This paper explores how mandated literacy assessment is reorganising teachers' work in the context of Australia's National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy, which was implemented in 2008. Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are tested annually, with school results publicly available. The wider policy context and the emergence of different…

School-age populations in many nations are becoming increasingly diverse (in terms of languages, countries of origin, ethnicity, faith traditions and so on) especially in low socio-economic communities where recent arrivals tend to be accommodated. In Australian classrooms, it is not unusual for a single classroom to include children who speak…

The fact that children growing up in poverty are likely to be in the lower ranges of achievement on standardised literacy tests is not a new phenomenon. Internationally there are a myriad of intervention and remedial programmes designed to address this problem with a range of effects. Frequently, sustainable reforms are curtailed by deficit views…