Observations & assessment – ensuring opportunity but not disrupting learning

Recognising how children are developing, what they like doing and what they are learning through their play is central to early years education. You must understand the children that you are supporting to ensure that their learning experiences are fun and engaging. Beyond this if you don’t know the children you can’t capture teachable moments and extend play effectively to enhance opportunities for them to learn. At KatieB Kids we take the time to really get to know our children, and ongoing assessment is an important part of this. In this blog we reflect on what assessment means, the role of observations, and how we balance establishing evidence with ‘hands on’ education.

Back in September 2021, with the revised EYFS, Ofsted made it clear that assessment, which includes observations, should not entail prolonged breaks from interaction with children, nor require excessive paperwork. The requirement to prove professional judgement through collection of physical evidence was removed. Like most settings, we welcomed the move away from rigid documented tracking, making observations just to ‘tick off’ a list does not show anyone a complete picture of the child.

But we are very mindful that, as professionals, we cannot make assumptions. We must be able to interrogate learning to improve outcomes and to take forward concerns if there may be a developmental need.

So how do we do this?

Every day in our nursery we are actively and proactively looking, listening, and noticing, not only what makes each child ‘tick’, but how each child plays, interacts, and learns. Through this information we adjust how we set up our spaces, and we adapt how we provide support to reflect the different rates at which each child is developing. At KatieB Kids we have a deep respect for children’s play, and we are careful not to force children to take their play down a route that does not interest them. That’s why we embrace in the moment planning and promote child led practice.

If we had any emerging concern about a child’s progress and development, we discuss this with parents. We must be ready, if it is appropriate, to work with any relevant professionals to achieve the best outcome for the child. In this process we must be alert that if we want to refer, then it is essential that we can provide objective evidence of the child’s needs, the interventions that work well, and what has been tried to more limited affect. A targeted plan helps us to structure this information, and standardized assessments linked to communication and language, or specific areas of SEN are used to support and guide this targeted plan. In our nursery, internal ‘hub meetings’, allow the child’s key person to present objective data to our SENCo and curriculum lead, to discuss what is working well, the activities within the room that need to be differentiated to meet the needs of the child, any challenges that the team have in implementing universal best practice and differentiating successfully, including feedback on challenging times of the day or challenging days, or any nursery routines that the child’s find difficult. This discussion and review of the evidence enables us to consider what further adjustments to provision within the setting could help, this may refer to deployment, resource provision or routine. It may be that we need to provide the educators in the room with more support or training, or it may be that we need to have a formal meeting with parents to implement a plan to formally review progress, ahead of making a referral for specialist support or intervention. What is clear, is that if we have not followed these steps, and evidenced it, then any support from specialists will be limited in its effectiveness for the child.

As early years professionals we cannot disadvantage the support that a child can receive by not being proactive with this.       

So, assessment and documentation for children with any emerging or established developmental concern is crucial, but it also has a role to support every child, and parent.

We are confident that the educators in our nursery have a solid knowledge of every child. We have strong relationships with families, and our practice is influenced by our own day-to-day observations about children’s progress and observations that parents share. Beyond this, our team are supported to work with sound professional judgement.

Let’s explore how this works.

At KatieB Kids our management team are qualified to graduate, and master’s level in early years education. They are current in evidence-based practice, contributors to graduate training programs and attend early years conferences. But most importantly, they spend time in the rooms within our nursery every day, so they know our children and can provide relevant, effective support and advice to key educators for each child. Hayley, our curriculum specialist, leads key person meetings every 3 months with every member of our team. These meetings enable discussion on every child, where we explore where the child is, at that moment in time, reflect on the progress that has been made, and establish the best next steps for the child. We dissect the best way to achieve maximum learning for the child considering their schema, learning style and interests, alongside anything that we know could impact upon their wellbeing – perhaps a change to family circumstances – a new sibling or a change of house and their relationships within the setting. The outcomes of these meetings are summarised and shared with the team and the parents.

Beyond this we do our very best to capture images of all our children to share through our digital parent portal. We want our parents to enjoy receiving pictures of their child at nursery, and we know how important it is that families feel part of their child’s day when they are at work. At KatieB Kids we share weekly insight bulletins, lead workshops and produce extensive resources to support linked to our ethos and values. All we ask is for an understanding that images of children must come second to learning. Our educators will take photographs when they can, and each week our management will upload these, but doing this can’t be prioritised over helping to extend or scaffold a child’s learning.

So, in summary, at KatieB Kids we value the importance of documented evidence, especially with children who need a little more support to access our curriculum. We are also sensitive to the needs of working families, who want to ‘see’, and understand not only what their children are doing in the week, but what they are learning. The most important thing is that we achieve this without taking our educators away from the children, because we know that our educators are best placed building relationships with, and interacting directly with the children, and not a tablet!

Ultimately, we ensure that our children do not lose opportunity, and we strive for what works, for our families, for our team, and most importantly for our children.