Half of local authorities say changes to early years development assessments introduced two years ago have damaged the quality of early years education, according to latest research.
Reforms introduced in 2021 included the removal of local authority moderation of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) profile. Previously, authorities had a statutory duty to externally moderate 25 per cent of EYFS profile judgments made by schools in their local area.
An evaluation of the impact of the reforms published by the Department for Education found that 50 per cent of the 101 local authorities surveyed thought there had been a negative impact on standards because of the removal of the statutory requirement. Another third of respondents said it was too early to say because, at the time of the research, the EYFS profile assessment had only taken place nationally once under the reformed approach.
Those who reported the impact had been negative were most likely to say it had reduced opportunities for shared practice (43 per cent), lowered standards (39 per cent) and created a lack of consistency (35 per cent).
