Can someone explain nursery assessment?

[Lizbiz89]

My dd 28 months and has been going to nursery since she just turned 2. They keep assessing her and some of it worries me slightly. For example for understanding she's at 8-20 months which is quite behind. I find this really strange as when she's home she understands everything we ask her to do. She's also scored at 16-26 months in most of the other assessments as well which is slightly behind. She only goes to nursery two mornings a week so I don't know how much they really see of her developments. Please can anyone let me know in more detail how they do these assessments? Also could anyone please let me know what "emerging", "developing", and "secure" means? Thanks

Emerging is that she is starting to show signs of something.

Developing is she is doing something occasionally.

Secure is she can do the thing well.

For example, drinks from an open cup.

Emerging would be picks up cup and spills lots, developing is drinks with a little spillage, secure regularly drinks from an open cup with no spillage.

To be honest, she's in nursery 2 mornings, so probably 9 hours, of that probably 6.5/7 hours of playing. It's not enough time to accurately observe and assess a child without lots of input from parents.

As a childminder I tell parents only wanting 1 day per week that their assessment won't be very accurate as they will do lots I don't see and, while children adore my setting, they take more time to settle into the day.

Children are observed and marked against the eyfs, linked below.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-foundation-stage-framework--2

Thank you so much for coming back to me! It's reassuring to hear that they don't always get an accurate reading. She goes to nursery 6 hours a week so not a lot really. She's such a happy and very bright little girl so I was a little shocked to see her assessments were behind. Thank you for clarifying.

Very helpful to know what these terms mean.

My daughter goes to nursery for two full days per week and is in the correct age brackets for everything but "emerging" or "developing". They also think she's a bit shy to which I LOL a bit, but clearly she's just quieter in the nursery environment.

The nursery practitioners can only state what they observe. It's not necessarily that the child can't do the skill in question to the right standard, just that they haven't seen them do it yet. If they had concerns I'm sure they'd tell you.

I would probably have a chat with then.

But to reassure you, DS is 4.5 and recently was assessed for maths/counting as emerging 40-60+ months, because he'd counted up to five in front of them. At home he can do addition up to 30, do sums in French up to 10 and count to 100. They can only judge them on the skills they show at nursery and some shine much better one-on-one at home.

It also depends on the nursery, i work in a nursery and each child has a copy of the eyfs in their folder. We ‘observe’ children 0-18 months every 6 weeks and 18+ months every 10/12 weeks. We call this the child’s ‘focus week’ and before their focus week we will go through their folder and highlight everything they are currently meeting to show they can do it, we would look at what points they’re nearly doing or any they might be behind in and focus on that during the focus week.
All the staff in the child’s room observe the child during their week and look for developments in their play and physical skills, then note them down on the sheet linking them to the areas of eyfs. After the week we would go back and re highlight anything we have seen.

In our setting we don’t use planned activities and all the play is child led, we facilitate their play to develop them and give ideas, for instance placing some people of animals down near them if they’re playing house or with cars.
In our nursery it’s not an assessment more just focusing solely on that child to check if they are meeting their milestones or if there is anything we might need to work on to help them achieve.

This is a really good website to view the EYFS ages and stages and you can reassure yourself from what you know your child can do at home!

www.foundationyears.org.uk/files/2015/04/4Children_ParentsGuide_2015_FINAL_WEBv2.pdf

My DS is exactly the same. Really chatty and confident at home but at nursery is very quiet and prefers to be alone. His assessments came back behind where he should be as well. I work in education and I know it’s just a snapshot. If they were worried they would talk to me. They also use parent observations to inform their assessments. Does your nursery do that? Perhaps worth having a chat about it as the assessments are supposed to take in a range of things. They also have to see something three times which can be difficult if it’s an activity your child shys away from or isn’t interested in. Try not to worry too much. They usually even out by reception