What do teachers think about the new early years baseline tests?

[christinarossetti]

What effect do you think their administration have on the settling children into reception/classroom routines?

Do they look to be in any way a useful and robust mechanism to inform the measure of progress?

And, in particular, do they represent a move away from the broad, play-based EYFS and towards a narrower curriculum, which won't give due emphasis to personal, social and emotional development?

Is there anything that will benefit the children, their families or teachers?

My instinct is to go with the 'too young to test' school of thought, although schools continually assess and measure, so maybe it's the how it's done that's the problem?

TIA

And nothing was picked up. Ridiculous. Anyway EYFS are taking the brunt with ofsted now over correct judgements on entry and progress. Too much and it triggers alarms as well.

Nothing was picked up and I know at least one school where the teachers award expected for very low literacy levels who achieved outstanding in the last 6 weeks. Théy aren't terribly worried about achievement in Y6 but I bet the junior schools they feed into will be!

Just imagine how amazing your reception reading ELG results could be if you could award expected for 'Mum is sad'. As well as the pressure from SLT, I'm not sure I'd want to be explaining to parents why I was putting a child onto a reading intervention when they've just been told their child was meeting the expected level at the end of the previous year.

Mine would be phenomenal. So phenomenal someone would be bound to smell a rat.

"The elg just says read phonetically decodable words and simple sentences. My phase 2 children can do that!"

"I couldn't, with good conscience, say a child who can read simple sentences from phase 2 has not achieved their ELG. That's what i've decided after years of being told that by my LEA anyway."

The opinions of two different reception teachers ...

Worringly if nobody's smelling a rat then perhaps the results aren't massively different from the national ones. Which means there's a large number of children leaving reception without being able to read 'Mum is sad.'

I feel like over awarding elgs is a massive issue. As eyfs leader there is lots of pressure to get a good percentage of children at the good level of development. However, we remain only at around 45% (mainly due to writing) I refuse to give the elg to children who are not ready. Yet on eyfs forums you see figures like 80%! Surely other schools must be experiencing rapid rises in speech and language issues, persistent absenteeism, child protection issues and a wide variety of SEN needs! We can't be the only school/area

I wonder if these same schools are also over awarding at ks1. And whether there's a correlation between them and schools that find they have to massively cut back the yr 6 curriculum and put lots of pressure on the children with many, many booster groups in order to get them to make 2 levels progress.

That's certainly the case in an infant school I know. The head of the junior school despairs but the school is considered outstanding and often mentioned as an example to other schools (they charge £200 per person to visit for the day).

Blimey

I bet that feels like a massive waste of money when you can't replicate their results.

"Everything is based on ever changing research."

In developmental psychology, yes. Among many of the campaigners for purely play-based early years learning, no. Many of these people appear to have come up with their theories and then looked for evidence to support them, ignoring the evidence that didn't.

Richard House, who is now a lecturer in a teacher training post, is an advocate of Steiner methods, is one example. He was one of the signatories of the letter written to the guardian opposing the baseline test:

www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/testing-times-for-primary-school-pupils-and-labour-education-policies

Conspicuously missing from those signatories are developmental psychologists or cognitive psychologists. Instead, the letter is padded out with children's authors, union officials, politicians and psychotherapists, along with heads of campaigning organisations and educational consultants.

Conspicuously missing also is any suggestion that the strong claims made in that letter are merely "provisional".

The OP is correct in linking this with the opposition to the phonics check: many of them are the same people. Worse still, many of them are the same people who opposed the introduction of phonics itself in 2007.

Nobody gets 80 percent. Top last year was in Lewisham with 70 something. Lowest 30 so something. I can't bare the thought of giving an ELG to a stage 2 reader. Writing is always the killer. I am currently panicking. As are most receptipn teachers. What about exceedings then. Is an exceeding a stage 4 reader? And they want to cut the number of exceedings. Lord. It makes ypu despair of your job.

Well I don't want to out my school but we were in the 90s for % of children with a GLD.

I went to a LA moderation event and told the moderators that our FS team did not moderate with Year 1 but handed us their extremely high scores.

They couldn't have cared less.

Well that was the official documentation I saw.

Play based eyfs was designed by developmental psychologists and they would never be against appropiate developmental assessments. .. it is what they spend their life doing.

A school near to me got 78% good level of development. It's in their figures and advertised on their website

In fact Kathy Sylva... numero uno early years advisor, runner of EPPE, student of Bruner who was disciple of Vygotsky...is the chief advocater of child initiated.

I just checked because I was starting to doubt myself.

Lewisham was 75% as a Local Authority. Don't think they've published individual schools within each LA.

I'm not in Lewisham but our school achieved 91%.

We might be able to give them another 91% this year in year 1- but it'll be 91% working below national standard!

Well like I said that was what was in the national I formation I read. You sure people actually understand what GLD IS?

Isn't the 80% figure quoted for individual schools, not a whole LA though. The 75% for Lewisham is the figure for the LA, it doesn't mean some schools within Lewisham won't score above or below that. In fact it would be very strange if that wasn't the case and every school in Lewisham had 75% of children reaching a GLD.

Well I'm pretty sure that they don't understand what it is. They can't do!

I have a child in my class who has been referred to an Ed. Psych for "social and communication difficulties", we (and parents) suspect ASD. He cannot write a sentence. He cannot segment. He cannot follow simple instructions. He cannot play successfully with other children.
He got a 2 across the board.

When I queried his results, I was told that as he scored a 2 in one area, they had to then give him a 2 in everything as that's how the GLD works !

I spoke to my head teacher about it and they didn't look too pleased but nothing has been done since.

When I write it down here, it makes me realise just how bad things are!

31st May is the deadline for resignation right? It wasn't yesterday, as my Head likes to tell people?

Yeah but you don't want to be too out of sink with your LA. I good school will be higher than the average but not by 20%

Yes 31st. That isnt how best fit works if everything is ELG and one area is emerging then you have to be sure that one area isn't ELG. Sometimes they aren't. An ASD child's development is everywhere. You except to see nothing approaching a best fit and actually that is what I use to convince parents, paeds that there is a problem.

Exactly.

As the FS leader is leaving in the Summer, I imagine our results will be just as high this year too.

I think I need to get out.

Just make sure you don't go wherever the FS leader is going.