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The role and significance of speech-language pathology (SLP) is not often considered in studies of language planning. SLP has tended to be considered more as an issue for health policy than for language policy. However, the health focus of SLP does interact with language planning especially in education where SLP assessments have implications for language-in-education planning in local contexts and in the development of literacy programmes and educational interventions in schools. It is in the case of assessment in educational contexts in which the concerns of SLP and language planning come closest together. This paper will discuss the implementation of language assessment policies within one rural Aboriginal community school in Australia. These policies have had the effect of medicalising non-standard language systems and increasing existing power imbalances between the Aboriginal people and the non-Aboriginal education system. This has resulted in significant detrimental impacts being experienced by the individual children who have been tested in accordance with these language assessment policies.
