This article examines how the principles of formative assessment might be applied to the curriculum subject of English. It takes as its starting point the problematic nature of progression in the subject and suggests that it may be better to understand progression as heading towards a horizon rather than a clearly defined goal. The article argues this by exploring the potential constraints of what might be considered goal models of progression and contrasts these with the affordances offered by those approaches that view progression as towards a horizon. In particular it suggests that, in order to understand how to progress, pupils need to acquire the guild subject knowledge of their teachers by being apprenticed into the same community of interpreters. The article situates this discussion within wider concerns about how teachers scaffold and regulate the learning process for their pupils.