ABSTRACT
Pupil assessment, and its evaluation, might be diagnostic, in which case we use the assessment results to tell us where a pupil’s learning strengths and weaknesses are: which facts have been learned and which not, which concepts have been understood and which not, which skills have been acquired and which not, or not securely. Armed with this information we can determine the best course of action for the pupil, in terms of what needs to be done next to remedy any gaps. This is the kind of use made of assessment results in ‘formative assessment’, where the child is temporarily, frequently and usually unobtrusively assessed and evaluated, in order that progress in learning can be continuously checked and maximised before any formal assessment takes place later.
