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Abstract
PISA claims that it can extend its reach from its current core subjects of Reading, Science, Maths and problem-solving. Yet given the requirement for high levels of reliability for PISA, especially in the light of its current high stakes character, proposed widening of its subject coverage cannot embrace some important aspects of the social and aesthetic world. Verdicts on the latter often have holistic features, and there are dangers that such verdicts involve attempts to compare what cannot be compared. Judgments about the normative and the social often feature a legitimate lack of consistency.
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Notes
1. There is some overlap between the content of this paper and a previous paper published in this Journal: 2014 How far can we aspire to consistency when assessing learning? Ethics and Education 8 (3): 217–228.
2. ‘Where a conventional Western composition will seem to unfold as a thread through time, Messiaen’s discontinuous music rather provides an environment within which time itself can be observed, “coloured”, as he would say, by rhythm; time suspended, in his slow movements, or time racing forwards, in his scherzos and dances, or, most frequently, time changing its rhythmic colour from moment to moment. Instead of affirming the orderly flow of everyday existence, this is music which acknowledges only two essences: the instantaneous and the eternal’ (Griffiths Citation2006).