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The Pre-school Learning Alliance has welcomed the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile results for 2016- 17, which show that the number of children achieving a good level of development by the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has increased from 69.3% to 70.7%.

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, said: “It’s very positive to see that the number of children achieving a good level of development continuing to rise. At a time of such challenges for childcare providers, today’s figures underline the important work the early years sector is doing in delivering quality care and education for the young children in their care. 

“What's more, with the government planning to reintroduce the baseline assessment, these results serve as a timely reminder of the value of EYFS Profile. The broad, observational and child-focussed nature of the Profile make it a far more appropriate method of early assessment and, while not perfect, the fact that it assesses such a wide range of early skills allows it to capture the nuances and complexities of young children’s learning in a way that a narrow, binary test never could. 

“With the government not only planning to reintroduce the baseline assessment but also to narrow the focus of the Profile, focusing it more heavily on numeracy and literacy, there is a real danger of early assessment becoming little more than a tick-box exercise. By restricting children’s learning to the skills that are easiest to measure, we do them a gross disservice. As such, we continue to oppose the baseline assessment and urge the government to ensure that it doesn’t remove from the EYFS Profile the very qualities that make it such a worthwhile and useful assessment.”

About the Alliance

• The Pre-school Learning Alliance is the largest and most representative early years membership organisation in England. A registered educational charity, it also provides high-quality affordable childcare and education to support children and families in areas of deprivation throughout the country. 
• The Alliance represents 14,000 member settings and supports them to deliver care and learning to more than 800,000 families every year. We deliver family learning projects, offer information and advice, produce specialist publications, run acclaimed training and accreditation schemes and campaign to influence early years policy and practice. 
• The Alliance website is