HAVING just completed a year in reception, I am beginning to reflect on baseline assessment. My school repeats the assessment in the summer term to look at progress. Although this was mostly heartening, when you look at pupils who make very small steps of learning, you see how these whole assessment systems fail. A child who “joins in with number rhymes” scores one counting, but to score two they must be able to count orally to 10. I had two pupils who by the end of the summer could count orally to five and count objects with their fingers up to three, but this did not fit a box. They had gained confidence and were becoming more interested in learning, but this cannot be measured. In our job, it is sometimes the un-measurable things that need to be celebrated.

Ruth Cole 7 Plover Close Stubbington, Hampshire