Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will outline the process by which the GL Assessment reception baseline for use in the academic year 2016-17 was approved by her Department.

GL Assessment, along with five other approved suppliers, was appointed to provide the reception baseline assessment in 2015-16 as part of an open procurement process. Of these six suppliers, only three achieved sufficient order volumes to proceed to delivery.

When the decision was taken that reception baseline assessment would not be used as the baseline for progress measures in 2016-17, after the comparability study, the volume requirement was removed and schools were free to choose from any approved supplier. GL Assessment, along with three other suppliers from the original procurement, opted to offer a reception baseline scheme.