Making best-fit judgements
‘Best-fit’ judgements
Best-fit judgements are about consistency, not perfection, and professional judgement is key. You should base your judgements on how well the ELG descriptors fit the child and look for secure, repeated behaviours across a developmentally appropriate range, not flawless execution or equal mastery.
Your judgements should reflect the child’s overall development in relation to the ELG instead of isolated pieces of evidence. When using the best-fit model, use your professional judgement and consider if a child can meet most of the descriptors, most of the time.
Practical tips
When making your judgements, you should:
- use professional judgement informed by observations in varied contexts, such as play, routines and guided tasks
- consider what the child can do in different contexts or environments, such as at home and in the setting, indoor and outdoor, and group scenarios and one-to-one
- consider what the child can do when using adaptations and their established mode of communication, such as using sign language
- hold discussions with colleagues to inform your assessment judgements
- apply the best-fit model consistently
This video illustrates examples of assessment practice. While it features real children in real school settings, their actual developmental levels may differ from what is shown, and some scenes include acting for demonstration purposes.
Transcript
Transcript
In the EYS profile, we use the best fit model to make judgments about a child’s development. It’s not about ticking every box. It’s about recognising secure, consistent behaviours that reflect real learning.
Professional judgement allows us to see the whole child, not just isolated moments. Practitioners can apply the best fit model, meaning a child does not need to master all aspects of the ELG equally.
Let’s talk about Ahmed’s reading.
So after speaking to a variety of practitioners that work with him on a daily basis, we feel he is really confident now with decoding unfamiliar words and using that segmenting and blending to read them, including words with digraphs as well such as sh and ch.
W - i - sh.
So that’s really good.
He’s also able to sight read lots of familiar words to him. He is really speedy with those now.
‘It’s red,’ said Sam.
Fantastic.
And he can read non-decodable tricky words as well, so things like ‘said’, ‘too’, and ‘the’. Sometimes he needs a little bit of a prompt to blend longer words, so just a little reminder of how to segment and blend those. So words such as singing and wishing, as well.
‘Washing.’
‘Wishing.’
‘Wishing.’
Great.
So does he need support regularly?
Only occasionally, really. So especially with longer words, he might pause and need a bit of a reminder to go back and segment them and blend them. So let’s have a look.
St - and - ing.
Standing.
But he generally is really confident and he is got a really good understanding of what he reads as well.
So you’ve judged him as meeting the word reading early learning goal?
Yeah, definitely. He only needs a little bit of support sometimes, but generally he’s really confident and his knowledge is really consistent with his phonics knowledge as well. He’s really secure in his approach and most importantly, he loves reading.
Oh, great. Really looking forward to having him next year.
The EYS profile handbook reminds us that it is important to consider the child’s behaviours and attainment with any inclusive adaptations or reasonable adjustments in place to help them engage, regulate, and learn.
As we said at the start, best fit includes a range of typical development by the end of reception. It’s not about flawless performance.
Best fit judgements will also draw on what you know about the child’s home learning and information from parents.