The Reception Baseline Assessment will be a new national assessment in place to administrate all primary, infant and first schools around England. This has been introduced to help measure progress in how primary schools assist their pupils.

When is the Reception Baseline Assessment?

This will however not be implemented into school till Autumn 2021 as the current challenging circumstances of Covid 19 has put a strain on schools. However, some schools may implement an alternative assessment RBA Early Adopter year, this is optional.

This assessment will be completely new to schools and maybe unpopular as it was back in 2015. Parents and teachers alike have protested that this assessment will be daunting to many children who already are dealing with the anxiety of starting school.

As this will be introduced next year, it is good for parents and teachers to start looking into what this assessment will be including and how to prepare your child for this.

What will be included in the Reception Baseline Assessment?

The Reception Baseline Assessment will only become mandatory when the current Key Stage 1 assessment (SAT’s) becomes non-statutory. This means that it will become optional, it is not part of the curriculum. Please note only children who will start reception in 2021 will be required to sit this

This assessment will be including an activity-based assessment on the following topics. Answering questions on these topics will be inclusive to verbally or pointing or moving objects

Mathematics Tasks:

• Early number
• Early calculation (early addition/subtraction)
• Mathematical language
• Early understanding of shape

Early Literacy, Communication and Language Tasks

• Early vocabulary
• Phonological awareness
• Early reading
• Early comprehension

The assessment will be on the first 6 weeks of children starting school and will last around 20 minutes and will be age-appropriate for your child. The teacher’s themselves will be administering the test and will record all results online. These results are later used to inform teachers at the beginning of their primary school journey. Results will not be shared and used only at the end of year 6 to measure the school level progress.

More information shared here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtcBdknyCI

Is the Reception Baseline Assessment important?

The Department of Education has stated that this assessment will enable the department to create school-level progress measures for primary schools. This is important as it will give schools credit that they create during their time in reception, year 1 and year 2.

It is also important to point out that this assessment should not be considered as a test. The Reception Baseline Assessment has been designed as a one to one with a teacher that they are familiar with. It will also cover material that pupils are already familiar with. This has not been created to catch them out.

Reception Baseline Assessment: What schools need to know

Schools will need to prepare that this assessment is not a “pass” or “fail” assessment but is just a guide to show at what level the children are at reception.

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) will be developing and delivering this assessment from start to finish.

As this assessment was previously trialled in a nationally representative sample of schools between September and November 2018 and in September 2019. Schools had the opportunity to choose to participate in the RBA Early Adopter year in Autumn 2020.

How will the Reception Baseline Assessment measure progress at Key Stage 1?

Several schools usually have a form of baseline assessment, so it may not differ as much. The reason for this is to understand each child’s academic level and how their needs may be fitted.

The new Reception Baseline Assessment will be measuring the progress that is made for each child during their time at primary school. This is however not only for the child but it will give the government a snapshot of how the school is progressing with their pupils

It will be showing progress in Mathematics and Literacy, Communication and Language (as seen in Reception classes at the start of the year).

The government has reported that this is assessment will not:

• Provide any on-going formative information for practitioners
• Be used in any way to measure performance in the early years, evaluate preschool settings or hold early years practitioners to account
• Provide detailed diagnostic information about pupils’ areas for development

Reception Baseline Assessment: Example questions

The Reception Baseline Assessment will be a task-based assessment. This will be delivered in English. Pupils will be required to use physical materials that they can handle including plastic shapes and picture sequencing cards. The Assessment itself will be accessible to all needs and child friendly. What this means is that children will not necessarily answer questions using their words but can alternatively point or move objects as needed.

The assessment will be including routing, this is to not overwhelm the child with too many activities. This is also to help reduce the required assessment time. Scores will all be recorded online by the practitioner, with routing rules automatically applied.

This will be a one-to-one comfortable situation between a child and their familiar practitioner. It will be the practitioner responding to the child’s needs and reflecting familiar classroom practice.

There will be a resource box provided for the practitioner with all materials that will be required. There will additionally be guidance documents to support the administration.  Furthermore, there will be an administration guide provided to all users in hard copy and an online guide.

Watch the video below for more information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7CMu_Ef1Zs

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