The Reception Baseline Assessment: What Happens and Why

In their first six weeks of Reception, children in England's state schools spend a short time one to one with their teacher doing a few practical activities: counting objects, naming pictures, listening to a short story. This is the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA). It usually takes less than 20 minutes, children cannot pass or fail it, and there is nothing to prepare.

What surprises many parents is who the results are for. The RBA is not designed to tell you or the teacher how your child is doing. It records a starting point so that, seven years later, the government can measure how much progress the school helped the whole year group make by the end of Year 6.

What it looks like for your child

For a four year old, the RBA feels like an ordinary activity with an adult, and most children do not realise they are being assessed. The teacher or teaching assistant sits with one child at a time, using small objects, pictures and a touchscreen device. There is no time limit, and the assessment can be paused and finished another day if a child is tired or unsettled. Teachers can adapt it for children with special educational needs or disabilities, and there is specific guidance for children with visual or hearing impairments.

The activities fall into two strands.

Children start Reception with very different experiences, and many are still four. The assessment is designed with that in mind, which is why it sets no expectation of what a child should be able to do.

What happens to the results

No numerical score is shared with parents, teachers or schools, and scores are never published. The data is held nationally until the class reaches the end of Year 6, when it becomes the baseline for the school's progress measure.

Teachers do receive short written statements describing how each child got on. Schools can decide whether to share these routinely, but they must give them to you if you ask. The RBA is not used to group or label children.

The Standards and Testing Agency's information for parents about the RBA explains all of this in more detail.

Should you prepare your child?

No, and the guidance is explicit about that. A baseline only works if it captures where children genuinely start, so practising would defeat the point.

The things that help a child settle into Reception happen to touch the same skills anyway. Think of sharing picture books and talking about what happens next, counting real things like stairs or pieces of fruit, playing rhyming games and "I spy", and simply chatting and taking turns in conversation.

Where the RBA fits in Reception

If you want to know how your child is getting on, the RBA is not the place to look. Throughout Reception, teachers observe and record how children learn through play. At the end of the year comes the EYFS profile, where the teacher judges your child against 17 early learning goals and shares the results with you. The phonics screening check follows in June of Year 1. Between them, these give a far fuller picture than a 20-minute snapshot in September.

Because the RBA does not feed back individual concerns, raise any worries about speech, understanding, attention or development directly with the class teacher or the school's special educational needs coordinator. The earlier a school knows, the sooner it can plan support.

Support in the early years

Merit Tutors is an Ofsted-registered childcare provider. Once children are settled in school, our KS1 maths tuition and KS1 English tuition offer extra help with early number, reading and writing for children who need it.

Questions parents ask

Is the Reception Baseline Assessment compulsory?

Yes, for children starting Reception in state-funded schools in England. A small number of children are exempt in specific circumstances, so speak to the school if you have concerns.

Can I see my child's RBA score?

No. Scores are not shared with anyone at school level. You can ask the school for the short written statements describing how your child did.