Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of nursery school attendance rates since September 2020 on plans to introduce Reception Baseline Assessment in September 2021; and if he will make it his policy to delay formal testing of four year olds in English and maths.

The purpose of the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is to act as the starting point to enable the Department to measure the progress schools make with their pupils. Whilst nurseries remained largely open during the COVID-19 outbreak, the attendance rates of nursery pupils do not impact on the RBA as an assessment. The assessment will assess all children on-entry, accounting for any impact on their learning up to this point. It is important for us to understand where children are starting from so that we can acknowledge and give credit to those schools that have successfully helped their pupils to catch up.

The Department is planning for a full programme of primary assessments to take place in the 2021/22 academic year. This will include the introduction of the statutory RBA as previously announced. We will confirm full details for 2021/22 primary assessments in due course.