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In recent years, a growing political emphasis has been placed upon the development of transformative assessment-driven reform in schools. There is global consensus on the value of assessment activities that are carefully designed to be consistent with desired learning outcomes, and which coherently connect learning theory, the curriculum, classroom activities and assessment. The consensus ends when there is debate between those who believe that schools produce more able students when they are faced with summative assessments and those who propose the implementation of formative assessment strategies in classrooms. This article presents a literature review which investigates the large-scale transformation of classroom practice in the Scottish region of the UK, known as "Project 1." The article begins with a summary overview of "Project 1" and continues with a conceptual discussion of formative and summative assessment. The latter sections of the article delineate the key architectural principles underpinning formative assessment in practical settings before going on to present the professional evaluations of "Project 1" by participating teachers.

Responses from 556 part-time students in two universities and two further education colleges in Scotland found that 81% were employed full time; 62% had mixed personal and vocational motivations; and considerable fee support from employers was offset by a decline in released time for study. (SK)