This article focuses on the demands of assessment tasks to address the question: What is entailed in becoming recognised as an accomplished student-writer? In taking up this focus, the writers use authentic samples to show how tasks for assessing writing can be read as instantiations of particular approaches to English education. They investigate how the tasks inevitably draw on cultural knowledges as a primary resource and raise the issue of what is involved when writing assessment moves away, as it is doing in some Australian schools, from concerns with personal voice and individual growth to a socially critical, discourse-oriented approach.