Primary Assessment consultation March 2017
Draft response from Early Education – for comment by members
Q6. The EYFSP measures a child’s development against the ELGs set out in
the EYFS statutory framework. Should the profile be improved to better assess
a child’s knowledge, skill, understanding and level of development at the end
of the early years? If so, please describe which elements could be added,
removed or modified.
a) We note that the consultation raises the issue of including self-regulation within
the Profile. We agree that this is important but as this is already covered within
the Characteristics of Effective Learning, the best way for self-regulation to be
reflected in the Profile is to include the Characteristics (see (i) below).
b) The current EYFSP is well established and understood by practitioners, with a
consistent time series of data from 2012, so changes should only be made to the
EYFSP if there is clear evidence that this will improve the quality of the
information collected sufficiently to outweigh the additional cost implications of a
change, and the additional workload on school and local authority staff which
would be involved in familiarisation with the changes.
c) Workload and training issues must be put in the context of any other changes
introduced within a similar timescale – bringing in a new baseline assessment at
the same time as changing the Profile, for example, would have an extremely
damaging impact on teaching in the reception year.
d) In considering the Profile, ministers must remember that the EYFS is a key stage
in its own right. The EYFSP is a summative assessment at the end of the EYFS
key stage, fitted to the needs of children from age 0 to 5.
e) The principles of EYFS teaching and assessment could be extended to children
aged 6 or 7. The converse does not apply -- it is vital that teaching and
assessment approaches from KS1 and above are not pushed down into the
reception class, as they are simply not appropriate for children aged 5 and
younger.
f) The EYFSP currently serves two purposes; the primary purpose is as a
summative assessment to aid children’s transition between reception and year 1.
g) The secondary purpose as an accountability measure is linked to some existing
evidence of gaming of the EYFSP. Consideration should be given to reducing
the high stakes use of assessment data to prevent distortion. Greater use of
sampling for accountability, for example, would avoid gaming and impact of high
stakes testing.
h) The greatest problem with the EYFSP data as it is currently used is the so-called
“Good Level of Development” (GLD). This was arbitrarily set by government and
is not based on evidence of what a typical level of development is at the end of
the reception year, in particular in relation to the Early Learning Goals for literacy
and mathematical development. Limiting the GLD to those children who attain
the unrealistic literacy and number goals leads to sweeping statements about
i)
j)
k)
l)
m)
large numbers of children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds,
“failing”. It also has a distorting effect on children’s experience and the
curriculum.
Consideration should be given to revising the GLD to be a more rounded
reflection of children’s attainment. The EYFSP is about ensuring schools are
ready for children (as a result of having good transition information) as well as
ensuring that children are “ready” for school. In this context, the GLD’s current
focus only on the Prime Areas, Literacy and Maths is too narrow to be helpful early literacy and numeracy outcomes are very poor predictors of later success in
school. Far more relevant are whether children are developing the
Characteristics of Effective Learning, which are strongly linked to self-regulation
which research shows is a critical basis for learning, as the government
recognises in this consultation document.
We suggest the GLD be defined as attaining the Early Learning Goals for the
prime areas (Personal, Social and Emotional Development; Communication and
Language; Physical Development) and a non-binary score for the Characteristics
of Effective Learning (see below). In addition, the specific areas could be
represented by identifying an overall total score across all areas which would not
privilege Literacy and Mathematical Development over other areas of learning.
By using these three scores, professional judgements would be stronger as they
are triangulated.
In relation to the inclusion of the Characteristics of Effective Learning within the
GLD, we commend the assessment tools developed by Bristol City Council
(www.bristolearlyyears.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bristol-EY-CoELFinal-Document.pdf) , which gives a useful framework for assessing children. It
provides a points score on a graduated scale (not yet/rarely/sometimes/often),
instead of using a deficit-based binary model. Including the Characteristics of
Effective Learning in this way would not only provide a much more valid
assessment of children’s learning and development, but would also have a
positive impact on early years practice by focussing on aspects of development
that are among the most significant for young children.
To avoid any increase in workload, this could replace the existing statement
which practitioners are required to write for each child on their development in
relation to the Characteristics Effective Learning, to be reported to parents and
year 1 teachers.
The ELGs for Literacy and Mathematical development need to be modified
because unlike all the others they are not typical of children at that age -- this is
evident from the data which shows children scoring disproportionately lower
against these ELGs (see graph below). They are unrealistic expectations and
inappropriate, and have negative knock-on effects on children’s experience by
distorting focus on getting children to reach these goals.
n) This is exacerbated in some cases where practitioners may be adding in
additional requirements under pressure from headteachers or local authorities,
such as interpreting writing a sentence to include use of capitals and punctuation.
The wording should therefore be tightened to avoid misinterpretation.
Suggested changes to ELGs
The following is our suggested amended wording for the ELGs:
Literacy
Reading: Children read and understand simple text using a range of strategies
including context, visual memory and phonics. They use their phonic knowledge to
decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some
common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others
about what they have read.
Writing: children write to record their own ideas in a range of circumstances. They
use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.
They also write some irregular common words. Their writing can be read by
themselves and sometimes by others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are
often phonetically plausible.
Mathematics
Numbers: children use numbers in a range of circumstances. They can reliably
count sets of objects to at least 10, and can say which set has more or less. They
recognise and order numerals to at least 10. They solve everyday problems in
practical contexts using addition and subtraction by joining or separating sets.
Shape, space and measures: children use everyday language to talk about size,
weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money to compare quantities and
objects and to solve problems. They recognise, create and describe patterns. They
explore characteristics of everyday objects and shapes and use mathematical
language to describe them.
The wording of the ELGs needs to have regard to equality issues, including
recognising that children have different development pathways - eg in relation to
boys and reading. The wording therefore needs to be applicable to all children, and
reflect what is a reasonable expectation for children at the end of reception.
Q7. The EYFSP currently provides an assessment as to whether a child is
‘emerging, expecting or exceeding’ the level of development in each ELG. Is
this categorisation the right approach? Is it the right approach for children
with SEND?
a) We believe the current categorisation is the correct approach and should not
be altered. The issue is not the categories, but practitioners’ understanding of
“best fit” and confidence in making professionally informed judgements, with
triangulation of decisions based on the exemplification.
b) Too often practitioners are using the ELG summative statements (and the
descriptors included in the earlier bands in Development Matters) not for
guidance on a best-fit basis in identifying a typical range of development, but
instead within their formative and summative assessment processes as a
checklist of isolated skills. This unhelpful, inaccurate and time-consuming
approach is exacerbated by the plethora of electronic packages that present
assessment in this way.
c) This is an issue for guidance and training at all levels, and continued support
for the professional development of practitioners (including teachers).
Additional funds should be spent on professional moderation & training, not
software systems or expensive baseline assessments.
d) The Profile handbook is very good and helpful, eg on responsible pedagogy,
and we hope this will continue in its current form.
e) We note that there are concerns over systematic biases in way that ELGs are
scored but feel these could be addressed by tighter definitions. We believe
the biases currently result from people putting their own spin on the
requirements (for example, asserting that “writing a simple sentence” means
something that has a capital letter and a full stop, or is in cursive writing).
They can also be the result of gaming when the assessments are used for
high stakes purposes.
f) In relation to the category “Expected” (not “expecting” as stated in the
consultation), we would prefer the use of the word “Typical”, but given that the
terminology is well established, we feel perhaps it would be better not to try to
change this.
g) While the classification “Emerging” clearly is not sufficient to describe the
learning and development of children with SEND or indeed others who have
not reached the ELGs, the EYFSP specifies that more information must be
provided in such cases. We would suggest the use of the Early Support
materials for children with SEND. These should be added as a supplement to
the documentation accompanying the Profile.
h) For all children, the Profile is meant to support a conversation between the
reception teacher, parents and year 1 teachers, and should always be
supplemented by more detailed transition information.
Q8. What steps could we take to reduce the workload and time burden on
those involved in administering the EYFSP?
a) The purpose of the EYFSP is to provide a summary of each child’s
development at the end of EYFS. It should be a simple, clear summary, to
share information accurately about the child. A secondary purpose is
accountability. The current EYFSP serves both purposes, but it is important
to be clear about the distinction between summative and formative
assessment. Practitioners observe children throughout their time in the
foundation stage; this is formative assessment which is integral to the
practitioner’s cycle of observation, assessment and planning. The EYFSP is
a summative assessment which draws on the practitioner’s observations
throughout the child’s time in the setting, and thus should be quick and easy
to draw together using a professionally informed, best-fit judgement.
This model of assessment (from EYFS 2008 and Development Matters 2012)
describes the formative cycle, which is a statutory requirement in the EYFS.
There are no requirements for the process to be recorded, and much of it is
based on the knowledge of skilled practitioners who will use this approach on
a moment-to-moment basis, as well as in longer term assessment and
planning. Using the best-fit approach, many settings draw on their knowledge
of the child to produce a termly summary. The EYFSP, as an end-of-year
summative assessment, follows exactly the same process and is the only
required summative judgement.
b) Because the EYFSP draws on, and is the culmination of, ongoing
observational assessment as set out in the EYFS Statutory Framework
section 2.1 it is consistent with the assessment principles of the EYFS and is
not a large additional workload It just requires completion of a one-page
document.
c) Where workload problems exist this is generated by requirements that do not
arise from the EYFSP itself but are externally driven – for example
approaches taken by some headteachers, local authorities and online
“tracking” systems lead to practitioners spending lots of time generating and
inputting large amounts of “evidence”.
d) The workload could therefore be reduced by more clarity about what is
required as part of statutory assessment – so that it is fully transparent to all
those involved including local authorities, headteachers and Ofsted, particular
in relation to schools inspections. For example the Ofsted Early Years
Inspection Handbook (August 2015. 150068) gives helpful guidance on what
is required for assessment in the EYFS. Including something similar in the
Ofsted Schools Inspection Handbook for assessment may prevent some of
the issues raised above around gaming.
e) As mentioned above, we recommend adding the Characteristics of Effective
Learning to the Profile, which would involve scoring an additional nine
statements. Practitioners should already be observing these, however, and
DfE could then remove the requirement to write a statement on the
Characteristics, which many practitioners currently find difficult.
Q9. How could we improve the consistency and effectiveness of the EYFSP
moderation process whilst reducing burdens?
a) Moderation should be built in throughout the EYFS as part of everyday good
practice as described in section 2.1 of the EYFS. A national process of
accreditation for moderators needs to be brought back, with only accredited
moderators taking on the role in local authorities. The Profile should be a
short summary at the end (summative), but the assessment should be
continuous, against where children are at the time (formative).
b) A review may be needed as to whether local authorities still have sufficient
resources for moderation, and if not how should this be tackled. The
requirement to pass through 95% of the EYNFF funding has been made
without a proper assessment of the resources needed to deliver statutory
duties of this sort.
c) Gaming occurs because of high stakes accountability based on assessment
scores. The Profile has become distorted to be about the data and not the
children, whereas it should be about transition and promoting consistency and
continuity for children. The Profile data would be far more reliable for
accountability if used on a random sampled basis, with the high stakes
element for any individual school removed.
d) Greater emphasis needs to be given to the ethics of assessment, which is
based on professional judgements. Teachers should no more be pressured
to distort their professional judgement in assessments, than doctors should be
pressured to change a diagnosis to achieve targets in the health service.
Q10. Any form of progress measure requires a starting point. Do you agree
that it is best to move to a baseline assessment in reception to cover the time
a child is in primary school (reception to key stage 2)? If you agree, then
please tell us what you think the key characteristics of a baseline assessment
in reception should be. If you do not agree, then please explain why.
We do not agree that progress measures are the best accountability measures for
primary schools. The government has not produced credible evidence of
assessments at age 4 providing a valid or reliable guide to predicted performance at
age 11: the one paper which they cited as an “international evidence base” in
response to a FOI request, consisted of an 11-year-old article by members of the
research team who had both designed the assessment, and were evaluating their
own work – moreover, this was an organisation which both advises the government
supposedly “impartially” and sells one of the commercial tests which is likely to be
considered for use by government. This is neither impartial nor a credible evidence
base, and fails to address the issues raised by other researchers as to the difficulties
of constructing a valid, consistent assessment of children at age 4 which is a reliable
predictor of later attainment.
Additionally, much evidence, including the DfE’s current consultation on “Analysing
family circumstances and education”, shows the clear link between family income
and both educational attainment and progress at KS2 and 4, suggesting that any
system of accountability based primarily on progress would in fact be judging
schools on their economic circumstances of their pupils.
The previous failed attempts at introducing baseline assessment in reception have
shown that:
 It is difficult to develop a valid and reliable assessment – the fact that the 2015
scheme failed because the three commercial schemes were not sufficiently
compatible underlines the difficulty of getting consistent results when
assessing very young children
 Baseline assessment increases workloads for schools at a crucial time when
teachers need to be getting children settled and focusing on their learning.
Teachers unanimously agreed that they already carried out their own
formative assessments of children, and that the national baseline assessment
schemes did not add usefully to their knowledge, but did increase their
workloads
 A national scheme of baseline assessment is costly (both in terms of direct
costs and opportunity costs from diverting teachers’ time and school
resources) and diverts resources away from improving teaching and learning
 High stakes assessment provides perverse incentives to lower results, eg by
encouraging teachers to minimise any learning undertaken before the
assessments take place
 High stakes assessments distort the curriculum and in the case of baseline
assessment will skew the delivery of the Early Years Foundation Stage
curriculum still further towards inappropriate early delivery of numeracy and
literacy activities that do not aid later learning even in relation to those
curriculum areas.
It is unethical to carry out assessments on young children which will have no direct
benefit to them – and indeed are harmful if they restrict the curriculum offered,
reduce the amount of teacher time available and divert resources into the collection
and analysis of data. If as suggested these data are not used until the children have
completed their primary schooling, there can be no possible benefit to the children
themselves.
It is also nonsensical to hold schools to account at the end of a seven year period for
progress from a starting point since when there will almost certainly have been
significant changes in the cohort of children, the staffing profile, the leadership and
governance teams – and almost certainly the curriculum and funding regimes set by
government.
Baseline assessment should only be introduced if:
 It directly improves the learning of the children involved (ie is consistent with
the principles of formative assessment embedded in the EYFS)
 The negative impact on children’s access to teaching and learning is minimal,
and balanced out by demonstrable and proportionate benefits
 It does not distort delivery of the EYFS curriculum and is consistent
 It has been shown to provide consistent, accurate data which are reliable
predictors of future attainment
 It avoids any possible early labelling of children which could become selffulfilling
Q11. If we were to introduce a reception baseline, at what point in the
reception year do you think it should be administered? In particular, we are
interested in the impact on schools, pupils and teaching of administering the
assessment at different times.
There is no good reason to introduce a baseline in reception, particularly since the
government has recognised the value of the EYFS Profile and is committed to
keeping it. All the arguments the government puts forward for abolishing SATS in
year 2 apply equally – and perhaps doubly – to the idea of having both a baseline
and the Profile in reception.
The argument that schools should demonstrate progress from entry is flawed (see
above), but even if it were valid, it would be entirely arbitrary to undertake the
baseline at the start of reception rather than at the start of Year 1, when statutory
school starts. If measuring from some point in the early years, why start in
Reception when more than half of all schools offer a nursery class, and growing
numbers take 2-year-olds, either on roll or in governor-run provision? It encourages
fragmentation of the EYFS, rather than incentivising all providers to work together to
ensure children benefit as fully as possible from the totalilty of early years provision
they receive.
The timing of assessments would be problematic in all cases: too early in the year
and children have not settled in and will not show a true reflection of what they know
and can do. Too late and there is a danger of children’s learning being held back to
“game the system”.
Q13. If we were to introduce a new reception baseline measure, do you agree
that we should continue to use key stage 1 teacher assessment data as the
baseline for measuring progress in the interim years before a new measure
was in place? If you disagree, what do you think we should use as the baseline
instead?
We disagree with the concept of high stakes progress measures based on any kind
of narrow baseline. Schools should be judged on a broad basket of measures, of
which assessment data should form only a part, with schools being enabled to
provide a narrative context to anomalies in the data. If DfE continues to use Key
Stage 1 assessment data, it should be in this way, not in a high stakes way which
will having distorting effects on children’s learning.
Q14. If a baseline assessment is introduced in reception, in the longer term,
would you favour removing the statutory requirement for all-through primary
schools to administer assessments at the end of key stage 1?
We would be in favour of minimising the amount of statutory assessment throughout
the early years and primary.
Q15. If we were to introduce a reception baseline to enable the creation of
reception to key stage 2 progress measures for all-through primaries, what
would be the most effective accountability arrangements for infant, middle and
junior schools’ progress measures?
Effective accountability measures for the early years, infant, middle and junior
schools should be constructed in such a way as to avoid the distortions caused by
high stakes use of data from single assessments at any one point or points in the
education system. The fact that any one system of progress measures of the kind
proposed by government causes problems for different parts of the early years and
primary system emphasises the flaws with this kind of model.
Q24. Do you think that any of our proposals could have a disproportionate
impact, positive or negative, on specific students, in particular those with
'relevant protected characteristics' (including disability, gender, race and
religion or belief)? Please provide evidence to support your response.
Previous research shows that summer born children, boys and children with SEND
and children with EAL tend to perform less well in baseline assessments in
reception, and depending on how the outcomes of these assessments are used
there may be a risk of inappropriate early labelling of children which would
disadvantage them by biasing the expectations of teachers, parents and children
themselves. Cohort measures which do not control for these factors could equally
well disadvantage schools by failing to account changing profiles from year to year.
Q25. How could any adverse impact be reduced and are there any ways we
could better advance equality of opportunity? Please provide evidence to
support your response.
To minimise adverse impact from baseline assessment the results need to be lowstakes, and care needs to be taken that children and parents are not presented with
over-simplified information such as a single combined score, and that any
information they are given is put in context with feedback from the teacher based on
observation of the child more holistically – eg against the full set of EYFS areas of
learning.
We also draw government’s attention to the relevant parts of the Rochford review,
which reminds us that
“Equality is not always about inclusion. Sometimes equality is about altering
the approach according to the needs of the pupils” (p11)
and for example:
“Pupils with EAL can fit a wide range of profiles. Some may be newly arrived
to the country and may have come from difficult circumstances in their home
country. Others may always have lived in the UK, but may come from homes
where English is not spoken. Others may already be bilingual or multilingual.
The right approach to supporting assessment for all these pupils may be
different.
Recommendation Whilst it is important that these pupils can be assessed
within wider statutory assessment arrangements, additional advice or
guidance may be required to help teachers with making their assessments
accurately and effectively. Schools need to know when to disapply pupils from
statutory assessments, particularly when making judgements about whether
to enter pupils for the national curriculum tests. For those pupils judged to be
working below the standard of national curriculum tests, teachers need to
know how to apply the pre-key stage standards or how to assess against the
7 areas of cognition and learning effectively.(p27) “
We note that there is much in common between the Characteristics of Effective
Learning in the EYFS and the seven areas of cognition and learning effectively.
A follow up of the Rochford might usefully look at assessment in the EYFS, and also
consider whether for pupils in KS1 and 2 who are not yet working at expected levels,
whether elements of assessment within the EYFS may be of relevance.
Draft as at 22 May 2017