Ei-iE

Major UK education unions have welcomed the announcement by Government that baseline assessments will not now be used for measuring primary school student progress in subsequent years. This follows the publication of a comparative study on baseline assessments used by primary schools.

NASUWT: Warnings justified

The Government has been forced to recognise that the three tests schools were permitted to use do not produce comparable results and, therefore, cannot be used to form valid and reliable baselines of progress. That’s according to Chris Keates, General Secretary the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), who was reacting to the publication of the Reception Baseline Comparability Study by the Department for Education (DfE) on 7 April.

This was “a significant development, as the use of baseline assessment was a core element of the DfE's proposed reforms to the school accountability regime in the primary sector”, she added.

Keates reiterated that her union made clear from the outset that using different assessments to establish a common baseline would always create problems in terms of the comparability of the outcomes produced by these different systems.

“It is time for the Government to live up to its promises to listen to the profession and develop a model of assessment in the primary sector that takes full account of the expertise and experience of qualified teachers, rather than the whims and prejudices of ministers,” she said.

NUT: Open to discussions

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) welcomes ministers’ decision to abandon the introduction of baseline assessment of reception age children, said Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary and President of Education International’s European region, the European Trade Union Committee for Education. The attempt to make baseline assessments work has cost millions, prevented children from settling into their schools, and increased the workload of their teachers, she added.

The private companies which sold baseline assessment systems to schools will now try to persuade teachers to carry on using their tests and observation schedules, on a voluntary basis, she noted. “There is no good reason for schools‎ to do this,” she pointed out.

She insisted that the DfE will “now be considering options for improving assessment arrangements”, on the basis of discussion with “stakeholders”. The NUT welcomes the opportunity to participate in such discussions, as it believes “strongly in developing forms of assessment that support children’s learning needs”, she said.

ATL: DfE Study backed up by union survey

Nansi Ellis, Assistant General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), highlighted that ATL and NUT research shows that only 6.7 per cent of respondents agree that baseline assessment is “a good way to assess how primary schools perform”. It also suggests that baseline assessment is potentially damaging for children.

Fewer than one in 10 respondents found that the reception baseline assessment was an “accurate and fair way to assess children”, she said.

Ellis also underlined that the ATL considers that “the reception baseline assessment is a waste of money, a waste of time, and tells reception teachers nothing useful about the children in their class. And as the outcomes cannot be used for accountability, we see no reason why schools would choose to undertake baseline assessment in September”.