If you're a parent preparing your child for their 4+, this is WHY it is CRUCIAL that you understand 'School Readiness'.
/‘School Readiness’ is a term that is bounced around a lot when schools describe their 4+ Assessment process.
These top schools are looking for ‘School Readiness’ when they are assessing the children at their 4+ Assessments.
If you don’t truly know what this means, you will be unable to fully prepare your child to actually go into any 4+ Assessment and demonstrate ‘School Readiness’.
Public Heal England define ‘School readiness’ as ‘a measure of how prepared a child is to succeed in school cognitively, socially and emotionally.’
The good level of development (GLD) is used to assess school readiness (I discussed this in more detail in my previous Blog).
Children are defined as having reached a GLD at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage if they achieved at least the expected level in the early learning goals in the prime areas of learning (personal, social and emotional development, physical development and communication and language) and in the specific areas of mathematics and literacy. This is why the report from your child’s nursery is so important (I’ll talk about this in more detail in another blog)
So basically if your child has a good GLD they will have demonstrated school readiness in their 4+ Assessments.
So what does school readiness look like exactly?
Having worked in over 100 schools during my time as a full time teacher (3 schools were long term contracts and then I did a lot of Supply work- both state and private) I was able to see exactly what a ‘school ready’ child looks like
Here is how PHE defines a ‘School Ready’ child:
Able to recognise numbers and quantities (to 20)
Participate in singing
Ability to collaborate with others (adults and children)
Ability to communicate their needs
Have a good vocabulary
Ability to socialise and make friends
Have strong gross motor control and engage in a range of physical activities
If your child can do all of the above, you are golden. If they cannot, then they will be unable to demonstrate ‘School Readiness’ and therefore it is highly unlikely that they will pass a 4+ Assessment.
That’s why working with us is so beneficial to all of our clients. Because we know EXACTLY what each school is specifically looking for in their 4+ Assessments, we are able to provide a very bespoke and highly tailored learning journey for our students. This supports them to have the highest chances for success. For this reason we have amazing results year after year after year.
This year will be no different.
