Parent Baseline

[Masha]

Hi

 

We have been using Tapestry for a couple of years now and love it!

 

Currently we use our first two weeks of observations to generate a baseline for a new child but at our recent Ofsted inspection we were advised that we really needed a 'day one' baseline from the parents' assessment of their child's learning and development.

 

Our inspector told us that she had seen this done successfully on Tapestry and just labelled 'Parents baseline'.

 

My question is, if anyone does this, what happens if a parent overestimates their child's abilities? Does your progress show them going backwards from their baseline?

 

Or do you enter the parent baseline as a report and then do your own baseline?

 

We're struggling a bit to figure out how best to do this!

 

 

[EmilyTapestrySupport]

Hi,

 

I'm wondering if there was some misunderstanding as to what your Ofsted inspector meant, I wonder if they meant parents filling out a child's 'all about me' when they start with you. This could be used to help form your judgement for the child's baseline.

 

Most parents will not have the understanding of the EYFS to be able to make a proper assessment, and as you suggest, some of them might overestimate their child's abilities!

 

This tutorial here covers where you can find the 'all about me' section on Tapestry and how to enable relatives to be able to see it and fill it in.

[Lauren]

Hi Masha,

 

I have spoken to quite a few schools that sit with their parents to discuss the sorts of things the child can do and then make judgements for the baseline.

 

You can just manually fill in the baseline within snapshots if you like, but if you are concerned about how accurate those assessments will be, you might want to consider just making an observation called 'Parent's Baseline'. As long as you add that during the 2 week baseline period (as set by you on each child's baseline snapshot in the snapshots section) then it will just contribute towards the scores there.

 

Your own practitioner assessed observations will also contribute and at the end of your 2 week baseline period, you can go to the snapshot and use the 'show details' button to see how your practitioner assessed observations and the parent assessed observation compare. Then you can manually override any scores in the baseline that you disagree with, and hopefully it will be clear whether the scores your parents came up with are overestimated or not.