Nursery World - 'Pre-school PISA': sad story of a wasted opportunity

Professor Peter Moss explains why he thinks England's participation in the 'pre-school PISA' is a wrong move.

Last Thursday the Department for Education (DfE) issued a press release headed ‘England joins new study to improve children’s early development’. England, it announced, is to participate in a new cross-national assessment of five-year-olds, the ‘International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study’ (IELS), organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with participating countries organising the collection of data to a common format.

Modelled on OECD’s well-known international assessment of 15-year-olds, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the IELS will assess four learning ‘domains’ (emerging literacy, emerging numeracy, self-regulation, and empathy and trust) using tablets, each domain taking approximately 15 minutes. Additional information will be gathered from parents and staff through written and online questionnaires.

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