’Accountability and Control’: a note on analysing secondary assessment systems

Abstract

This paper builds on Lingard's paper (1990a, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11, pp. 171‐188) analysing the present secondary school assessment system in Queensland by presenting comparable material for Victoria from 1856 to 1979. All Lingard's tools of analysis are used, but particular attention is paid to Offe's concept of “economic connections” and to operation‐alising it by the use of the financial accounts of examination boards. Only by employing such tools in the service of sociological theory will an approach be made to theories about assessment systems.