Reception baseline: 'children scared of getting it wrong', say teachers

New research commissioned by the National Education Union (NEU) and carried out by University College London has exposed problems in the Government’s new Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) for assessing four-year-olds on entry to primary school, which will be rolled out this September.

It has been published on the same day as the DfE releases its own research claiming that the Reception baseline is an accurate starting point for school assessment.

The NEU-commissioned report, Research into the 2019 Pilot of Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA), combines a survey of teachers’ views with case studies of schools involved in the September 2019 pilot of Baseline. 

Nearly 50 per cent of teachers believed Baseline had a negative impact on children, reporting that some children showed signs of anxiety and discomfort and were ‘scared of getting it wrong’. 

One teacher from a case study school commented, ‘I would worry about those children who are going to struggle. And how quickly do you stop the test? Do you actually go through with it or do you just click “no”, “no”, “no”, because you know they can't do it or they can't concentrate?’

Other findings included: 

• 80 per cent of teachers said the Baseline test did not provide an accurate picture of children’s attainment
• 85 per cent said their school’s own on-entry assessment of children provided them with better information than Baseline
• 77 per cent did not think Baseline gave them any useful information about their pupils they would not otherwise have had 
• 69 per cent said Baseline had not helped to develop positive relationships with pupils
• 83 per cent said carrying out Baseline increased their workload. 

Many respondents commented Baseline was a ‘tick-box’ exercise which devalued teachers’ professional judgment about children and their learning needs. 

One teacher commented, ‘It just seems like a monumental waste of a week of a practitioner’s time.’

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said the Government was ignoring the evidence stacking up against Baseline. 

‘The experts of the British Educational Research Association have said that it is not possible to test four-year-olds and get reliable data. Now, in this report, teachers’ lack of trust in Baseline is all too clear. 

‘The Government persists in spending millions on assessment systems for which there is no evidence of value, when teachers and parents are crying out for serious investment in early years education.’

Researcher Guy Roberts-Holmes, associate professor at UCL, Institute of Education, added, ‘Baseline assessment is at odds with what we know about child development. Instead of building confidence and trusting relationships through active play, children are forced to sit still for up to half an hour to complete an inappropriate screen-based, tightly-scripted literacy and numeracy test. For some four-year-olds, trying to settle into their first experience of school, it creates inappropriate stress, emotional upset and uncertainty. 

‘Contrary to claims that children don't know they're being tested, we found that children are well aware that they are taking a scripted computer test, and that they have a sense of whether they've performed well or badly. There is a danger that they will then label themselves as good or bad learners. There are strong grounds here for parents to be concerned.’

Nancy Stewart from campaign group More Than A Score said, ‘Teachers agree with parents, headteachers and education experts: Reception baseline assessment is a waste of money, resources and precious teaching time in the first few weeks of school.

She added, ‘Teachers and heads understand that testing children at the age of four and then comparing it to SATs results seven years later is a useless way to judge schools. Parents want schools to be measured on the basis of an all-round education and the happiness of pupils, not the results of a narrow set of tests.

‘The Government is increasingly isolated and should scrap these tests now.’