The Failure of Assessment: Critical Responses to the ASAT Debate

Critical educational commentary on the problem of assessment has attempted to apply political and philosophical coherence to a dispersed collection of problems, by representing the field as polarised by absolute oppositions of principle. This paper attempts to set aside these global formulations, arguing that they bear little relation to the more piecemeal elements of the problems endemic to the modern apparatus of assessment. Drawing on recent Foucaultian work on Australian education, it explores these arguments via a case study of debates on the Australian Scholastic Aptitude Test and gender equity in the Australian Capital Territory. The conundrums arising from this example are treated as suggestive of some limitations of current forms of educational critique.