From down under?

It was great to listen to Barbara Comber at the University of Sheffield yesterday. Although developments in Australia with the NAPLAN testing regime and public scrutiny via myschool are not exactly what you'd calll good news, the careful and critical study of these sorts of innovations from their inception could be very productive in understanding how policy gets enacted and interpretted (and subverted and resisted). It might also open a useful space for comparison and critique. All through her talk walked the ghost of Foucault. But also the impact of a testing regime on conceptions of literacy was hauntingly familiar. Will it end up with this?