Scales
The profile comprises 13 scales across the six areas of learning: Personal, social and emotional development
* Dispositions and attitudes
* Social development
* Emotional development Communication, language and literacy
* Language for communication and thinking
* Linking sounds and letters
* Reading
* Writing Mathematical development
* Number as labels and for counting
* Calculating
* Shape, space and measures
Knowledge and understanding of the world
Physical development
Creative development
Points
There are nine points within each assessment scale. Points 1 to 3 describe children who are still progressing towards the early learning goals and are based mainly on the stepping stones. Points 4 to 8 relate to the early learning goals, and point 9 describes a child who is working beyond the level of the early learning goals. To be assessed at point 9, a child must have achieved points 1 to 8.
Assessment
Reception teachers are asked to make a 'best-fit' judgement against all of the statements in the profile, by looking at their accumulated evidence of learning (observations, nursery transfer records, conversations with the parents and the child, and so on).
There are 117 statements in total and they are mostly broad summary statements. Practitioners need to record parents' views at the beginning and end of the year and interview children to gain their views of their progress. Interviewing the children is a positive step and makes assessment a process involving the child, rather than something which is just done to the child.
Many of the points in the scales are not hierarchical (that is, they do not progress from the least through to the most advanced skills), but some scales are more hierarchical than others.
Children with English as an additional language can be assessed in their first language in all the scales except communication, language and literacy, where they can only be assessed as having achieved at most point 3 in these scales (pre-early learning goals) if their first language is used.
It is expected that the FSP will be inclusive for children with special educational needs, as the profile is a result of ongoing observations and practitioners will have adapted the curriculum to suit the child's needs.
However, where a particular scale is inappropriate to the child's level of development, it can be left out, and alternative forms of assessment used.