Key Assessment Points

Early Years:

The  Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA)  became statutory in schools in September 2021. It is an activity based assessment of pupils’ starting points in:

• language, communication and literacy
• mathematics

The  RBA is a short, task-based assessment. It is not used to label or track individual pupils.

Schools are required to carry out the assessment within the first 6 weeks of pupils starting reception. No numerical score is shared and the data will only be used at the end of year 6 to form the school-level progress measure. 

The assessment will enable us to create school-level progress measures for primary schools which show the progress pupils make from reception until the end of key stage 2 (KS2).

At the end of Early Years (end of year R) the school is measured by assessing what percentage of the children achieved a Good Level Of Development (GLD) and this is compared to national percentages as well as Portsmouth percentages.

Year 1 Phonics Screening: Towards the end of year 1, all year 1 children across the country take a test to see how good their phonics knowledge is. The test is out of 40 and to pass they need to achieve 32 and above. These results are compared to national percentages as well as Portsmouth percentages.

Year 2 Phonics Screening:  Children who did not pass the phonics test at the end of year 1 have to take the test again at the end of year 2.

Year 6 SATS: Towards the end of year 6, all year 6 children across the country are also required to take a test in Reading, Maths and Spelling, Punctuation & Grammar (SPAG). These results are compared to national percentages as well as Portsmouth percentages. Writing assessments are completed throughout the year.

Year 4: All year 4 children across the country will take a test in the times tables up to 12 x 12. Please click here for further information about the check.