The reception baseline assessment (RBA) is a new national assessment that will be administered in all primary, infant and first schools in England to children in reception classes. The reception baseline assessment will provide the basis for a new way of measuring the progress primary schools make with their pupils.

Due to the challenging circumstances faced by schools in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, statutory introduction of the RBA has been postponed to Autumn 2021. Instead, schools have the opportunity to sign up to the RBA Early Adopter year.


Reception Baseline Assessment framework

The assessment framework provides details about the assessment for the pilot year, including information about the content of the assessment and its design.

Reception Baseline Assessment supporting document

The supporting document provides further information on the development process, content and format of the assessment.

What schools need to know

Information video

This video explains what the assessment is and how it will work.


Parent-facing resources

Information page

Information video


Foundation Years webinar

We were delighted to have Harriet Rogerson and Kathryn Dwyer from the Department for Education and Angela Hopkins from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) join us live to talk to the early years sector about the reception baseline assessment and the pilot findings.

The session covered:

  • Background to the reception baseline assessment
  • Assessment development process
  • Pilot feedback
  • What happens next?

You can view the webinar below and download the webinar slides here.


Relationship between reception baseline assessment and KS1 attainment

DfE published information on how pupils who participated in the 2015 optional reception baseline offered by the National Foundation for Educational Research performed in their key stage 1 teacher assessments in the summer of 2018.

The main findings are:

  • The relationship between a high RBA mark and KS1 outcomes was statistically significant for all three KS1 teacher assessments in DfE’s analysis, in an analysis of variance (ANOVA) test.
  • A statistically significant relationship between a high RBA mark and the probability of reaching the expected standard in all three KS1 teacher assessments in the analysis was observed in a binary logistic regression analysis.