Observation, assessment and planning

Practitioners are required to monitor children’s progress and support their development.

“Assessment should not entail prolonged breaks from interaction with children, nor require excessive paperwork. When assessing whether an individual child is at the expected level of development, practitioners should draw on their knowledge of the child and their own expert professional judgement and are not required to prove this through collection of physical evidence.”

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework

Ongoing assessment of children’s learning and development, enables practitioners to support each child’s development and to share information with parents or carers and other practitioners. There are some universal and additional assessment tools below that you may wish to use to monitor progress.

Where a professional working with a child/family identifies potential delay in a child’s learning and development, we recommend they take the following steps:

  • talk to the parents or carers to gain their views
  • access relevant health checks to eliminate other potential causes of delay, for example a hearing test
  • develop a plan to provide additional support to the child and monitor progress:
    • if the child makes progress, then continue with support
    • if progress is limited, talk to parents and consider accessing additional support from other professionals

There is more information about additional support for children on our SEND web pages.

Observation and assessment tools

There are a range of tools that practitioners may use to support their assessment of children within early years and childcare settings including:

When a child is aged between 2 and 3, practitioners must review their progress and provide parents or carers with a short written summary of their child’s development in the prime areas of learning.

Where possible, the progress check and the Healthy Child Programme health and development review at age 2 (when health visitors gather information on a child’s health and development) should inform each other and support integrated working.

  • Birth To Five Matters - national, non-statutory guidance to support practitioners and children through their development within the Early Years Foundation Stage
  • Cohort monitoring (group progress) tracker (Excel 75KB) - optional tool to support leaders and managers in monitoring the progress of groups of children within the setting to inform practice and provision and ensure best outcomes for all children
  • Development Matters 2021 - national, non-statutory, guidance to support practitioners and children through their development within the Early Years Foundation Stage
  • OPAL (Observation of Play and Learning) - an assessment tool developed by the Barnet Early Years Alliance designed to make observation and assessment more meaningful to children and adults

Additional assessment tools

Some children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, may make smaller steps in some areas of learning and practitioners may find other assessment tools supportive in monitoring this.

The following tools may support you in identifying and supporting children with delay in their learning and development:

The West Sussex Learning Journal is available to settings as an optional template to be used to record the progress and attainments of children in their setting.