Teach-Primary-Issue-19.4

Start off on the right foot and help propel your pupils towards their best chance of school success... S chool readiness’ is a hot topic right now, but it seems it can mean different things to different people. At the end of 2024, the prime minister announced the target of 75 per cent of five-year-olds reaching a ‘good level of development’ (GLD) in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile by 2028, explaining that this will ensure children are “starting primary school ready to learn”. At almost the same time this target was announced, Kindred Squared shared findings that whilst 90 per cent of parents consider their children to be ‘ready for school’, teachers think that 33 per cent of pupils are not. ‘School readiness’ is a very contested subject. EYFSP The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) is the statutory measure of children’s attainment at the end of Reception. The GLD measure means that a child has achieved all 12 Early Learning Goals in: • communication and language • physical development • personal, social and emotional development • literacy • mathematics There are also other Early Learning Goals in the areas of understanding the world and expressive arts and design. Children are assessed either to be at either the ‘expected’ or the ‘emerging’ level, with the ‘exceeding’ level removed in the 2021 EYFS reforms. The assessments are based on teacher judgement, without any statutory moderation. Understanding the EYFSP and school readiness isn’t straightforward. For a start, whilst it is described as a measure of ‘school readiness’, children have been in school for a full year by the time the EYFSP is carried out. Secondly, the binary nature of the assessment can make it hard to interpret. For example, a child who understands a lot about number, but can’t yet ‘automatically recall (without reference to rhymes, counting or other aids) number bonds up to five (including subtraction facts)’, will be assessed at ‘emerging’. Another child who isn’t yet able to count to 10 will also be assessed as ‘emerging’. Clearly, these two children are at very different levels of development, despite both being described as ‘emerging’. However, that’s not to say the GLD isn’t important. There is a strong association between children achieving the ‘Good Level of Development’ and going on to achieve well throughout school. For example, the DFE-funded SEED Study (Study of Early Education and Development; Gardiner and Melhuish, 2021) found that: • children who achieved GLD were more likely to reach expected levels in reading and maths at the end of Key Stage 1 • achieving the GLD is associated with better language, cognitive, and social-emotional outcomes up to age seven, which is as far as the study currently goes Ready OR NOT? JUL I AN GREN I ER ‘ “The binary nature of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile can make it hard to interpret” www.teachwire.net | 49 AS S E S SMENT S P E C I A L