Since the Delors report, reformers of education have been trying to create a curriculum that allows for human beings to flourish. Schools should not only be places where we learn to be and learn to live together, but also places where the way we assess students valorises all the different types of human gifts within them.

And yet, most schools are locked in a 19th Century assessment structure that prevents young people from exploring the variety and extent of their gifts and forces them to perform on a narrow, high stakes track. When will this change?

In this remarkable book, Conrad Hughes gives an overview of the assessment problem affecting schools and creates a path to take to broaden assessment and potentially reposition the whole purpose of schooling. It's a brave, beautifully written treatise that anyone interested in education and assessment should read.

• Georges Haddad, Honorary President of Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Former Director at UNESCO (Education sector)