Reception baseline provides 'accurate' assessment for children's progress

Following pilots across the country, the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA), a one-to-one assessment to be completed with a teacher, will be taken by all children in their first six weeks of primary school from September.

The assessment will replace Key Stage 1 SATs from the academic year 2022-23. 

The DfE said that a validity report, to be published later today (26 February), based on the national pilot found RBA provided an accurate assessment of a child’s starting point from which to measure the progress they make in primary school. 

The report also found: 

• the assessment was representative of a range of literacy, communication, language and mathematics skills and knowledge appropriate to the age and development of children at the start of Reception
• assessment results provided a fair and accurate measure of pupil performance – including for those with special educational needs and disabilities
• pupil performance is comparable within and across schools
• over 90 per cent of assessments are expected be completed within 20 minutes

School Standards Minister Nick Gibb said, ‘It’s hugely important that we understand how much progress primary schools help their pupils make.

‘This new teacher-led check will replace the SATs taken at the end of Year 2 to give a better understanding of a child’s starting point when they arrive at school and reduce the number of assessments in primary schools overall.’

Teaching unions are divided on the issue of the RBA, with the National Education Union (NEU) opposed to it.

The report comes as new research commissioned by the NEU exposes problems with the RBA, with nearly 50 per cent of teachers saying they believed the assessment had a negative impact on children.

However, the National Association of Head Teachers, the union for school leaders, is backing the RBA and the Government's plan to remove Year 2 SATs.

NAHT general secretary, Paul Whiteman, said, ‘The NAHT welcomes the transparency and openness shown by Standards and Testing Agency through the publication of this report today and we are pleased to see that the Government has reiterated its intention to remove SATs at the end of Year 2.

‘NAHT has long argued that it makes little sense to take a baseline measure for progress midway through the primary years, as is the case now, effectively ignoring the incredible work and progress made in those critical first few years of school.

‘The introduction of a reliable and workable baseline assessment to replace Year 2 SATs has the potential to be a fairer way of measuring progress and means we should finally start to see the reduction in the volume of high stakes testing in primary that NAHT has long called for.’