Traditional assessment has been equated with written exams, concentrating on a small area of the curriculum, which must be taken individually, at a particular time and place. A growing number of educationalists are coming to believe that skills and competencies are at least as important an outcome of education as knowledge and there is a requirement for new data and monitoring systems to measure these. In this session we shall examine innovative approaches to assessment that are taking hold in many countries and promising to improve achievement.