Baseline assessment: Why it doesn't add up

Early years education is at risk. Not just from spending cuts and staff shortages, but from policies which will change how teachers teach and children’s opportunities to learn.These policies are not based on research and evidence but on opinion and prejudice. They threaten the quality of education, and the well-being of many children.At the heart of these risks is the government’s decision to resurrect reception baseline assessment – the formal testing of all children in their first six weeks of school.The government says that a baseline testis required in order to judge the progress children have made at the end of primary school. They want to use the test data to‘hold schools to account’. We say such a test will be damaging to young children. They will be pushed into a world of high-stakes assessment, which is at odds with young children’s learning and development.

Baseline is criticised by teachers, researchers, statisticians – and even the by the companies who were involved in the DfE’s last attempt to introduce it in 2015. More than a Score is campaigning to ensure this implausible and much criticised proposal never gets off the ground.