Assessment and testing in Scottish primary schools

ABSTRACT

This paper examines assessment policy and practice in Scotland. When proposals for introducing national testing in Scotland were announced in 1987, it was promised that there would be no central collection of results and so no league table of schools could be based on them. The arrangements for testing were changed in 1993 so that the tests have the function of providing teachers ‘with the means to check their own assessment’. Despite this, the authors of this paper reveal a considerable confusion of the formative and summative roles of assessment, partially as a result of the way the system was introduced.

KEYWORDS:

• national testing
• formative/summative assessment
• Scottish assessment system
• educational policy
• league tables