EYFS – Reception Baseline Assessment
The Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is a statutory assessment from September 2021 onwards. It provides a snapshot of where pupils are when they arrive at school. It will provide a starting point to measure the progress schools make with their pupils between reception and the end of primary school.
Full information about the reception baseline assessment and what it involves can be found here:
Schools will need to login to the NFER Reception Baseline portal (link here) and upload their reception pupil data via CTF file. For instructions on how to create a basic CTF file please follow the steps below:
- In SIMS go to Routines > Data Out > CTF > Export CTF and select ‘General‘.
- Untick all boxes except Student Basic Details
- Click on the ‘Year Group’ column and select Year R
- For each Reception pupil select the destination school as your own school
- Click Export CTF
The Reception Baseline Assessment portal will look like this:
Once signed in click on ‘Upload CTF‘ and select the location of the CTF file (eg: SIMS\STAR\CTFout) – this will pull through reception pupils’ details.
A start date will need to be added for each of the pupils (use the date the pupil started in Reception) and then details can be saved.
Teachers will then be able to log into the portal to add marks for these pupils.
The DfE state:
- This is to be a teacher observed assessment of pupils within the first 6 weeks of school. It will be recorded online.
- There will be no pass mark, score, grade, grouping or other indicator of attainment provided at the time of the assessment or any time after.
- This data will not and should not be used, by the school or the DfE to form the basis of any target setting or accountability. However..
- …the DfE will use the data from this assessment to derive values as a start point from which progress of pupils will be measured.
- This is because this assessment will take over from the current KS1 as the new starting point from which to measure a pupils progress at KS2.
Important links for more information:
Information about the reception baseline assessment – NFER