Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of assessing children with special educational needs and disabilities when they enter primary school as part of their baseline assessment; and if she will make a statement.

All early years and childcare providers currently have a responsibility to identify children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and make sure they put in place support as early as possible to help these children learn and progress. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards and requirements that all early years providers must follow to ensure that every child has the best start in life and is prepared for school.

The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with SEND, and practitioners must consider whether a child may have a SEND which requires specialist support.

The EYFS framework includes two specific points where assessments or progress checks must be undertaken - when a child is aged between two and three, and when they turn five. These are used to review a child’s development, and identify where progress is not as expected so that appropriate support can be put in place.

During the reception year, pupils also take the reception baseline assessment (RBA). The RBA acts as the starting point to enable the department to measure the progress primary schools are making with their pupils. The assessment has been designed so that almost all children, including children with SEND, will be able to access the assessment.

The department has always been clear that the RBA is not a diagnostic assessment and should not be used to track or group individual children. Data gathered from the assessment is only used to create a baseline for school-level progress measures and is not shared with schools, teachers, or parents.

Schools are expected to have arrangements for identifying the SEND of their pupils and for providing appropriate support to allow them to learn and progress.