'The Assessment Has Been Designed to Be Inclusive'

"The assessment has been designed to be inclusive and accessible for as many children as possible. This includes those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)."

So now we are assessing children with special educational needs within weeks of starting Reception. Children who may have just received a diagnosis. Children whose parents are still in the overwhelming early stages of understanding what that diagnosis means, what support their child needs, and what their child's future looks like. And the government's response to those parents is: don't worry, we have made it accessible.

Accessible means a teacher can pause the assessment if the child needs a break. It means adaptations can be made. It means someone has thought about visual and hearing impairments. What it does not mean is that sitting a child with autism, sensory processing difficulties, speech and language delays, or severe anxiety in front of an unfamiliar adult with a touchscreen device for a formal assessment is a good idea. Accessible does not mean appropriate. Accessible does not mean beneficial. Accessible means we have technically included everyone in a process that should not exist in the first place.

And then, the final line that captures everything:

"If you have any concerns about your child accessing the assessment, you should discuss this with your child's school."

If you have any concerns. There it is. The government's acknowledgement that parents will have concerns, followed immediately by the redirection of those concerns away from the government and onto the school. Not: we hear your concerns. Not: here is how we are addressing the evidence that this causes harm. Speak to the school. Manage it locally. Don't escalate. This is happening regardless.

Screen Time for the Government, But Not for Your Child

One more thing the government's own website reveals, almost as an aside:

"Your child will complete the assessment using a touchscreen device".

This is the same government that is currently discussing excessive screen time in children. The same government that has debated phone bans in schools. The same government that has funded research about the impact of screens on developing brains. And the RBA, the mandatory, national, no-opt-out assessment for four-year-olds, is delivered on a touchscreen. Not because it is better for children. Because it is more efficient for data collection.

What Other Countries Know That We Don't

While the UK is formally assessing four-year-olds, Finland is letting them play.

In Finland, formal schooling does not begin until age seven. Before that, children spend years in play-based environments, developing curiosity, problem-solving, social skills, and a love of learning that no assessment can manufacture. There are no standardised tests. There are no baseline scores. There is, instead, a foundational national belief that childhood is not a data problem to be solved, but a stage of life to be protected.

Finland consistently ranks among the highest-performing education systems in the world. Children who experience play-based early education demonstrate better academic outcomes in later years, stronger concentration, improved social behaviour, and significantly greater intrinsic motivation to learn.

Poland, too, reformed its education system by moving the school starting age back to seven and saw its international rankings rise substantially as a result. The evidence is not ambiguous. Earlier formal assessment does not produce better outcomes. It produces earlier anxiety.

Research on early brain development consistently shows that the years from zero to five are the most critical for forming the neural pathways that underpin all future learning. The expert consensus on how best to use those years is clear: play, relationships, safety, exploration, and joy. The UK government's approach is: a touchscreen assessment with a stranger before the child has learned where the toilets are.

The Myth That Children Need Structured Learning Before Age Four

There is a quiet but significant piece of context that rarely makes it into conversations about the RBA, and it is worth naming directly.

The idea that children need structured educational input from the earliest possible age. Nursery at two, phonics at three, assessment at four, is not an ancient truth. It is a relatively recent and largely commercial narrative. Generations of children were raised by parents and extended families, spending their early years in unstructured play, in community, in the rhythms of everyday life. They developed. They thrived. They went on to be curious, capable, contributing members of society without a single baseline score.

The commercialisation of early childhood has been enormously profitable. It has also been enormously anxiety-inducing for parents, who are now made to feel that every unstructured hour is a developmental opportunity missed. The RBA fits neatly into this narrative. It tells parents, implicitly, that their child's readiness for school is something that can and should be measured, which means it is something that can be got wrong. Which means there is something to worry about. Which means there is something to fix 

There is not. A four-year-old playing in the garden, making up stories, negotiating with a sibling, getting muddy, building something that falls down and building it again. That child is developing exactly as they should. The RBA has nothing to say about any of it.

This Is Not a Test. It Is a Statement.

The Reception Baseline Assessment tells every four-year-old in England something before they have even settled into their classroom. It tells them that who they are right now, at this moment, in front of this stranger, with this device, needs to be recorded, measured, and stored. It tells them that education is something that is done to them, not something they are invited to explore. 

It tells parents that their anxiety is appropriate. That there is, in fact, something to prepare for. That their child's entry into school is an assessment event, not a beginning. 

And it tells teachers, already overstretched, underpaid, and under-supported, that their professional knowledge of the children in their class is less important than a digitally recorded score generated in the child's first six weeks.

The government says this is about supporting children. The evidence says it produces fear, anxiety, and humiliation. The government says it benefits parents. The evidence says individual children gain nothing from it. The government says it is not about judgment. The evidence says it measures background and circumstance, not ability or potential.

One in five children in the UK now has a mental health difficulty. The Children's Commissioner has called it a crisis. And the government's response was to introduce mandatory formal assessments at age four. Ask yourself: DOES THIS ADD UP?

You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to look at a government webpage that uses the word 'WILL' in capital letters about your four-year-old and feel deeply uncomfortable. You are allowed to look at the research, the teacher surveys, the peer-reviewed journals, and the international comparisons, and conclude that this policy is not about your child at all.

Because it isn't.

Childhood is not a baseline. It is not a data point. It is not an administrative inconvenience on the way to Year 6 progress measures. It is the most important and irretrievable time in a human being's life. And right now, in England, we are spending those years measuring it rather than protecting it.

That should make every single one of us furious.

For more information about the reception based assessment yon can visit the government website.

You can read a journal Why are we tracking reception aged children? published by Wolverhampton university