ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 we identified eight possible purposes of school entry assessment at five years. These include purposes which were essentially child-oriented, including the early identification of learning difficulties and special educational needs. Alternatively baseline assessment could be used to provide information relevant to the school level, whether limited to accountability or used to aid school improvement programmes. We also demonstrated that the balance under the previous government was on the latter, school level purpose, even if much of the rhetoric had initially promoted baseline assessment as a means of helping individual children's development, as shown for example, in Sir Ron Dealing's Foreword to the draft proposals, where the only reference to purpose concerns the individual child:
Finding out what children already know and are capable of as soon as they enter the reception class is an essential element in being able to give them the education they need to progress quickly in these important early years.
(SCAA 1996b, p.1)