Teaching unions call for baseline assessment to be scrapped in new report
Two leading teaching unions have called on the government to abandon the reception baseline assessment, after a survey of more than 1000 teaching professionals revealed mass oppositions to the plans.
A survey of reception teachers and EYFS leaders from across the country, carried out by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), found that only 7.7% felt that the data collected by the new assessment was a 鈥榝air and accurate鈥 way to assess children.
The report, entitled They are children鈥 not robots, not machines, also found that that teachers do not believe that the baseline assessment, introduced to enable the measurement of the 鈥榲alue added鈥 by a child鈥檚 primary school between reception and the end of key stage 2, is an improvement on the informal on-entry assessment already used.
Commenting on the findings, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, said:
鈥淭his report rightly highlights the fundamental flaws in reception baseline assessments, and we share the concerns raised by the NUT and ATL. As the survey findings show, the vast majority of teachers and education professionals remain opposed to these assessments 鈥 and for good reason. Baseline tests are not only an unreliable and restrictive method of assessment, they also place unnecessary stress on young children during the crucial settling-in period, and risk wrongly labelling them as 鈥榝ailing鈥 at the very start of their educational journeys.
鈥淲e support the report鈥檚 call for the government to scrap this flawed proposal, and urge them to start working with the sector on building and improving upon the existing early assessment system, which places the needs of the child 鈥 not a desire to collect easy-to-process data 鈥 at its centre.鈥