BASE
Get to know your children as they start Reception and see the progress they make during their first year at school
Quick Look
Age: 4-5 years
Sections: Literacy, Numeracy, Communication & Language, PSED
Average Duration: 20-25 minutes
Format: Digital (web based or download), Storybook-style, Adaptive
Price: Click here for costs and sign up
Fun, quick and easy-to-use
Provides information to help tailor learning and support to each child
Ensure children are making good progress throughout Reception
What is BASE?
BASE provides insight that can be acted upon to support the development of every child. It allows you to quickly identify what children know and can do at the start of the school year, and helps you see what support they need to help them progress. Used again at the end of the same year, detailed reports help you demonstrate the progress children have made.
Objective information to support early learning goals
A fun and engaging story-based assessment for young children helps you get an objective picture of what children know and can do when they join you, and the progress they make during this crucial stage of development. The assessment covers early literacy, early numeracy, communication & language, and Personal Social and Emotional Development.
Adaptive and quick to complete
BASE takes around 20 minutes to complete, and is carried out one-to-one with each child at a computer. The computer is controlled by the teacher or appropriate adult. The assessment asks the child to complete activities and the adult submits the responses. The assessment is adaptive and the sequence of questions responds to the child, moving them on when they get questions wrong, and showing more challenging questions when they answer correctly.
The assessment can be stopped and restarted at any point and no teacher marking is required.
How it works
The initial BASE assessment is carried out within the first few weeks of the child’s entry to Reception year (or equivalent e.g. KG2). The follow-up assessment, carried out in the last few weeks of the final term in the same year, provides information showing how each child has progressed during their time in the setting.
Information to inform and support your judgement
BASE complements observational assessment by providing an objective and independent assessment to identify learning needs and development:
- Understand literacy and maths development: on completion of both the start and end of year assessments, you will receive indicators for their literacy and maths development, how this compares to other children in the class and cohort, and in comparison to national averages.
- Further diagnostic reports show levels of development for each child in each sub-strand of the literacy and maths assessments. For example, literacy is broken down by concepts about print, vocabulary, letter recognition, repeating words, matching and reading.
- Monitor Personal, Social and Emotional Development: the EYFS prime areas of learning and development can also be recorded using judgements made against a series of statements based on teacher observations. A simple chart shows you how your children compare to others of a similar age.
- Benchmark your school performance against national averages, as well as a school with similar characteristics to your own. Customise the characteristics as appropriate for your school*
- Demonstrate progress: progress reports show the rate of development that each child and class has made during the year, and helps you compare their progress with other children of the same age. Progress is shown for literacy, maths and PSED.
Access and support
Schools can access the assessment and feedback information through a private and secure online account. The assessment can be completed online using the secure web shortcut, or downloaded to the local network or computer. We provide step by step guidance to help you set up and run the assessment.
Talking about BASE
”The reason we like the Literacy and Maths aspects of the BASE assessment is because we feel we can get a very raw baseline - something that is objective, and something that is more than we can get with just a teacher assessment.”
”The BASE reports give really detailed guidance and a breakdown of scores in each of the sections so that you can actually use it for planning and resourcing.”
”Our intake comes from all over, it’s a really diverse population. The CEM data helps us to see the spread of ability and then we can make sure we use our support assistant and resources appropriately.”
How do other schools use BASE?
Positive impact on teaching and learning
Carrying out the BASE assessment helps us to get to know each child as they settle into school. The reports provide us with detailed and objective information on what children know and can do which gives us a starting point, helping us to plan the support they need.
Get a holistic profile of development
At our school the ‘on-entry’ BASE assessment feedback, plus the full range of teacher observations and formative assessments over the course of the year are combined with the feedback obtained from the end of year BASE assessment. This helps to provide a narrative of each child’s progress over the whole of the year.
Identify trends
We are able to identify the trends in our cohort’s year on year which gives us a school wide ‘heads-up’ and allows us to plan accordingly.
Make comparisons with similar schools
The interactive reporting provides contextual information for our school leadership team so we can benchmark pupils’ attainment and progress measures in relation to schools with similar characteristics to ours.
Compare children’s progress with the national picture
The Pupil Report and Class Report allow us to see what children can do at the start of the year, at the end of the year, and how much progress they have made, compared to the national average.
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What’s unique about CEM assessments?
All our assessments are adaptive. The sequence of questions is tailored to each child, moving them on when they get questions wrong, and showing more challenging questions when they answer correctly. This means the assessment each child sees is neither too difficult or too easy, making it enjoyable, engaging, and efficient.
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