A 112,000+ signature petition against the introduction of English and maths tests in Reception class was delivered to 10 Downing Street today (Thursday 23rd September) by a group of four-year-olds.

The children are among 600,000 starting school for the first time this month. While making friends and getting used to a new routine, they will also be faced with the government’s controversial Reception Baseline Assessment, testing their English and maths abilities.

The new test has been widely condemned by heads, teachers and education experts as well as petition organisers the More Than A Score campaign group. They have calculated that at least 300,000 teaching hours (or 60,000 school days) will be sacrificed to the administration of the assessment which has been designed purely as a data collection exercise for the government.

Children will be taken out of the classroom one-by-one and asked a series of questions with right or wrong answers. The results will not be shared with schools or parents but will be locked away for seven years and then compared to SATs scores, to measure schools.

Justine Stephens who will be handing in the petition with her daughter comments, “Rowen is so excited about starting school – it’s a huge step and a big adventure. I trust her teacher to spend lots of time getting to know her, settling her in and assessing all that she can do. The last thing they both need is for this precious time to be wasted collecting pointless data for a government league table in seven years’ time.”

Experts have pointed out the many flaws in the government plans including the difficulty extracting reliable information from very young children and the disruption to classroom life at such a critical time. They also point out that Reception teachers carry out their own detailed assessments of children based on observation during the first weeks of school.

Nancy Stewart, Vice-President of Early Education and spokesperson for More Than A Score comments, “The government has attempted to introduce the so-called Baseline test twice before and abandoned it on both occasions. They cannot explain how it will be used as a progress measure to judge schools. How can a 20-minute test taken at the age of four possibly be compared to four days of SATs taken by 11-year-olds under exam conditions?”

Parents and headteachers are also united in their opposition to the new assessment. Only 6% of parents believe it’s important to formally test children in English and maths when they start school and 80% of heads believe it will not be a good use of teaching time*.

Kulvarn Atwal, headteacher of Highlands and Uphall Primary Schools in Ilford, comments, “The first few weeks of Reception are absolutely critical and as teachers, we have always taken the time to undertake baseline assessments of where children are at to support them in their learning journeys. But now teachers will be taken out of the classroom to waste precious time collecting unreliable and unnecessary data for external purposes. We are doing everything we can to minimise disruption to our children’s learning but it is the last thing pupils and teachers need.”

The new Baseline test is one of three new primary assessments in the 2021/22 school year. Along with an Autumn Phonics Check for year 2 pupils and a year 4 Times Tables Check, the number of government tests has now doubled to six, compared to before the pandemic. There are now statutory assessments in five out of seven primary school years.

Nancy Stewart concludes, “In this school year, children and teachers need time to love learning following many months of disruption. Mental health and wellbeing must be the priority, not high-pressure tests. Our youngest pupils are carrying the burden of a system obsessed with data collection. Parents, teachers, heads and experts agree: it’s time for change.”