If nothing else, in our condition, secondary school placements based on the single Grade 6 assessment (NGSA), like its predecessor the Secondary School Secondary Examination (SSEE), will do nothing to aid stakeholder participation and thus will be anti-working class. That is why it is difficult to believe, given the lineage of the parties making up the coalition government, that sufficient thought was given to what is being proposed.
Before proceeding to my main concern, because they have been in the public domain for some considerable time and also work against the interest of working people, I will most briefly deal with two of the usual quarrels with the SSEE.
The first states that it is unfair to allow the consequences of a single examination to determine an individual’s life chances. It could spell disaster if for any reason a child is not at her best at that one time. It appeared much fairer to spread the examinations over the entire course of the primary cycle and give stakeholders the
