When Penny Hannant was a primary school teacher, and later a headteacher, she was frustrated that it was often only when she started having concerns about a child that she would learn they had developmental needs.

“I wanted to know more about the children,” she says, “because once you get a child who is struggling, who has anxiety or learning gaps, it’s too late.”

Now a developmental psychologist at the University of Birmingham’s School of Education, Hannant has designed an early years foundation stage (EYFS) profiling tool that gives teachers information about children’s development well before that point.

The tool profiles pupils “almost as they walk through the door”, she tells Tes, better allowing EYFS practitioners to identify developmental needs in children who otherwise “sit under the radar”, and introduce intervention well before the current system typically allows.

Existing Reception assessments

Of course, there are already two government-mandated assessments in place to track children during Reception: the Reception baseline assessment, which schools must complete for each child within their first six weeks; and the EYFS profile assessment, which schools execute between April and June of a child’s Reception year.

But these tools track academic skills - there is “nothing that looks at their development” more holistically, Hannant says. “What’s the point of seeing if a child can read and write if they can’t hold a pen?”

By contrast, her new tool “gets into the fundamentals of what children can do”, she says. Hannant adds that this is particularly important given that during the Covid-19 pandemic, health visitors stopped doing in-person checks for two-year-olds, and since then the workforce has been “stretched to the max” so early signs are not always picked up.

Hannant worked with a paediatrician, an occupational therapist and a speech and language therapist to design the tool, which is based on Taylor and Trott’s Pyramid of Learning. It focuses on the neurodevelopment that underpins a child’s ability to learn.

For example, the tool measures visual processing, which is different to what an eye test would pick up; instead, it is about how a child’s brain interprets what they see. The tool also measures auditory skills (how they distinguish between sounds), as well as gross motor skills (whole-body movements such as walking or throwing a ball), fine motor skills (such as doing up buttons or drawing) and interoception (how well a child senses internal states such as hunger or pain).

Teacher training

The development profiling tool was tested on over 500 children in 39 state and independent schools across the Midlands. A majority of participant teachers - 68 per cent - said they found it the “most informative and purposeful to learning” compared with other tools, including the government assessments.

EYFS teachers undertake training in the key developmental concepts by watching interactive webinars, which together total two hours. Then, in the second half of the autumn term, they observe their pupils to answer 58 questions per child.

“We worked with an early years associate professor to make sure most of [the observations] fit into the curriculum,” Hannant says. “The parts about sound discrimination will fit into phonics work, and a lot can be done in PE lessons.” Just two observations - which require being one-on-one; for example, to check reflexes - call for a pupil to be taken out of class.

Once the observations are made - all are a “yes” or “no” response - the profiling tool produces a chart that signposts if a child is falling below the expected level in any area. If that’s the case, the teacher is recommended interventions, details of which are available from the NHS, to feed into PE and other lessons.

Earlier intervention

“They are the sort of needs we know would be picked up if the child went to triage for occupational therapy,” Hannant says. But this approach allows mainstream schools to pick up on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) earlier than is typical, therefore allowing interventions to be in place earlier, too.

For example, a child who has difficulty with proprioception - the ability to sense one’s position and movements - might have trouble sitting still, but that isn’t always something a teacher will notice in a classroom full of five-year-olds. If this need is unaddressed, it may result in the child being referred for a formal diagnosis further down the line. But if identified early, about six months of shoulder stability exercises can “make so much difference in a lot of children”, Hannant says.

As such, Hannant believes the tool “will save schools time. It will save referrals. I’m hoping it will reduce [NHS] waiting lists, because not all these children will go on to have neurodiversity”.

Upskilling staff on neurodevelopment

She adds that since the study was carried out, several local authorities have contacted the team about accessing the tool. It will be made available for every primary school to use from next September, at a cost of less than £50 per school (on a not-for-profit basis), and Hannant’s team will continue to update the training as they carry out more research.

This is crucial because, Hannant says, the teachers who participated in the study reported that the training upskilled them, giving them a better understanding of neurodevelopment. “It trains teachers to talk about development to the point that it really did shift perspectives. They weren’t just seeing the barriers to learning, they were understanding why they were there.”

Schools can register their interest for the development profiling tool at eydpt.bham.ac.uk

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