Episode 7 - Why Digitising the Primary School Baseline Test Has Been Terrible for Children

In this episode of Broken Custodians, Molly and Ben Kingsley from UsForThem speak to Dr Mandy Pierlejewski, senior lecturer and researcher at the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University, about the Reception Baseline Assessment and the digitisation of skills testing for four-year-olds.They explain what the RBA is, why it is carried out in the first weeks of primary school, and why the data is sent to the Department for Education rather than being used by teachers to support children’s learning. In particular the conversation looks at the recent move to a two-device digital test, in which the teacher follows a script and the child answers questions on a touchscreen.Mandy discusses what she and her colleagues observed when they studied children taking the digitised test in the previous school year, including signs of stress, anxiety, disengagement and frustration. More broadly, the episode asks whether the assessment is consistent with early years principles of care, whether it risks measuring digital familiarity rather than basic numeracy and literacy skills, and whether the baseline should be replaced by teacher assessment based on observation over time.Broken Custodians follows paper trails, interrogates official claims and asks what went wrong, who benefited, and what it would take to do better.