Over the past 30 years major reforms have been introduced to the curriculum and to school examination methods in England. Far more coursework, practical work and project work assessment has been introduced, to be set and marked in the school. The rationale was that the curriculum needed to change and assessment methods needed to change to match the new curriculum. A wider range of skills, capabilities and understandings needed to be developed for the emerging ‘knowledge economy’. This in turn required a wider range of assessment methods to be developed to identify and report a wider range of learning outcomes – practical work, oral work, fieldwork and coursework to test practical competences and the application of knowledge. At one and the same time, examinations passes and school league tables have become a major instrument of system accountability, such that, students, teachers and schools now focus on passing examinations much more intensively than they did 30 years ago. Pass rates have increased substantially, but arguments have been raised that too much coursework and practical assessment by teachers has led to ‘grade inflation’ rather than to real improvements in educational standards and outcomes. Current policy in England is now to abolish school-based assessments by teachers in GCSE and A-level and return to an entirely final examination based system. Research suggests that the intense pressure exerted on teachers and schools to raise test scores in response to accountability measures, had indeed led to a situation whereby re-drafting coursework, and re-sitting short modular and practical tests, were raising scores without necessarily raising the educational standards achieved. Coaching and practice came to dominate student experience. Yet there are good reasons for assessing student achievement through a range of methods and activities, undertaken over time, and in so doing underpinning the development of a wider curriculum. Can the assessment of a wide range of individual achievements be reconciled with contemporary political pressure to use examination results to measure the system as a system? The paper will review these issues in relation to changes to GCSE and A-level in England. It will situate this review in the context of other debates about the need to develop a wider range of skills and capabilities for the ‘21st Century Economy’. The paper will then reflect on whether and if so in what ways assessing broader learning outcomes for individuals might be separated from system accountability procedures.

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