§ 34. Mr. Gwilym Robertsasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the work of his Department's Assessment of Performance Unit.
§ Miss Margaret JacksonThe Assessment of Performance Unit is now fully operational. Its Consultative Committee, appointed by my right hon. Friend and widely representative of educational interests, held its first meeting in April, when it received a progress report from the unit and reviewed its future programme of activity. A working group on language, following the lead given by the report of the Bullock Committee, has made considerable progress in preparing to commission the development of assessment materials. A working group on mathematics is being formed and is expected to move quickly to follow up the substantial amount of work already completed in a separate project sponsored by my Department. Groups covering other468W areas of the curriculum are either operational as in the case of science, or about to become so—for example, moral education. The unit's work is essentially long term, and past experience shows that it takes two to three years to develop and validate new testing material. Nevertheless a promising start has been made.