Ofsted And Target Setting

[Guest]

I teach a reception class in a two form entry school, there are 2 receptions in one room and I team teach.

 

I have a question from our assessment co-ordinator at school who is trying to hold the head back from a return to the baseline assessment stuff, PIP's, that I thought we had escaped last year. She wants to know if formal target setting is necessary in the foundation stage ie. does ofsted need to see evidence of it though baseline assessment and predicted future SATS levels? If not on inspection how will they see evidence of children's learning? Will the accept our observations, profiles, children's work and talking to the children them? My colleague and I both believe that if the provision is of a high enough standard, children are obviously employed in their learning and we have all the above, then BIP's are contra the spirit of the foundation stage guidance. But are we right? Or do we need to have the more concrete evidence that BIP's gives the school?

 

Lots of waffle I know but I would appreciate any advice I can get, cos I'm confused.

[mundia]

Hi Emily

We had abandonned our LEAs baseline, which yielded a score from which KS1 predictions were made before we had our last OFSTED. Althoughwe were questioned about it, they were happy that we were able to show progress through our own profile. The KS1 predictions I think will now come from the scores in the FSprofile, although Im not sure how.

 

So you shouldnt have any problems with not using some sort of baseline which is scoring, as long as you are able to justify what you do as a way of showing progress. perhaps other members have different experiences?

[Sue R]

Hi Emily,

Not come across you before, hello!

 

At our combined Inspection in January absolutely no mention was made of this, but as we're a Day Nursery, it may be a slightly different matter. The way I see it, FS should really not be formally connected to any predicted future SATS levels, it just isn't the way it functions. Forgive if I'm talking uneducated bilge, but there's pressure enough on everyone!!

 

So long as the curriculm is covered and achievements are recorded and monitored, with PDPs etc, surely that should be enough?

 

Interested to hear more

Sue

[JacquieL]

You have the Pupil Profile and all your record keeping, observations and examples of childrens 'work' so you do not need to do any other baseline. You will have filled in your pupil profile in the Autumn term, with evidence, and monitored the children's progress so what else do you need?

My own view is that target setting , the type that KS1/2 do is not appropriate for R as the children are reliant on their stage of child development, brain function etc. and that cannot be hurried on if it is not in that child's genetic makeup. You can only develop them to the optimum for them.

As far as I can remember SATS levels should be predicted from the beginning of KS1. In practice at my school we can target set form the end of Reception by looking at what they have acheived in Literacy and Numeracy. This can easily be assessed against the NC levels 1c etc. and we target them two levels so a 1c should be a 1a by the end of Y1 and a 2b by the end of Y2. Anyway that's the theory.

[Guest]

Thanks for getting back to me,

 

I am pleased to hear that you all seem to think that we're not too far off the mark, I like the idea of just assessing them against the NC levels at the end of the year and predicting them forward. We found that we were loosing around 4 weeks teaching across the year by doing baseline assessment, your way we assess them using our own knowledge of the child at the end of the year and we show progression through the profiles. Have I got that right?

 

Emily