Do You Add Value?

[Guest]

Once again, following a leadership team meeting, I have been asked about providing 'baseline'scores for my foundation stage children. I have said that it is not necessary to do so any longer as the children's assessment is through the profile. I'm told that I need to do something to show the value added by the Reception class and that would validate the good work we do.

 

What are you all doing? I imagine others are facing similar pressures to provide measurable data. My worry is that it is very easy to sit down after a number of weeks and produce some evidence of what you've observed so far relating to free activities and teacher led tasks. But does this produce a true picture of what the child is truly capable of?

 

My colleague has suggested we photocopy the Early Years Developmental Records that we get from the nursery schools and then should the powers that be want to they can compare that with the profile data at the end of the year.

 

Ideas, thoughts and what you do (especially if it avoids lots of meaningless red tape ) would be very welcome!

 

Thanks

 

Angela

[Susan]

You ought of course be able to use your profile as your value added proof in itself. Afterall, if the children are attaining ELGs that in itself is proof that you are doing your bit.

In practise, of course, everyone wants more evidence or concrete statistics.

I got round this in part by marking the entry points on the profile after the first half term based on our initial observations. You do need to ascertain a certain amount of info about your children in order to plan next steps but actually sitting down with the profile documents was very time consuming and onerous.

My LEA also devised a document to preceede the profile and was designed to be used in all preschool/FS1 settings and to transfer to schools, to allow us to see at a glance where the children were and use the data accordingly. If your document does this then it is rather a waste of time and paper chasing exercise to do anything else?

Good luck!

[Guest]

AOB,

I agree with your colleague, as I, and my staff, have spent hours writing up the records of transfer for all our preschool children, it would be appreciated if the information was used as a baseline to build upon and compare at the end of reception.

 

In our area all preschool/nursery settings use the same format so that if the schools have children arriving from different settings the school doesn't have a variety of different formats to sift through.

Ours show what level ( for each developmental area) each child has reached within the FSC, with comments of achievements, and a space for the recommended "next steps".

 

Our assessments are derived from observations carried out over a one-two year period and therefore they must surely be more informative than any information gained by schools within the first few weeks. I think most teachers were against the "Baseline Assessments" introduced a few years ago ( are these still done?) mainly because children are adjusting and settling into their new routines and environment etc to be performing at their "natural" levels.

 

And of course why make more work which doesn't necessarily benefit the children or teachers.

 

Peggy

[apple]

Hi there all

we update the eprofile half termly and this produces some very telling graphs. By using the graph element of the eprofiles you can generate some useful data that shows the value added in a number of ways. (boys/girls/ ethnicity etc in all or just one area of learning. I tend to print the first and last graph fpr the year 1 teachers too

[Guest]

We have just had our nursery self evaluation which covers all areas of the nursery. I gather "value added" arose. I am trying to draw up some sheets using the stepping stones as a base to cross reference all our photos and observations so that one photo provides evidence for many stepping stones. Time consuming to set up but hopefullyif asked "wHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE?" The reply will be Well you see this photo it is evidence that this child is working at these levels in these areasof the ELGs. That is the idea anyway

[Guest]

My head asks the same questions at my PMR every time we meet and now we have to do the SEFs for Ofsted he asks even more. I use Target Tracker to record progress and so have printed off a variety of graphs to show the progress of an above average, average and below average child in the class. I also create spider charts which show class average at the start compared with the end. Unfortunately we keep coming back to the big question about what these mean in NC levels. They don't easily transfer across as they don't predict any higher than a level 4 in Y6! So I just tell him to use Y1 levels to make those sort of long term predictions. Is that of any help? heyjude