Guest isaac Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Hi, Ofsted is currently inspecting my school, and today after my little 'chat' with one of the inspectors she wanted to know why we don't have any formal assessment on entry to nursery. Being new to nursery I don't really know if this is normal practice or not. She wanted to see cumulative evidence - similar to that of the old baseline. Is there a widely used format that shows figures, points etc? Or not? Any feedback or advice would be VERY welcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mundia Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Hi there Isaac and welcome to the forum. Thnaks for making your first (of hepefully many) posts. many LEAS including my own still have some sort of baseline which is likely to be optional. We declined to use ours as we dont like it and devised our own on going profile. But they are not usually completed until the children have been in nursery for at least half a term. We have an initial observation proforma whcih will include notes made on the home visit as well as observations made in the first few days. Neither yield 'scores' and deliberately so as we really didnt want to go down that path. Is your OFSTED picking up on something that was a weakness in a prevous inspection- that could be why they are asking. Or is the school generally data poor so the issue is more of a school issue than just a nursery one? Ask your coordinator if you have one if there is anything standard that you LEA is using or that your school has use in the past. And all the best for the rest of the inspection Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest cat33 Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 isaac, you have my sympathy!! Like Mundia, we have devised our own on entry profile. I dont think it is written anywhere that we have to do so, it is just good practise. Ours is very basic but it does give us something to assess progress from and is useful to share with Parents if they wnat to see what is going on! Lots of PSe bits ! Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest isaac Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 I spoke to the inspector today, again, as we do have an initial assessment for the children but it doesn't have scores. She said that I need to have something concrete to prove value-added! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mundia Posted January 14, 2004 Share Posted January 14, 2004 I know that some inspectors are a bit obsessed about scores but you can show value added by progress not by number crunching. We use different coloured highlighters to show the progress at a glance. But it may be that you have either not had an inspection for a long time or have had problems in the past. We are through all that (having been in serious weaknesses about 2 years ago). Since getting out of that category, we can more or less do what we like as long as we can show that it is right for us and show that we are moving forward as a school. Nursery to end of foundation scores are not used in any PANDA reports anyway. At the moment, value added is only recorded for KS1 to KS2. However, if it makes your inspectors smile, find out what you LEA does and do it. Sometimes we have to jump through these hoops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 17, 2004 Share Posted January 17, 2004 Hi, Ofsted is currently inspecting my school, and today after my little 'chat' with one of the inspectors she wanted to know why we don't have any formal assessment on entry to nursery. Being new to nursery I don't really know if this is normal practice or not. She wanted to see cumulative evidence - similar to that of the old baseline. Is there a widely used format that shows figures, points etc? Or not? Any feedback or advice would be VERY welcome. Hi we are using Willows Nursery of excellence baseline, it is great simple to use and shows stages of development form 0-5, enabling us to possible see who may be special needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest isaac Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 Hi Cinderella, Could you tell me where or how to get this baseline assessment please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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