Rethinking the Design of School Readiness Assessments

Introduction

The concept of school readiness and whether children should be ready for schools, or schools should be ready for children, relates directly to the wider discussion of whether the balance of provision at this age should be weighted towards delivering education or care and the contested issue of defining what attainment and achievement is for children in the early years. In every system the focus shifts solely to education at some point because many countries define the success of their education system by the educational qualifications outcomes achieved at the end. The challenges and limitations associated with accurately interpreting or measuring the progress made by children at the end of a period of schooling without knowing their starting skills are widely recognized. In order to try and address this issue school readiness assessments such as Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) or other forms of baseline assessment have been introduced in a wide range of countries, including schemes such as the Bracken School Readiness Assessment in the USA (Bracken, 2007), the Reception Baseline Assessment in England (Department of Education, Training and Skills, 2021), and the Australian Early Development Index in Australia (Australian Government, 2021). These are used as a way of measuring the “value added” to a child’s learning by educational experiences that can increase a child’s future opportunities. The common assumption seems to be that assessments provide a start point from which subsequent progress can be tracked, giving a more accurate picture of the progress that a child has made in comparison to using “raw” end of phase test results, which assume everyone starts at the same level.

The robustness and usefulness of the data taken from PIPS or baseline assessments has been widely acknowledged and used to inform a range of studies including research into children’s cognitive development and learning, effectiveness of assessments and early education pedagogy (Hawker, 2015). However, concerns have been raised about the narrow focus inherent in one-off school readiness assessments and the limited picture of the child that they present, with arguments being made to support development of fuller school readiness processes that allow a more holistic view to be presented. Over focus on an assessment point creates an unnatural jolt in the child development process, which promotes a deficit view of the child and introduces performance pressures, but there is a practice occurring that avoids this whilst still enabling practitioners to support children’s educational development and attainment. This chapter aims to suggest that a move away from school readiness assessments towards school processes is the way forward by:

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  Presenting an overview of some the current trends and concerns related to school readiness assessments

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  Exploring how school readiness is judged in different countries

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  Considering how school readiness assessments could be changed

Background

It may appear to be counterintuitive, but in order to explore the issues related to school readiness assessments it is necessary to start by recognizing the significance that is attached to subject-specific attainment at the very end of a child’s education. In many education systems, particularly those in the global west, success is judged primarily by final exam results with limited recognition of the acquisition of more general skills and attributes such as positive attitudes to learning or resilience when faced with challenges (Rawding, 2018). There are many who argue that the “schoolification” of early education curricula, which introduces young children to formal academic content and pedagogies too early will have a detrimental effect on a child’s overall academic attainment and could have serious implications for their mental health (Glazzard et al., 2019). Despite these concerns many governments and policy makers continue to equate an effective education system with high numbers of students achieving end-of-education qualifications.