Assessment is naturally a key part of the Early Years Foundation Stage. In fact there is a whole section of the revised Statutory Framework (2017) dedicated to it. Surprisingly however, there are only two paragraphs that actually give any detail about general assessment practice. Firstly it describes how practitioners should observe children to “understand their level of development, interests and learning styles” and then states that practitioners should limit their paperwork to “that which is absolutely necessary to promote children’s successful learning and development”. At the end of the EYFS practitioners must also complete the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP). This currently covers all 17 Early Learning Goals (ELGs). For Reception Teachers, the statutory moderation processes create their own pressures, with observations being used to evidence children’s skills for external professionals. Recently moderation practice was reflected on in the Ofsted publication, Bold Beginnings. In a case study, the report shared one practitioners view: “A Reception teacher felt under constant pressure to provide evidence for children’s learning. Photographs were taken constantly during day-to-day activities to capture children’s successes. This was said to stop the flow of teaching and take staff away from working directly with children. It also meant that more time was spent at the end of the day to print the photographs, stick them into individual children’s folders and write a summative statement to explain each of the photos. One ‘learning journey’ included 15 photographs of a child putting on their coat, at various times across the year and with varying degrees of success. Some staff thought this was necessary to provide evidence of progress. When the teacher was asked whether they knew themselves, without 15 photographs, whether the child had accomplished this aspect of self-care and independence, they said ‘yes’ immediately. The headteacher believed the requirements of early years assessment and the early years moderation process was driving this unnecessary paper trail.” Ofsted 2017 It would seem therefore that many years after the first publication of a statutory EYFS Framework, we are still grappling with one key question: how much paperwork is actually enough? When I am asked this question by practitioners, my first response is often a realistic one; there is no official answer that will satisfy everyone. One person’s “too much paperwork” will inevitably be someone else’s “not enough”. However, I generally follow up that response by asking practitioners to consider why they observe and what they do with those observations. If we are going to get the best value from our observations and the evidence we decide we should keep, perhaps we need to critically review our processes and ensure they are really working for us. Is every word or picture we choose to record contributing as much as it can to the range of evidence we may need? “Assessment has no intrinsic value – it cannot exist meaningfully as a self-standing detached entity. The process of assessment is only as useful as the purpose to which it is used, the ways in which it is used and the effect it has on how practitioners reflect on their pedagogy and the unique learning path individual children take” (Du Biel 2014). So why do we observe and record? In order to make professional decisions about young children’s development needs, interests and learning, as described in the EYFS framework, there is really only one way – to watch and listen to them as they engage in the world around them. I often refer to this as getting inside their heads. Given that we may be working with pre-verbal children or children who do not speak the same language as the majority in a setting, this is simply the best way to find out what is driving children’s learning. At this point, observational assessment will often happen in the moment. Skilled practitioners will use their observations to firstly understand what it is the child is doing and then sympathetically engage with, support or extend children’s learning, with no real need to record or capture it. It is simply enough to use the information we continuously gather as we work with the children in our care. However, good assessment practice is often confused with record keeping and documentation. Unfortunately this is where the problem of the great paperwork race often starts. Practitioners have seemingly convinced themselves that unless they capture each and every interaction, then in some way it didn’t happen and becomes invalid as later evidence of the child’s learning journey. One of the factors that seems to drive the compulsion to race around with notebooks or tablets, trying to capture each movement, word or mark every child in our care makes, is the non-statutory guidance, typically used for assessment purposes. “Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage” (Early Excellence 2012) or “Early Years Outcomes” (DfE 2013) are both non-statutory guidance aimed at supporting practitioners in making “best fit”, periodic judgements about children’s development from birth to the end of the EYFS. Each page of Development Matters comes with the health warning that the document is not a checklist, yet with the inevitable desire of practitioners to ensure they are doing the right thing, this is precisely what it often appears to become. Despite hopefully coming a long way from the myth that each statement needed to be observed three times to prove it was true, a lot of excessive paperwork can be generated by misinterpretation of the purposes of these supplementary documents. Both documents describe typical behaviours of children across overlapping age bands. We can use the knowledge we have of a child and reference this against the descriptions in the bands to support our on-going summative evaluations of children’s progress towards the ELGs. Yet each band does not necessarily fully reflect the range of skills, knowledge or understanding that a child may demonstrate. For example, in the 30 – 50 months band of Shape, Space and Measures there is no reference to knowledge of measures of any kind, yet every nursery child I have ever met was typically exploring capacity, weight or height. Equally in the 22-36 months band of Moving and Handling, the developmental range of the statements covers skills typically seen across nearly a two year range. This alone shows how each band is an amalgamation of skills based on typical developmental phases. The purpose of the guidance is to provide some developmental indicators that a child is working at an appropriate developmental stage. Therefore to simply tick off statements would be to ignore a large array of skills the child may have or create the need to spend time looking for evidence of skills the child has already, naturally moved beyond. In order to consider what are going to be the most useful observations to capture, I believe practitioners should first look at the Statutory Educational Programmes and their linked goals. By considering the content of these, the important areas of focus can be determined. For example the Communication and Language Educational Programme and Early Learning Goals state: Communication and language development involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations. Listening and attention: children listen attentively in a range of situations. They listen to stories, accurately anticipating key events and respond to what they hear with relevant comments, questions or actions. They give their attention to what others say and respond appropriately, while engaged in another activity. Understanding: children follow instructions involving several ideas or actions. They answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about their experiences and in response to stories or events. Speaking: children express themselves effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs. They use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future. They develop their own narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events. DfE 2017 Hence we have a very clear guide as to which skills we need to attend to. As practitioners we will know a child’s current skill set. Through the careful planning of relevant and engaging provision we will plan for the child’s growth and improvement; e.g. developing how they respond, react, anticipate, concentrate or develop vocabulary. The child will demonstrate their improving skills through their responses to a range of situations. Over time we will see the newly developing skills becoming more apparent or a parent will share with us something they have not seen before. These are the things that we need to capture – the new, emerging steps of progress that enable us to see how each child is developing. This is not to suggest we should be assessing all children against the ELGs! Crucially practitioners must have a secure understanding of how children develop the relevant skills and how we might typically observe them at different stages of development. This is key to knowing what we may need to capture. For example, how children respond to others will change developmentally over time, but it is a common assessment thread that we all need to consider. By focussing on the inherent skills within the statutory curriculum towards the ELGs, we can build a more complete profile, one that is more relevant and useful for all who are involved in a child’s development. The non-statutory guidance is then returned to its initial purpose – as a reference document to aid summative judgements. Primarily this then allows practitioners to put down their tablets and notebooks and focus on what is most important; working with children. This view was emphasised recently by Gill Jones, HMI who said we should be asking ourselves, ‘Is it more important that I keep playing with this child, rather than taking a photo of what they’ve been doing?’ In fact the very best observations often come after those periods of deep sustained shared thinking, rather than looking permanently through the viewfinder of a camera. When planning for children’s next steps in learning, it can also be helpful to consider right from the start what new skills, knowledge or understanding you would be hoping to see as a result of your provision. This focus on what you will look for, listen for and therefore need to note is a practical way of focussing yourself on what you might be assessing. In many respects the language of planning is often linked to what we want children to “do”, rather than focussing on the skills we would like them to learn or develop. By shifting our own focus we can become more alert to the things we wish to capture or record, rather than once more trying to capture everything and hoping some of it is of use! Over time we will have things we are alert to, and which we know as a team we want to record to show that a child is making the progress we would expect. The issue of paperwork also lies more formally in the area of accountability. Most pertinent is the EYFSP and the need to share evidence within the setting and with external moderators. Despite the view of the teacher referenced in “Bold Beginnings”, The EYFSP Handbook is (and has always been) very clear about what constitutes evidence. ‘Evidence’ means any material, knowledge of the child, anecdotal incident or result of observation, or information from additional sources that supports the overall picture of a child’s development. STA 2017 The moderation process is also expected to be firmly rooted in professional dialogue. However, as the EYFSP covers all 17 ELGs, this can cause panic and a feeling that separate evidence is required for each and every one of them. In some sense it is – but it is the type of evidence that I feel is important to consider. There are some goals that will require physical evidence; it would be hard to discuss writing outcomes for example, without actually looking at a child’s writing. A child’s use of past, present and future tenses may be best evidenced through observations that capture the child’s voice. But many ELGs will be evidenced by a practitioner’s everyday knowledge of the child’s behaviours and ways of being. If a child typically moves around the setting, without having frequent collisions and will run, climb and crawl into small dens then our knowledge of this may preclude the need to have endless photographs to prove we know about all their physical skills. Many of the areas of learning also rely on linked skills. For example, the skills found in the Communication and Language ELGs thread their way through the skills found in all of the goals linked to the Specific areas of learning. In keeping with “Eliminating unnecessary workload associated with data management” (The Independent Teacher Workload Review Group March 2016) we should consider the following key point: Be streamlined: eliminate duplication – ‘collect once, use many times’. The same principle should apply when considering summative assessments prior to the EYFSP. The full range of knowledge about the child should be used, regardless of it being formally recorded, to then best-fit against the age bands. This approach should remove the pressure to collect something in writing for every statement and make professional judgement the primary driver for the assessments made. In summary therefore it will always remain the professional decision of the setting or practitioner to decide just how much evidence for assessment is “enough”. Yet some small adjustments to practice can prevent unnecessary evidence gathering becoming a primary focus of the observational assessment process. It is not the quantity of observations which defines their value, instead it is the quality, usability and relevance, which ensures we have the right information to make accurate assessments which we can use to promote children’s successful learning and development. Questions for reflection: Are your observations targeting predominantly the product or the processes and skills? Are you recording judgements instead of observations? Do the observations you capture help you understand the child as a learner? Do observations focus only on what is deemed important to assess or are you considering other linked skills you can use to assess other areas? Do you think about what you might look for, listen for and capture to demonstrate progress when planning next steps for children?
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