Off to a Bad Start

The government says testing four-year-olds will raise standards, but Dr Sue Gifford and Dr Helen J Williams believe it will be harmful to children and their education...

When the new baseline assessment for Reception children is introduced in September 2016, the government believes it will “improve the standards of schools” and “give credit to those that improve pupils’ performance”. We, however, have a rather different perspective. A closer examination of the proposals reveals the baseline assessment to be inappropriate, costly and seriously flawed in terms of both reliability and accountability.

We are not the first to raise an objection. Perhaps most astonishingly the government completely ignored feedback from its public consultation in 2013 – where 54 per cent of respondents were teachers and headteachers. Just over half (51 per cent) said “no” to introducing a baseline test at the start of reception, and 73 per cent opposed the idea of government-approved, commercially produced assessments because of the potential for confusion and inconsistency. Yet both of these points are included in the current proposals, which are as follows:

• A short assessment will be made of Reception children during the first half of the autumn term.
• The assessment will report a score for each child on a single scale.
• Schools will choose from a list of commercially produced assessments , from providers awarded contracts by the DfE (awarded at the end of January 2015 for 19 months in the first instance).
• Assessments are likely to be tests, rather than observation based, and scores will not be adjusted for age or for children with EAL.
• Schools not using an approved baseline assessment will not be able to access ‘low prior attainment funding’.
• Schools that choose not to use a baseline will be judged on progress from KS1 and on their outcomes at KS2.
• Infant schools do not need to baseline, as junior schools will be judged on progress from KS1 assessments.

In October 2014, we wrote a letter to the education secretary Nicky Morgan from the ATM / MA Primary Group that expressed our concerns as mathematics educators. The reply, written by David Laws, minister of state for schools, came mid-November and was not encouraging – serious concerns remain.

Laws claims criteria for the tests have been developed in consultation with “assessment experts, early years experts and teachers”, but it is difficult to see how experts would agree to measure four- and five-year-olds using one-off assessments, with a single score on a narrow content domain. We have since logged a freedom of information request for the names of the experts involved.

The government is clear it does not intend the baseline assessments to be used to inform teaching; giving each four or five-year-old a score, it says, is for the purposes of accountability only. But while ministers insist the baseline will not be used to monitor individual children, the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) states it will “sit within teachers’ broader assessments of children’s development.” With schools under pressure to monitor progress, it’s difficult to see how tests will not be used to track the progress of individuals – especially if they “sit within” other assessments and are communicated to children’s parents. These assessments are therefore intended to be additional to more useful assessment, wasting valuable staff time.

The narrow scope of the tests is also a worry as we know how difficult it is to assess four- and five-year-olds who may perform very differently from day to day and depending on the context. Commercial providers will be left to decide on the content of baseline assessments, which must focus on “attainment against a predetermined content domain” (STA 2014), i.e. elements of the EYFS curriculum, and make predictive links with the KS1 curriculum. Yet this disregards critical areas of our youngest children’s development.

There is research available on what does predict later achievement in mathematics, though apparently this was not used in identifying the 2013 Early Learning Goals for the end of Reception. Most of the Numbers Goal is neither achievable for the majority of 5 year-olds nor predictive of later achievement. Tests that repeat the inaccuracies of the Number Goal, therefore risk children failing or being made to perform a narrow range of skills without understanding.

Formal assessment for the purposes of accountability puts pressure on schools, children and families. And whilst we do assess children’s knowledge, it is very questionable practice to ‘score’ a young child on this at any time, particularly during his or her first weeks settling into full-time school. Scores given in the early years stay with children throughout their primary schooling; they risk becoming labels and creating self-fulfilling prophecies. This is particularly harmful for mathematics learning which suffers relentlessly from negative attitudes. In short, testing in this way gives a distorted message of what is of most value in education, leading to impoverished learning and risking the depression of future achievement.

Using formalised scores from a one-off test to measure progress is being proposed at an age when most European children are not, for sound evidential reasons, in formal schooling. It is harmful and unsound. Baseline testing of this sort wastes money better spend on professional development to improve the quality of our youngest children’s early mathematical experiences.

Put to the test

Not every primary will undertake baseline testing and we advise all schools to think carefully about the purpose of testing their non-statutory, school-aged children. Consider, for example, the following points…

1. There are better assessments

Do not divert staff or funding from ongoing qualitative assessments. The most valuable assessments of young children take place over time; they are informal observations undertaken in a variety of contexts, backed up with diagnostic ‘interviews’. One simple, reliable test of a reception child’s number understanding is to ask her to, for example, give you nine pencils and see if she can count out this number from a larger amount. This task can be replicated in a variety of meaningful contexts. It predicts a child’s ability to access later mathematics and focuses attention on what matters: the application of number understanding.

2. The tests are flawed

Advise colleagues and families of the costly, inappropriate and flawed nature of the tests and the meaninglessness of any score obtained. There is an 11-month difference between the youngest and oldest child in a Reception class, proportionally equivalent to comparing the scores of a 12 year-old and a 15 year-old – clearly nonsensical.

3. Parents can opt out

Remind families these children are not in statutory education. If they do not want their child to be tested, there is nothing to stop them absenting their child.

4. Results are unreliable

It would appear to be in schools’ interests to obtain low baseline scores in order to benefit from ‘low prior attainment funding’ and to demonstrate progress from Reception to KS2. How does this affect the validity of such a test?

5. Here today…

Bear in mind that the likelihood of the current proposals remaining intact in 2022 (when the 2016 Reception children reach Y6) would appear to be slim.

About the authors

Dr Sue Gifford is principal lecturer in mathematics at the School of Education, University of Roehampton. Dr Helen J Williams is mathematician in residence at Marlborough Primary School, Falmouth.