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Abstract

Baseline assessment has recently been trialled as part of an accountability measure in English primary schools. The research presented in this colloquium examines the views of teachers related to using well-being and involvement indicators as a starting point for baseline assessment. The findings suggest that the focus on well-being was welcomed by the teachers, but provoked discussion regarding the situational nature of well-being, particularly in the context of scoring well-being as a part of the performative assessment process.

Keywords

Baseline assessment performativity reception class transition well-being

Introduction

In 2015, standardised baseline assessment data was collected on four- to five-year-old children within the first six weeks of starting primary school in England. This government policy formed part of the drive towards accountability and quality assurance in state-funded education (Bradbury, 2013; Brogaard Clausen et al., 2015; Sapon-Shevin, 2010). The baseline data, largely based on language, literacy and mathematics, was to be compared with results in the Standard Assessment Tests in literacy and mathematics at the end of primary school at the age of 11 (Standards and Testing Agency, 2015). The present government intention was to measure the added value between these two assessment points (Department for Education, 2014). Although the use of a baseline assessment was not mandatory, under this assessment and accountability regime, schools that did not adopt a baseline assessment would be judged against established standards (85% of children achieving the minimum expected standards in Standard Assessment Tests at age 11).¹

Schools were able to select one of three baseline assessment schemes approved by the Department for Education (Standards and Testing Agency and Department for Education, 2015). These schemes vary greatly in terms of format, content and administration processes. Two providers include scripted tests presented by the adult to the child on a computer, on a tablet screen, or with the support of physical resources and observation checklists, while the third scheme is based on teacher observation (TACTYC, 2016). The research presented in this colloquium focuses on teachers’ and head teachers’ experiences of piloting the observation-led baseline assessment: the Early Excellence Baseline Assessment for Reception (EExBA-R; Early Excellence, 2015). The EExBA-R includes two separate parts. The first section is a screening of children’s levels of well-being and involvement using the Leuven scales in order ‘to ensure that children are assessed at the optimum time within these 6 weeks’. The second part assesses ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning, all three Prime Areas … covered in the English Early Years Curriculum Guidance (EYFS) and the Specific Areas of Literacy and Maths’. According to Early Excellence, EExBA-R was designed to ‘not disrupt settling in routines’ in a reception class context, and information is gathered based on evidence of teachers’ ‘knowledge of the children from a range of means, including previous settings, parents and observations carried out during children’s first weeks in the setting’ (Early Excellence, 2015).

This article focuses on teachers’ and head teachers’ perspectives on using well-being and involvement indicators as a starting point for the EExBA-R. The research took place whilst they were involved in piloting the EExBA-R as part of the initial bidding process for the government contract. Following ethical guidelines (British Educational Research Association, 2011), the data were collected through individual or group semi-structured interviews with 12 reception/foundation stage teachers and 5 head teachers in the winter of 2014–2015 from 5 schools in the south of England. The questions to the teachers and head teachers concerned the implementation of the EExBA-R, and included their views on screening for well-being and involvement, how information was collected, and the value of the information.

One of the key themes arising from the data analysis was the value of a focus on well-being as key to children’s successful transition to school. Nevertheless, questions regarding teachers’ articulations of well-being and the scoring of well-being as part of the assessment process emerged during the analysis of the data.

Findings

Teachers welcomed an initial focus on well-being

‘I’m all for it’ (School 5, Teacher 1)

Screening for well-being and involvement as a starting point was perceived as offering teachers crucial information about individual children and how they were settling in at school. The teachers placed an emphasis on the principle that children’s ‘well-being needs to be supported first’ (School 1, Teacher 2):

It’s good that that’s set up as the first step, and it also gives teachers a bit of a prompt to say, well, actually, your first job when the children come in is to settle them. It’s not to see their learning to start with. (School 1, Teacher 1)

The teachers’ responses focused on the significance of emotional support during the first weeks of school in order ‘to make sure that they were happy and settled’ (School 1, Teacher 5). This initial process also helped teachers to understand ‘how they [children] integrated with the classroom environment’ (School 2, Group Interview) and provided confidence in making judgements as to when to start assessing children: ‘If your well-being is low, your involvement is low. And you are not going to be in a place to be able to be baselined [assessed] because you are uncomfortable about the situation you are in’ (School 1, Teacher 4). These responses suggest that the focus on well-being allowed the teachers to prioritise settling-in processes, rather than making immediate decisions about children’s abilities on entry to school. This was perceived as being a fairer way of assessing the children on entry to school, which is supported by previous research – a strong sense of well-being during transition has been identified as supporting children’s positive engagement with the environment and being key to children’s learning (Barblett and Maloney, 2010; Harrison and Murray, 2015; McLelland and Steward, 2015; Mashford-Scott et al., 2012).

Observing the situational nature of well-being

‘He’s a one when he’s not at the water tray but a five when he is’ (School 3, Teacher Group)

As identified by the participants, children’s levels of involvement are embedded in the context of the activity being observed: ‘a child might be totally different indoors to outdoors, in different parts of the learning environment’ (School 2, Group Interview). As one teacher explained in relation to a child who was highly involved when outside playing with water and seemingly less interested in other activities: ‘He is obsessed with water play and with outside, so we would find him quite highly involved at the water tray, but you move him anywhere else and he wanders’ (School 3, Teacher Group). Reflections such as these raise issues regarding the recognition of well-being as encompassing multiple aspects linked to different social contexts (Seland et al., 2015) and whether well-being is being assessed in terms of feelings, states or cognisance (Carr, 2004). If conceptualisations of well-being are directly linked to how it is assessed (Mashford-Scott et al., 2012), more knowledge of how teachers understand well-being in the context of baseline assessment is necessary.

Well-being in a performative context: Assessing children even if levels of well-being are not high

‘As long as their well-being is a four and their involvement is a four I was safe to go ahead’ (School 1, Teacher 2)

Although recognising the situational aspect of well-being, views of children as being ‘green’ (School 3, Teacher Group), as a ‘four’ (School 1, Teacher 2) or as a ‘one’ (School 4, Teacher 1) indicate a reduction of well-being to a single quantifiable score. There is a question here as to whether well-being in the context of baseline assessment is being oversimplified and/or perceived as ‘fairly stable’ during key transition periods (see Dodge et al., 2012). Despite the value that the teachers placed on well-being, policies that require children to be assessed before the sixth week of school entry, meant that the baseline assessment had to be prioritised over children’s levels of well-being:

The children that scored the highest well-being earliest on, they were the ones that would be the first ones to go through, and then whittled down, and if the children were still at a low well-being then, after I think it was a two-week cut-off, then that was it, we just did the baseline. (School 1, Teacher 1)

The Leuven scales were developed to enable teachers to use assessment of well-being to reflect on the effectiveness of the learning environment (Laevers, 2011: 3) in promoting deep learning. This raises questions about the use of the Leuven scales as part of an assessment that is firmly linked to performativity, where the focus is on assessing the individual child to monitor school performance based on standardised performance indicators and added value (Broadfoot, 2001).

Time constraints also became a factor in how the children were assessed. Although it was seen as best practice that children would be assessed in self-initiated activities, this was not always seen as being possible:

If we could take observations from their play, then we would, you know, if I saw them creating something, I might be able to tick a box there, if they were initiating conversations, that sort of thing … after a few days we would set up specific activities to try and create, because we still wanted it to be sort of child-initiated, but then you’ve got to put some structure in there to ensure that you are collecting the right evidence because, otherwise, they might just want to play outside, and then you are not going to see any literacy or any maths. (School 1, Teacher 5)

The interdependence between well-being and high involvement when engaged in self-chosen/self-initiated activities points to the importance of considering the different experiences and data when children are being assessed through more adult-structured and adult-initiated activity. This raises questions about issues of equality in the assessment process.

Future considerations

As summarised in this article, the teachers involved in this research welcomed the use of well-being and involvement indicators as a starting point for baseline assessment. They positioned well-being high on the agenda during transition to school, as well as highlighting the importance of enabling children’s positive engagement with their environment. The teachers identified children’s levels of involvement and well-being as embedded in the context of the activity being observed. However, our findings raise several concerns related to the performative assessment context. There is the problematic reduction of well-being to a static score, and the pressure to assess children when levels of well-being were not high and to base assessment on adult-structured activity instead of observations of child-initiated engagement. The Governement focus on performative assessment practices for externally monitored accountability purposes is entrenched within the English primary schools. Nevertheless, in order to promote assessment practices that support young children’s well-being, engagement and learning, there is a need to further explore and work with teachers’ understandings of well-being during transition to school. More importantly, well-being has to be considered from multiple perspectives, including those of children, parents and early years settings.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been funded by the Froebel Trust, London.

Notes

Author biographies

Sofia Guimaraes is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Roehampton, having previously worked as an early years teacher, a special educational needs teacher, a researcher and a Senior Lecturer in both Early Childhood Studies and Psychology. In terms of research, her main interests include literacy acquisition, bilingualism/multilingualism, and children’s social and emotional well-being and learning.

Sally Howe is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Roehampton. She originally trained as a primary teacher and taught for 10 years in London. Her PhD research examined children’s perspectives on the transition to Year 1 in England. Her research interests include children’s identity development in relation to educational contexts.

Sigrid Brogaard Clausen is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Roehampton. Her research interests arise from her experience of the Danish and English early years, and range from the policy conditions for children’s well-being, learning and democratic participation to the development of professional identity in ‘early years’. She is currently working on a collaborative research study into the recently introduced baseline assessment in England, examining teachers’ experiences of working with well-being and involvement in the context of the assessment. Further to this, she is taking part in research into parents’ and early years practitioners’ perceptions of children’s well-being. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the steering group of the Early Childhood Studies Degree Network in the UK.

Michelle Cottle is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Roehampton. She originally trained as a primary teacher and taught for 10 years mainly in international schools overseas, working with the English national curriculum and different curricular frameworks. Since then, she has worked on Economic and Social Research Council-funded research projects and is currently undertaking a PhD. Her research interests include policy enactment within early years settings and primary schools, creativity in relation to learning and teaching, teacher and practitioner perspectives on their work with children and families, children’s learning experiences and children’s participation in research.

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