National curriculum assessment in Wales: adaptations and divergence

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Anne Whipp, Gary Brace and Gareth Elwyn Jones for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. Successive subsequent changes in the responsibilities of statutory bodies during the 1990s (see Whetton 2009, this issue, for the changes in England) saw the full range of responsibilities for curriculum and assessment policy advice and implementation, including the commissioning of tests, transferred to Wales by the end of that decade. The nature and significance of policy developments in the 1990s is discussed more fully in Daugherty (2000).

2. The statutory curriculum and assessment body that was established in 1994 is usually referred to by its Welsh language acronym – (ACAC) Awdurdod Cwricwlwm ac Asesu Cymru – as is its successor, ACCAC, set up in 1997 with responsibilities broadly equivalent to those of its counterpart in England, QCA.

3. Since April 2006, ACCAC's functions have been taken into the curriculum and assessment division of the WAG civil service thus bringing to an end the role of ‘arms length’ bodies in Wales in assessment policy development and implementation.