Early childhood assessment: observation, teacher ‘knowledge’ and the production of attainment data in early years settings

Abstract

Since 2003 children in England have been formally assessed at the age of 5 after their first year in school, and their numerical scores reported to parents and analysed at school and national levels. The use of statutory assessment for this age group is unique in the UK, where other regions use less formal methods of assessment. It is also unusual internationally. This paper examines the peculiarity of this assessment system, the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, using data from two ethnographic case studies of classrooms of four- and five-year-old children in London. The study revealed tensions between the construction of teachers' knowledge, their ambivalence in relation to the numerical data they report, and the use of the data for school accountability purposes. Alternative methods of assessing this age group in other parts of the UK are used to consider the implications of the production of numerical assessment data in early childhood education.

Notes on contributor

Alice Bradbury is a member of the Centre for Critical Education Policy Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Her research explores the relationships between education policy and issues of equality, with a particular focus on early childhood education.

Notes

1. The term ‘minoritised’ is used here, in keeping with much writing influenced by critical race theory, to emphasise that being in an ‘ethnic minority’ is dependent on context. Indeed, in both of the schools in this study, pupils who would be termed ‘White British’ were in the minority.

2. Instead of reporting on 117 points across nine scales, teachers now have to report on 17 early learning goals across the curriculum. Each of these goals, however, consists of a number of statements; thus the numerous single statements of the original EYFS Profile have been replaced by fewer but longer statements in the revised profile. Furthermore, the decision for each goal is not a binary yes/no, instead teachers have to decide if a child is ‘exceeding’, ‘expected’ or ‘emerging’ (often recorded as 3, 2 or 1) in relation to the goal. These data are reported to local authorities as before, compared at the national scale and used to form part of schools' inspection judgements.