Management Information Sheet

Key Information Sheet from the Briefing Meetings

Last year's highlights
The headline data for 2009/2010 shows an increase of 2.1% for numbers of children scoring 6+ in all areas of PSED and CLLD, and getting 78+ as a total. (From 47.9% last year to 50% this year)
There has also been a narrowing of the 'inequality' gap by 3.2 percentage points between the median score for Norfolk and the lowest 20% of the cohort.

What is Early Years Foundation Stage Profile moderation?
Moderation in the context of the EYFS profile helps to ensure practitioner judgements of scale points are consistent with national exemplification and are arrived at through a reliable, accurate and secure process. It is a supportive process and is designed to quality assure practitioner judgements and develop practitioners' confidence in relation to assessment and their understanding of the EYFS profile.
(Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Handbook)

Why do we need to moderate EYFSP?
Those involved in assessment must have confidence that judgements are fair and consistent for all children and that judgements made for any one child are comparable with those made for all other children in the cohort. Achieving this level of comparability requires moderation processes that involve practitioners working with each other throughout the year, supported by an annual programme of moderation activity organised by the local authority.

Responsibilities of the Local authority
The LA must:

	ensure all practitioners responsible for completing EYFS profiles take part in moderation activities at least once a year
	ensure all settings are visited regularly, at least once every four years, as part of a cycle of moderation visits by a local authority moderator, and that settings with identified problems or other particular circumstances are visited more frequently
	moderate all 13 assessment scales over a three-year cycle

Responsibilities of head teachers, governing bodies and managers of early years settings
The head teacher and governing body must:

	arrange for practitioners responsible for the completion of EYFS profiles to take part in local authority moderation activities at least once a year.
	take responsibility for the reliability of their EYFS profile outcomes, using quality assurance processes, and ensure that the data accurately reflects the attainment of the current cohort of children.
	Practitioners involved in making the assessments should have adequate opportunities to become familiar with effective practice. This may involve: attendance at training courses visits by moderators to settings moderation meetings within settings (in-house moderation) moderation meetings with practitioners from other settings

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Handbook definitions
Adult-led activity: an activity defined, structured and delivered by an adult to a child or group of children. It focuses on the direct teaching of skills and knowledge with a specific objective in mind.

	Adult-directed activity: an activity defined by an adult that focuses on a specific objective that the child may complete independently or with adult support.
	Child-initiated activity: an activity wholly decided on by the child which is the result of an intrinsic motivation to explore a project, or express an idea. In doing this the child may make use of a variety of resources and demonstrate a complex range of knowledge, skills and understanding.

Section 3 in the Profile handbook expands on this further

Scale point hierachy

	Scale points 1-3 are the pre-Early Learning Goals. Most of the cohort will be working here in September. SEN children might still be working here at the end of the year.
	Scale points 4-8 are the Early learning Goals. Most of the cohort will be working here at the end of the year.
	Scale point 9 is beyond the Early Learning Goals. Very few children would be working in this band at the end of the year. It describes the attainment of children working in the gifted and talented range.

Documentation
The following documents can all be accessed via the Norfolk schools Early Years Foundation stage assessment page - www.schools.norfolk.gov.uk

1.	Early Years Foundation Stage Profile handbook
2.	Assessment and Reporting Arrangements 2011
3.	Guidance on use of data
4.	eProfile version 3.2

Useful Publications
Early Years Foundation Stage Profile: Guidance for Assessing Children with Regard to First Language (available from the Ethnicity, Culture and Achievement Service at a cost of £4.00 each, including postage & packing)

Publications listed below are available from: www.teachernet.gov.uk
Or you can download them at: www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk

Mark making matters Ref: 00767-2008bkt-en

Children thinking mathematically: PSRN essential knowledge for early years' practitioners ref: 00861-2009bkt-en

Numbers and patterns: laying foundations in mathematics Ref: 01011-2009dom-en

Learning, playing and interacting: good practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage 00775-2009bkt-en

Visit www.foundation-stage.info LA registration password is Walpole8

The Early Years Team can offer training in these areas:

	Promoting sustained shared thinking
	Understanding the pedagogy of the Early Years Foundation Stage
	Writing in EYFS
	Reading in EYFS
	Training for TAs
	Creativity
	Developing the learning environment for child-initiated learning
	Working with parents and carers
	Transition
	Planning for single-age or mixed-age classes
	Observation and assessment
	Talking with Ofsted about EYFS
	Understanding EYFS data

We can deliver this through:

	Advice and support through PIPP
	Staff meetings
	INSET days
	Cluster development
	Modelling of adult-led activities in school
	Courses at one of the Professional Development Centres

What's new?
eProfile update
www.education.gov.uk/schools
Users are strongly advised to download the new version of eProfile. Data held in version 3.1 will be compatible with the new version 3.2. Data in version 3.0 will also upgrade. Users should remember that assessments entered in specific half terms will be converted to months. Users should always make a backup of their current and past work to an external device before upgrading.

Developments include:

	Quality assurance feature. This is based on the information in the QCDA fact sheet 'QCA/08/3905 Quality assurance of Early Years Foundation Stage Profile data', which covers a range of interconnections between scales and scale points.
	Scatter graph that allows users to plot pupil scores in one scale against their scores in another.
	Enhancement to the average points scores graph that allows users to run through and superimpose the scale scores of each pupil against the plotted averages for the group.
	New preview engine. Also saves to PDF format (click on Save and select PDF).

Transition documents
New documents produced by the Early Years Teams to help with all transitions Birth to Five.

Towards Excellence

A new Quality Improvement Framework that has been rolled out to all Private, Voluntary and Independent settings. We are trialling in the Reception Classes of about 6 schools.