To ask why children will be 'distressed' by the Reception Baseline Test?

[Eastie77]

I completely disagree with this ridiculous test. However after reading an article in today's Guardian I'm wondering if there some parents are over-reacting slightly about the effect it will have on children..

According to parents in the article and solictors representing famililies, children are likely to be 'distressed' and 'damaged' by it. I'm wondering how a 20 min chat and check of language of ability to count will really impact a 4 year old personally when they have no idea they are being tested?

I do understand concerns over the longer term impact such as early streaming which some parents think will be the end result of this test - I happen to agree with this which is one of the reasons I'm opposed to it. I think that should be the emphasis of the protests against the test rather than claiminng that children will end up psychologically damaged by it. Getting lawyers involved to prevent children being asked if they can count to 20 really seems a little dramatic

Reception baselining has been going on for years. And the whole point about a standardised baseline at reception is so that they can get rid of y2 SATs.

I’m also fairly sure that it’s more disadvantaged groups that have most to lose from abolishing testing. Pushy middle classes make sure their kids do well; accountability for progress of disadvantaged groups absolutely does concentrate the mind of some schools.

They'll probably do it in the corridor? That's where we always did reading practise. Nice and quiet but with other people occasionally walking past.

I suppose it depends on the DC and how the school handles it. DS wouldn't see it any differently to when he does a bit of adult-led play with his key worker at nursery and would be fine.

Can I just add that teachers don’t have access to these results as they will be black boxed. Staff will still need to carry out their usual(hopefully play based) baseline and if your child goes to an infant school they have no use as the results stay with the school not the child.

and if your child goes to an infant school they have no use as the results stay with the school not the child.

What a total waste of fucking time then!

I presume that’s true about locking the data up? If so, comments like this

As far as I'm aware, they actually found them really useful

aren’t really applicable!

Children aren't idiots - they will know they are being quizzed to see if they know the 'right' answers. It will set their understanding of what school is about - being right or wrong and getting approval by being right or wrong.

Children who don't know the answers will understand they have done badly - it risks starting to establish an internal dialogue that they are 'no good' at school.

Most countries don't do these tests. They aren't necessary.

@M3lon so I'm assuming you'd ban teachers ever giving children words to read that are a tiny bit too difficult or asking them any questions?
@DobbinsVeil unless the school is massively incompetent they won't know it's a test any more than quiet reading in the corridor is a test.

@girlinabluedressagain it sounds like you are saying teachers should never ask children questions they don't know the answer to?
And yes my DCs sometimes get a bit upset when they are asked this type of question but they also often want you to tell them the answer, because they are just interested, or don't care/think they have it right.

eh?

When my DD started school (in a different country) she had a very similar test, done during the summer holidays as part of a 'come and meet your teacher and look round the school' day. It was very informal (it in a classroom on her own, but I was sat outside and the door was ajar, although I didn't hear anything).

It didn't mean anything in terms of streaming, she ended up in a class of very mixed abilities, but it did allow the teacher to assess the differen levels in the class and figure out who needed more help/who was already at a particular level etc, rather than spending the first few weeks trying to do that. She certainly hasn't been traumatised by it (and is now 9 and I don't think she ever mentioned it again!).

M3lon, if that many university students are having panic attacks or anxiety issues around exams, I think there's perhaps something else afoot - I can't imagine some very informal testing at primary could have that great an impact once you get to that stage.

I know what you mean OP. It's not like teachers have never (informally) sought to gauge where a child sits in terms of aptitude or prior learning when they start school. I assumed this test was a way to benchmark that and make it easier to compare & track. I see no issue with that as long as there is sensible consideration of the fact that regardless of the teacher, children's pace of progression beyond that first test will vary.

This is an absurd waste of time, effort and money. The pupils won't benefit, their teachers won't benefit and the data will just disappear into a giant statistical data mountain. Where in years to come they will be manipulated out of all recognition and used to prove or disprove whatever the incumbent government wants them to prove.

@drspouse DS4 would likely find 1:1 quiet reading in the corridor massively stressful in the first few weeks. The school also has a reputation for incompetence but with another new head and reception teacher, it's too soon to call it. Still, with only 13 in the class 2 appealing for elsewhere, and DS4 probably refusing to engage, at least it shouldn't be too time-consuming.

DD1 did basically this when she started in 2005.

They had a little booklet that they did 1-2-1 with the teacher. The teacher noted with a smiley face that she'd asked her to count as far as she could, then there'd been a "incident" in the classroom, and she turned back after dealing with that to find dd1 had got up to 567...

It was all very low pressure, and no worries if the child didn't want/couldn't do something.
It was done while chatting to the child and a good time for the teacher to get to know the children better. No child was traumatised or upset by it, even those who could do hardly anything, because the teacher made it a gentle bit of fun. Even ds who was resistant to any suggestion of pen on paper or sitting down or anything else that might be called learning, had no problems doing it. Although I believe he barked all his answers as he was a dog that day.

flash well maybe...but trauma when young is the most likely to come back and bite you in the ass later on....

Its the whole testing regime to blame IMO, not specifically primary...but yes, if you undermine student confidence early it will have the most profound effects.

I can’t say too much as we’re a pilot school and the actual details have to remain confidential, but if done well (presented as a chat/game/ooh how many teddies have you got there?) sort of activity then it should hopefully not be distressing for the majority of children. I’m personally against it as it’s inferior to the more holistic baseline I (and most other teachers) already do, in the whole class setting, through play and observations. It takes me away from my class, during the most important settling in and getting to know them time, leaving my TA to deal with the majority of children who may be still having toilet issues, building sharing skills, learning physical boundaries etc. The 1-1 time is valuable, but we find time and space for 1-1 chats within the classroom setting in far more appropriate and fun ways!
I am in no way against a baseline, it’s an important assessment and forms a major part of my planning and teaching for the year. I am against the way this baseline is set up, and how limiting it actually is for the amount of time it takes. That said, we’re piloting as I’m willing to try and want to give feedback once I’ve actually experience it.

Like so many things, it will depend entirely on how it's handled by the school. I am 100% confident that DD's school will handle it brilliantly because their attitude to SATS at Year 2 is so laid back as to be horizontal. Some of the parents get quite worked up about SATS and the school's attitude is very much, "go away and stop worrying about it. It's a test for us and the kids don't even need to know about it." DS didn't even realise he'd done it.

And I think a baseline is actually a helpful thing. Long term, it may also provide better information about what is expected of children at key stage 1 because my biggest issue with school in this country is that the expectations of children when they are so y young are just so out of whack. In other countries, where they start a year or more later, the curriculum for reception, year 1 etc is the same, but the children are at least a full year older and do a lot better as a result.

DS is finally (age 7) at the age where he's starting to understand school and be able to follow along. But he's massively disadvantaged because so much of what he's now learning is based on things he struggled with. He's catching up, but it's a difficult process and is probably going to require additional tutoring.

Most countries don't do these tests.

Is this actually true? My experience of primary education abroad - Germany and US - would suggest that testing is more prevalent than in the UK.

Another good example is my friends DD who has finally, aged 10, being confirmed as dyslexic. With the diagnosis, all kinds of things are being set in place to help her but the problem is that like my DS, she's already behind. My friend has had a tutor for her DD for a year already and the view is that at best, she'll be more or less caught up by the end of next year. However, her IQ tests show that she is significantly above average and even by the end of year 6 it's unlikely that will be reflected at all. It's really frustrating for my friend, especiially as her DD's friends are going to schools with entrance exams her DD currently doesn't stand a chance of getting into .

What bothers me about baseline tests is that they can be very misleading and, if all future planning for that child is based on that data, it can be quite damaging. I once dealt with a child who was generally accepted in primary school to be cognitively able and he did well there with support. They did a test in secondary with no support in place at all and he did pretty badly. So the pretty graph the secondary school drew of his expected trajectory started at an artificially low level and stayed low. For ages afterwards it was a massive struggle to get the support he needed because, so far as the school was concerned, he was achieving in line with his expected trajectory, and they wouldn't accept that every other piece of data demonstrated that he should be achieving considerably above that level. He ended up getting very bored and frustrated and the whole thing was a real disaster.

My DS's school uses the Early Excellence tracker and me and DH find it really useful to keep track of his progress. It's nice that we can add our own images from homework progress etc onto the website. We got sent a link to more info which I found really good earlyexcellence.com/eexba/what-is-eexba/ it doesn't seem like DS has to have set 1:1 time with teachers but more like observed as part of a group. No complaints from me or parents of DS friends

Australian primary schools in our area (in NSW) do this - it's called "Best Start" interview and is usually done just prior to the child starting kindergarten (reception equivalent, although most of our kids are older than in the UK because the rules are slightly different - they HAVE to be in full time education by the time they're 6, and CAN'T start before they're 4 and a half)

It's a very relaxed chat with the child and is designed to just give the kindy teacher a heads up on how well the child can read, write, count etc. There is no judgement and we are not given any "results" because it's not about results as such, it's a "which areas do we need to focus on with this child to start with".

I've never heard of any child being "distressed" by it, although some with SEN don't take much part in the interview - but then that is useful info in itself to a kindy teacher.

I wasn't in the room for the test and that was ok because they didn't want the parental presence to influence the child's responses - I was outside though.

It maybe the way the UK are presenting it, or that it IS being done with some future research in mind - but that's not what it is for in Australia, as far as we know.

Children in the UK go into school and formal education much younger than many other European countries, and they do no better from it. Less testing FGS

@Isatis no planning for the child is being done on the basis of this
@DobbinsVeil I imagine the teachers just have to make "best efforts" and it a child will obviously become distressed in a 1:1 chat then, like a non-verbal child, they'd just say "sorry no point".

For those saying they could be useful. There is already a very useful way of tracking progress using the early years documents. Reception teachers DO baseline children already. However, the big difference is they use observations based on children playing and learning once they have settled, not a one off test. Teachers also “Teachers will not be given children’s individual scores, these will be kept in the national pupil database and used as a starting point for measuring a child’s progress during their primary school years.”. In other words, this will be saved about your child but neither you nor their teacher can tell you how they did. I find that very worrying and personally will be submitting an FOI should the legal action being taken by a group of parents to prevent these tests taking place fail.

Italian primary school is more formal than English primary school but DC start later (between 5.9 and 6.8 depending on birthday) and almost all of them spend the the ages between 3 and 5/6 in state run pre-schools.
I think it works similarly in France.