Nursery World - Campaigners dismiss DfE Baseline research

Campaigners calling for the Reception Baseline Assessment to be scrapped have dismissed DfE research, which claims to show a clear link between children’s test results at the age of four and Key Stage 1 scores.

Department for Education analysis of the Key Stage 1 results of 67,000 pupils that took part in the RBA pilot run by the National Foundation for Educational Research in 2015 has found a clear association between attainment at the age of four and age seven across reading, writing and maths at Key Stage 1.

According to the findings, for every one mark increase in the RBA, the odds of reaching the expected standard in all three teacher assessments at KS1 increased by 10 per cent.

The research compared data from pupils who took part in the previous optional NFER RBA with the same pupils’ data following KS1 assessments.

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