I thought this article in the Guardian today, a first person piece attacking teaching to “Assessment Objectives” was pretty insightful. I thought the comments, too, were interesting. Some criticised the author for focusing too much on some ill-defined notion of creativity. But I didn’t read any properl- reasoned defence, by those commenting, of the approach which she criticised. I’m sure it’s very prevalent in schools; my book carries has quite a bit of evidence on this.
Another article on the effects of targets, this time in terms of their effects on further education, was published in the TES’s FE Focus section last week.
I should have provided a reference to this at the time, too, but here is also a link to an article in Guardian Education in which Shirley Williams, the former Labour education secretary, talks about her reservations about the current testing/accountability regime.