Why it works? Why it does not?

Still working on my assignment and searching materials I can use… More I read, more curious I get whether Assessment for Learning works always, or the evidence is so strong, because of ‘novelty effect’. I don’t mean because it is new concept (term ‘formative evaluation’ is from 60ties, I think), but because it is new for particular classroom/individual teacher and so they do everything to make it work. What makes me saying that is the evidence from Ofsted – fact that AfL, after strong support and national strategy initiatives, still is weak and does not work in many schools. (see my previous post on Ofsted Report)

Is that because these schools seen they priorities somewhere else or did not have change/improvement potential (the staff and leadership were not ready to change)?

I feel like I need to find some more info on school improvement / influence of different initiatives etc. (Does Assessment for Learning work because it is new initiative and people are enthusiastic so any new initiative would work the same way?)

And also I am struggling to get some material on assessment published in Slovakia or related to our school system or system similar to ours (Czech, Hungarian). Assessment for Learning literature is mostly in English therefore very likely from similar cultural context. Will it work in our context? How to implement? This are just few questions I need to get my head around.