Records of Achievement and The Learning Society: a tale of two discourses

ABSTRACT The first part of the paper briefly explores the implications of creating a learning society’ in terms of the changes this implies for how education is currently organized and delivered. The argument is made that the steadily increasing influence of the discourse of the ‘assessment society‘ — which assumes that all aspects of quality can and should be measured in an overt way — is actively inhibiting the development of a learning society’. The argument is illustrated by a case‐study of the records of achievement initiative — one of the earliest attempts to change the focus of assessment practice in the UK. It concludes by suggesting that while an assessment discourse of ‘performativity’, rather than ‘empowerment’ remains dominant, initiatives like recording achievement are unlikely to have more than a marginal impact.