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Reception baseline assessment

Information and guidance for schools administering the reception baseline assessment (RBA).

Updates to this page

From:
Standards and Testing Agency
Published:
27 February 2019
Last updated:
18 May 2026
Show all updates

  1. Removed information relating to changes and videos for the academic year 2025 to 2026. Moved information that remains relevant into the updated 'Overview of the reception baseline assessment' section and new 'RBA assessment services' section.

  2. Updated with details of changes and links for the RBA in the academic year 2025 to 2026.

  3. Removed guidance for participating in the 'try it out' activity for the 2025 RBA, which ended on Friday 13 December 2024.

  4. Added guidance on how to try out the 2025 assessment services for the reception baseline assessment.

  5. Updated to include the '2024 reception baseline assessment: assessment and reporting arrangements'.

  6. STA previously announced changes to the RBA from September 2024, but this has been delayed by a year, until September 2025 - the latest updates to this guidance reflect this.

  7. Updated for the academic year 2023 to 2024

  8. Updated to reflect that the RBA is now established and providing collections for multiple academic years

  9. Changes have been made to move current information from across two separate pages (guidance and collection page) to one page (this collection page).

  10. Added 'Reception baseline assessment: quality monitoring visit guidance' to the Reception baseline information collection.

  11. Added 'Reception baseline assessment: information for parents' and 'Reception baseline assessment validity report'.

  12. Added 'Reception baseline assessment: equality impact assessment' and 'Reception baseline assessment: assessment and reporting arrangements (ARA)'.

  13. Updated to note any reference to the reception baseline assessment becoming statutory from 2020 in these documents is now inaccurate. Statutory introduction of the reception baseline assessment has been postponed to autumn 2021.

  14. First published.

Overview of the reception baseline assessment 

The RBA has been a statutory assessment since 2021. All pupils must take it within the first 6 weeks of starting reception if they attend a:

  • state-funded maintained school
  • academy, including free school
  • special school
  • Defence Children Services (DCS) school and setting

The RBA is an age-appropriate assessment, made up of 2 components assessing:

  • early mathematics
  • early literacy, communication and language

Schools will use 2 devices to administer the RBA:

  • one for the practitioner to administer the assessment
  • a separate touchscreen device for the pupils to respond to some of the questions

The assessment is interactive and pupils will respond to questions:

  • by interacting with the touchscreen device
  • verbally (interacting with the practitioner)
  • using toy bears for some mathematics questions

The Department for Education (DfE) will use RBA data to create school-level progress measures for primary schools, which will show the progress schools make with their pupils from reception until the end of key stage 2 (KS2). DfE will publish these measures for all-through primary schools in the summer of 2028 for the first time. This will be when those pupils who entered reception in the academic year 2021 to 2022 reach the end of KS2.

RBA assessment services

Schools need to access the 2 assessment services, using DfE Sign-in, to administer the RBA:

  • Assessment service: manage your school’s assessments
  • Assessment service: start an assessment

Contact us

If you have a question about the RBA and you can’t find the answer in the guidance below, you can:

If you are still unable to find an answer to your question, you can contact the national curriculum assessments helpline on 0300 303 3013, selecting the option for RBA.

Official guidance

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