Assessment issues often get a bad press and yet assessment is at the heart of teaching and learning. Without assessment, teachers' decisions about what pupils need next to make progress would be pure guesswork. They would not know which activities to select and so their attempts to help their pupils would be trial and error. Without assessment,…

The very first edition of "Primary Science Review" included an article entitled "Teaching primary science--how research can help" (Harlen, 1986), which announced that a section of the journal would be for reports of research and particularly for teachers reporting their classroom research. The intervening 24 years have seen…