HannahR Posted October 2, 2007 Posted October 2, 2007 Hi, I was hoping to get some opinions on the PIPS assessment used at the beginning and end of Reception. Do you find it useful and/ or appropriate? Does anybody know of other assessments which they think are better for this age group? Thanks!
Susan Posted October 2, 2007 Posted October 2, 2007 Hi Hannah and welcome. I dont have any personal experience of Pips but the last :EA I worked in didnt recommend it as they said it was inappropriate but they didnt support eprofile either!
dublinbay Posted October 2, 2007 Posted October 2, 2007 Just wanted to say hello and welcome to you Hannah. Don't know anything about PIPS but I sure someone who does will be along soon to help you.
HannahR Posted October 2, 2007 Author Posted October 2, 2007 Thank you for your replies, especially the friendly welcome! Somebody else has suggested Letters and Sounds is more relevant, does anybody have experience of this?
Marion Posted October 2, 2007 Posted October 2, 2007 Hi and welcome to the forum I think the person who has suggested Letters and Sounds may think you mean Progression in Phonics (PiPs) rather than the CEMCentre PIPs assessment programme. All I really know about PIPs is that it takes a great deal of time to administer it only covers CLLD MD AND PSED and is frowned on by the NAA for providing information for the FSP as it a one off test which in their opinion does not give an accurate view of the child. Many schools use it to please OFSTED as it allows the school to track children's progress. We looked at it but decided against using it. Hope that helps.
HannahR Posted October 2, 2007 Author Posted October 2, 2007 Hi Marion, yes thanks, that is really helpful. This is a fantastic way to find out what other practitioners are doing and what their opinions are.
Guest Posted October 2, 2007 Posted October 2, 2007 I have moved to a new school which use Pips. It varies from 5-15 minutes to administer per child, once at the beginning of the year and once at the end. I can't see how it will link with the profile, but the school has found it a useful tool to show progress form entry to leaving reception and it produces some pretty scattergraphs which compare where your children start and finish compared to others in the county and country who do Pips. My head has used it to highlight strengths and areas to develop in reception. We are now using the profile as our assessment tool. Out of interest, what do other people plan to use to track attainment when the EYFS is in place, rather than stepping stones? Or do people tend to just use the profile?
Susan Posted October 4, 2007 Posted October 4, 2007 Out of interest, what do other people plan to use to track attainment when the EYFS is in place, rather than stepping stones? Or do people tend to just use the profile? Marie, I think that could be worthy of a new thread.
catma Posted October 5, 2007 Posted October 5, 2007 (edited) well you can use the profile in reception but not really for below that - you'll be looking at ages/stages. My observation for HTs is that there are only 2 stages of development within the FS rather than the 4 they are used too, so "progress" may be a little harder to actually graph. CX ps check out "creating the picture" for the principles of assessment and record keeping in EYFS http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/p...eating_picture/ Stuff about not using numerical bought in systems if they don't focus on importance of observational assessment as they won't meet the statutory requirements in there. Edited October 7, 2007 by catma
Guest Posted October 6, 2007 Posted October 6, 2007 Thanks Catma for the link to 'creating the picture' - I hadn't heard of this document before and it's going to be useful and help us get started on thinking about how our assessment/tracking system will have to change in Foundation due to EYFS. Just wanted to have my say (rant?) about PIPs - our school still does it as it is seen as a useful part of the whole school target setting system but the Reception and Nursery staff (who have to administer PIPs Aspects) hate it. It is a test and the EYFS states that there must be no testing in the FS so we are going to push like mad to stop doing it from September 2008. It is a one off snapshot of where a child is at a particular time and really only takes account of phonics, reading and maths. It may only take a few minutes (about 10 we found) to do at the start of the year but we have to follow up all the Reception children at the end of the year too. There are over 100 Reception children and each one works one to one with the teacher. The test at the end of last year took at least 40 minutes per child (their progress in phonics and reading made it much longer) and some took over an hour. Heads like it because it is supposed to predict the scores a child will achieve in the end of KS1 Sats but a search of this Forum will show you lots of sources of evidence that no test can do this. We have an excellent tracking system using the stepping stones and ELGs used throughout the Nursery and Reception and of course we complete the profile so we have a really holistic assessment of each child's strengths and areas for development. That is all that is needed! The time it takes to administer this awful test is time taken away from working with the children and doing observations. Grrrrrr! Rant over....I shall try and calm down now!
Susan Posted October 6, 2007 Posted October 6, 2007 Thanks Catma. And thanks MissesP for your perspective on Pips. Its always useful to hear what the users really think!
Guest tinkerbell Posted October 6, 2007 Posted October 6, 2007 Hi Hannah welcome I have had a few rants on here about PIPs.I used it a couple of years ago as the initial assessment for my Reception I told my HT I wouldn,t be using it in the summer term as it was only assessing a few areas and would be dangerous if fed into the e-profile eg if a child could say a shape was a circle and another shape was big they got a score of point 7 (on e-profile) Our LEA early years advisors have advised us not to use computer based programmes for assessment we should be observing the children in their continous provision to make our assessments......I still assess with groups working with me too. Unfortunatley our LEA computer /data advisor promotes PIPs so you can see what king of authority I work for We have had a thread a little while ago with initial assessment booklet from the TES web site.I use this to make my initial assessments and to talk to parents using this info. Good luck Hannah
Guest Posted October 7, 2007 Posted October 7, 2007 Hi, I was hoping to get some opinions on the PIPS assessment used at the beginning and end of Reception. Do you find it useful and/ or appropriate? Does anybody know of other assessments which they think are better for this age group? Thanks! Hi Hannah We used to use Aspects in my Nursery and then PIPS begining and end of reception .This takes up an awful lot of time and wasnt really useful .When we were Ofsteded at the begining of this year they were not interested in /Aspects PIPs they only wanted from me the statuatory data ie Foundation stage profile.This year we have stopped using Pips are concentrating on what we should be doing ,that is settling in the children and forming a picture of the whole child.It has been so much better.and we have been able to get to know the childrens strengths and areas for development much more easily
Marion Posted October 7, 2007 Posted October 7, 2007 Hi skippytrip and thanks for the information ......welcome to the forum
Guest Posted October 8, 2007 Posted October 8, 2007 Hi skippy trip and welcome. Thank you and hello to everyone
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