Outcomes approaches to assessment: comparing non-government and government case-study schools in Western Australia

A key feature of recent curriculum reform in post-industrialised liberal economies has been the ascendancy of outcomes-based education policies. A 1995 review conducted in Western Australia (WA) recommended an outcomes-based approach, and in response, the Curriculum Framework (CF) was released in 1998. The same year, the WA State government mandated that all schools, both non-government and government, demonstrate compliance with the outcomes-based CF for Years K–10 by 2004. This article compares case-studies of non-government and government schools in analysing assessment and reporting issues in relation to the enactment of outcomes-based curriculum policy in the mid-2000s. With significantly different localised contexts, including different degrees of institutional autonomy and different approaches to curriculum, assessment and reporting, interesting contrasts and commonalities arose as each school engaged with the new policy. The research draws on a hybrid approach to policy analysis, incorporating both critical theory and post-structuralism with their different conceptualisations of power relationships. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine and analyse the views of participants at each site. Although there is no intention to generalise from individual case-studies, cross-case analysis reveals the emergence of meta-level themes – such as market choice, accountability and teacher professionalism – which are associated with ‘bigger picture’ issues of power and which may well provide insights for explorations of curriculum reform in other contexts.