examination success and may have detrimental effects on ordinary schooling (e.g.
teacher's putting more time and energy into private tuition activities which generate
substantial additional incomes, children studying for 10 or more hours a day).
Little's (1992) updated review of the literature on the Diploma Disease collects together
recent work and draws attention to refinements of the arguments which stress that the
Diploma Disease is best regarded as a social rather than individual pathology with roots
in established educational structures, the level of bureaucratisation in society and the
historical depth of social class divisions. Dore now argues that Japan is likely to retain
its economic pre-eminence despite the "examination hell" of schooling in Japan. This is
possible, he suggests, because work structures may be sufficient to offset some of the
adverse effects of over concentration on examinations. It is also because the Japanese
technical and scientific elite have been insulated from the worst effects of examination
orientation. Dore nevertheless now condudes that "the chief victims of an examination
dominated schooling are likely to be those who are bright without being the brightest,
those who are within sight of whatever are socially defined as desirable prizes in the
competition but by no means certain of reaching them without a great deal of anxious
effort". Though recent work has not confirmed simple relationships between assessment
orientation and work orientations, there does seem to be an association between interest
orientations to learning and creativity and problem solving at work (Little and Singh
1992). Moreover it seems possible that different types of assessment practices have
differential propensities to facilitate interest orientation, though this remains to be
demonstrated on larger samples than have been researched.
The experience of attempts to abandon national examining systems in favour of other
methods of selection -as in China during the Cultural Revolution seems unlikely to
provide a way forward for many countries. Unger's (1982) analysis exposes many of the
problems that arose during this period. China has returned to a familiar system of
national and provincial examining and the "sea of items" has reappeared as a common
epithet to describe the experience of secondary schooling. A unified entrance
examination for University entrance has been adopted and many of the characteristics
of backwash from this into the school system are becoming apparent (Lewin and Wang
Lu 1991).
Some promising developments have occurred with the introduction of various forms of
school based and continuous assessment which have been introduced partly to lessen
stress on public examinations. Pennycuidk (1989:139-152) reviews attempts to
introduce continuous assessment in Shri Lanka, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea,
Seychelles and Nigeria and finds systems ranging from the total replacement of external
exams, to parallel systems of continuous assessment and external exams, and to systems
where continuous assessment forms a component of final results, together with external
examination results. The much greater involvement of teachers in the assessment of
students in these systems is obvious. But there has been a wealth of difference between