An already-delayed new reception baseline assessment needs “further development work” before its roll-out next year, Ofqual has warned.
The Standards and Testing Agency has been developing a new version of the assessment which among other things will introduce some on-screen elements.
The new test, which will replace the current one designed by the National Foundation for Educational Research in 2019, was supposed to be ready by this academic year.
But the government announced in February the new tests had been delayed to the 2025-26 academic year.
In an end-of-year update, Ofqual, which regulates national assessments delivered by the STA and its contractors, said it had “monitored the development of STA’s new version of the RBA”.
“In the summer of 2024, Ofqual specifically required STA to provide evidence of its progress towards safe delivery of the RBA in 2025.”
This included “identifying upcoming milestones STA intended to achieve together with its approach to the management of all the risks associated with the project”.
But “while significant progress has been made, further development work needs to be completed prior to delivery of the new version of RBA in 2025”.
The reception baseline assessment was introduced in 2021 and will form the starting point for primary school progress measures from 2028.
Key stage 1 SATs, which previously provided the baseline, have become non-statutory.
Issues from 2023 SATs ironed out
Elsewhere in its report on its regulation of national assessments in 2024, Ofqual said 350 key stage 2 test scripts were declared lost in 2024, similar to the 353 lost in 2023.
This year, the “significant majority of these scripts were lost in one incident when they were incorrectly dispatched by a school”.
“Despite the efforts of Capita and STA these scripts could not be traced. In addition, a small number of scripts initially thought lost were subsequently located after return of results day.”
The system issue that caused the one-week delay to the start of marking in May 2023 “was not repeated in 2024”, and there were “no reports of difficulties which prevented schools accessing their results”.
Ninety-seven per cent of calls to the national helpline were answered, compared to 65 per cent the year before.
