Anyone work in EYFS who can help me understand nursery attainment levels?

[AirMaster]

My DD (4.5) has just finished preschool and today I was given her attainment levels. She recieved on track for most things, but got 18-24 months for: listening and attention, making relationships, understanding emotions, and 36-48 months in sense of self.

I was just wondering how these categories were assessed, and what she likely did or didn't demonstrate to get given these levels? I knew she was behind in these areas but wouldn't have thought she was operating at less than half her age in those three areas. And I'm not quite sure what sense of self means here, either.

Any thoughts much appreciated! Thank you!

Your child’s key person should have explained it it you if they were going to give you such a levelled report, which is usually unnecessary.

They will probably have ansses against the eyfs and probably development matters documentation.

They will have highlighted objectives that they can witness during your child’s time there. They won’t see everything and so some things won’t be able to be highlighted.

It’s possibly worth contacting them for more info, perhaps regarding listening and attention but realistically you just might have a little one who is quieter and they’ve just not been able to see that. Or you might have one that’s a bit of a handful and still learning some skills.
Both can be normal at this age, they’re only little.

Is there no evidence on the report regarding the different levels? Whenever I had my reports they were filled with little snippets whilst they played/had carpet time.

@thevoiceoffrustration Thank you for your reply! It's a school nurse rather than a childcare setting so she didn't have a key person (AFAIK!) and they've broken up for summer now.

I wish I could find a clear list online of what they were marking her against.

@Sometimeswinning It doesn't have any info at all other than the list of levels she's working at...

I don’t work in early years but I recently asked for clarification from my sons preschool on the same thing. They explained that different settings might use different frameworks but they helpfully gave me a copy of what they use and it’s called ‘milestone assessment sheets: prime and specific areas of learning’.

The wording varies a little from what you’ve mentioned but here are a couple of the pages. I’m hoping this will help in the meantime but as mentioned above you really are best to just request this from the school when you are able to.

Another thing to add is that they stressed that where a child is marked lower than their age it isn’t necessarily that they don’t ever meet that criteria, but they need to see the child meeting the criteria consistently not just once or twice. If your child is about to start reception and this assessment was carried out by a school nurse I really don’t understand how they could have spent long enough with the child to observe them. I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that I am not sure how it works in that sense

Sorry, school nurse is a typo, I meant school nursery but can't work out how to edit!

@ViaRia01 Thank you for this! It's really useful to see the criteria your child's preschool used. I think you're right that I'll just have to ask them for a copy of whatever they used!

@AirMaster sorry, I forgot to mention (if it’s not already clear) that the heading for each area of learning are written at the bottom in pen as the headings fell off the top during photocopying.

Thank you!!