Early years practitioners have given a mixed welcome to the Government's move to abolish baseline assessments on four-and five-year-olds during their first seven weeks at primary school in England, and introduce a profile scheme to be completed at the end of the Foundation Stage.
They approve of the move to streamline the current system, under which more than 90 accredited baseline assessment schemes are operating throughout England. But that is tempered by concern that it could be used as a 'stick to beat' Foundation Stage practitioners.
The new national Foundation Stage Profile Scheme will employ ongoing observation and assessment to look at each child's progress towards all six of the Early Learning Goals and their learning needs. The scheme, which was announced in the recent education White Paper and consultation documents, is sponsored by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). The National Foundation for Educational Research is developing the scheme in partnership with Birmingham LEA. They have devised assessment schemes currently in use. The new scheme will be introduced in England in September 2002 at the start of the next school year. (See box below for details of baseline assessments in the rest of the UK.) A group of reception teachers in Birmingham contributed ideas for scaled criteria and assessment activities, which are to be tested in randomly selected schools across England next month and again on up to 5,000 children next summer. The assessments are based on observations and professional judgement, supplemented by assessment activities for optional use with individual or small groups of children.
Leading early years campaigners are united in giving a warm welcome to the importance which the new scheme places on the traditional early years technique of observation. Pat Wills, who chairs Early Education, says, 'The emphasis on observation is excellent. It is just what all good early years practitioners have been doing for years. Even after you have jumped through hoops in terms of the baseline assessment, you carry on assessing all the time because you cannot prepare for the next stage of learning if you do not observe what is going on.'
She argues that the current system of more than 90 different schemes is very confusing for practitioners. 'It does need streamlining. In a school like mine in Blackpool we have children coming in from all over the country, and there is no consistency. The assessments vary. An assessment might say that a child can do such and such, and you don't know whether that means the child can do this unaided or with parental assistance or what.'
However, she would much prefer to see the new scheme introduced at the start of Year One. Carrying out the assessment during the Foundation Stage means the information has to be prepared and transferred to the child's teacher in Year One, and in some cases children move settings between the two classes. Therefore, it would be easier for the teacher undertaking the planning and delivery of a child's learning at the start of Year One to conduct the assessment. She adds, 'I think there is a temptation for it to be seen by teachers as a means of checking up on what the children have done in the Foundation Stage.'
Early years consultant Anne O'Connor goes further, saying, 'By moving it to the end of the Foundation Stage one wonders what it is they are measuring. I think this will no longer be about where the child is but it will be a stick to beat Foundation Stage practitioners with.'
Many schools also use baseline assessment to identify children with learning difficulties and special educational needs, according to an independent evaluation of baseline assessment last year by Professor Geoff Lindsay of the Centre for Development, Appraisal and Research, Warwick University, which was commissioned by the QCA. He queries whether schools will want to delay doing that until the end of the Foundation Stage.
'I would argue that there should still be assessment which starts certainly at the beginning of reception,' he says.
However, while there was extra Government funding to support the introduction of baseline assessment, he doubts there would be funding for schools to conduct two assessments, if they should feel it necessary. The new SEN Code of Practice, due to be implemented in January 2002, does not specify a method of identifying special-needs children through class-wide assessments.
Consultation exercise
The reforms of baseline assessment were outlined in a consultation exercise carried out by the QCA at the end of last year, when there was strong support for a single national scheme. There was also pressure from the National Early Years Network for the move to a profiling system, plus the consequent name change.
Mary Dickins, training development officer for NEYN, argues that the scheme must be clearly explained to parents to avoid them thinking it is a test that their child has to pass. 'We are concerned that results should not be delivered as scores or through any system that can be interpreted in hierarchical and value-laden terms. Material and information given to parents must be accessible, jargon free and based on a "can-do" interpretation of children's progress. We see a danger in provoking misplaced parental anxiety that may lead to unnecessary and inappropriate interventions for the child,' she says.
'Low baseline assessment scores can sap parents and children's morale and lead to low teacher expectation of children's future learning.' She says research has shown 'that the achievements of children match the level of their teacher's expectations, irrespective of their actual ability'.
Meanwhile, Anne O'Connor worries that teachers will be pressurised into pushing children to achieve higher and higher levels on the scales recording progress. 'I have always felt that baseline assessment was going to be used for target setting. When you set targets, then the meeting of these targets becomes all important, and to meet them you might have to engage in poor practice.'
Further information
* Copies of the White Paper Schools:Achieving Success, and the early years consultation document Better Beginnings can be obtained via the DfES website at www.dfes.gov.uk.The consultation exercise closes on 9 November.