Dear Gavin Williamson MP

A child-focused recovery plan for schools needs to include our very youngest pupils.

Along with everyone else, the nation’s four-year-olds, starting school in September, have had their young lives disrupted by Covid. They have missed out on socialising, play and many of the skills usually obtained in pre-school settings. Although nurseries remained open during the recent lockdown, attendance rates were as low as 50 per cent. Many young children have also had to spend time self-isolating.

In September 2020, almost half of new reception pupils were not “school-ready”, with children from disadvantaged backgrounds particularly affected. It is safe to assume that this year’s intake will be similar.

When these new learners begin their school lives this year, like older children, the focus must be on their emotional wellbeing. Settling in, learning the routines of school life and making friends must be the priority.

In this context, there is no place for the government’s planned introduction of Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA).

RBA will disrupt those critical early weeks as teachers are forced to devote time to administering the test. At least 20 hours of in-classroom teaching time will be lost to the administration of the test alone, for a class of 30 pupils. This will divert attention away from the important work of building trusting relationships. Research conducted during the 2019 pilot found that children knew they were being tested, while teachers believed the settling-in period was negatively affected.

New research from More Than A Score demonstrates that only 6% of parents believe it is important to formally test four-year-olds within the first few weeks of starting school. School leaders agree: 80% believe the RBA is not a good use of teaching time and two-thirds believe it should not be going ahead.

In any year, the information obtained from such young children would be unreliable and unhelpful to teachers and parents. This year, results will reflect the amount of literacy and maths experiences children have been exposed to and therefore will be primarily a test of input from parents/carers. In a year when nursery experiences have been at best disrupted and at worst non-existent, its collection is a pointless waste of teachers’ time.

As early years specialists and school leaders, we support More Than A Score’s call to cancel this year’s RBA in your schools recovery plan.

Signed