It is a matter of almost universal agreement in the education service – outside the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), that is – that our assessment systems are in urgent need of reform. Sadly, there is no consensus about which aspects need to be reformed or in what ways. The weaknesses of the assessment systems – the plural is in order: that there are several of them is part of the problem – are rarely scrutinised from the point of view of lifelong learning. To do so here offers a distinctive perspective on the analysis of a major preoccupation of practitioners and policy makers. What are the problems that beset our assessment systems? How did they arise and what are their effects? What might be done to remedy the problems? And, most important of all, do the ways in which the learning and achievement of students are assessed during their school years affect their attitudes to, and participation in, lifelong learning?

At present, the most common complaint is that there is simply too much (formal) assessment: too many tests and examinations and too much course work. For some students, every year between the ages of 10 and 20 or so will contain at least one formal examination. An associated allegation is that the examinations boards – the unitary awarding bodies, AQA, Edexel and OCR – are inefficient, making too many mistakes in the way they handle GCSEs, AS-and A-levels. But many claim that however efficient the exam boards, the extent of formal assessment should be reduced, since it brings too much stress to students and teachers and distorts the true purposes and practices of education.