Early learning and childcare quality indicators: Learning, teaching and assessment

Learning, teaching and assessment is an HM Inspector quality indicator. There are illustrations of practice and challenge questions below. These can help you to evaluate your current practice and identify areas for growth.

Themes for learning, teaching and assessment

The themes for this quality indicator are:

children’s learning and engagement
interactions to support learning
planning and assessment
tracking and monitoring

About this quality indicator

This quality indicator focuses on how children benefit from access to high-quality spaces and well-established routines that help them feel secure and ready to engage. It explores how children are supported to build positive relationships, regulate their emotions, and purposefully participate in a wide range of motivating learning experiences. It demonstrates the importance of staff having a high level of skill supported by strong pedagogical leadership. This includes a clear understanding of pedagogy, the concept of play, how children learn, children’s rights and children’s behaviour.

It places value on high-quality relationships, consistent expectations, and skilled interactions that enable children to sustain engagement, follow routines, and build independence in their learning. This indicator highlights the importance of observing and interacting sensitively with children to plan and assess their learning. It recognises the value of involving children fully in planning their learning indoors, outdoors and within the local community. This quality indicator emphasises the importance of robust tracking and monitoring of children’s progress to ensure staff know all children very well as learners.

Illustrations of children's learning and engagement

'Very good' children's learning and engagement

We understand the importance of building relationships and developing secure attachments with children. As a result, relationships with children, and between children, are very positive and enable them to feel valued, safe and secure. Clear, consistent routines and expectations help children settle, build confidence and develop independence in their learning. Children contribute meaningfully to the setting and influence choices and decisions about their learning. Children’s wellbeing and developmental needs are met very well through carefully considered transitions, experiences, and learning environments.

We make very effective use of indoors, outdoors and the local community to provide high-quality, real-life experiences. Our children are motivated and sustain engagement as they interact purposefully with a rich range of challenging and open-ended opportunities across the curriculum. We are highly effective in using the environment to support children’s learning. Children explore, experiment, and develop curiosity and creativity through a wide range of high-quality resources and spaces. We carefully consider the flow of the day, taking into account opportunities for children to maximise learning, be active and offer time and space to rest.

‘Weak’ children’s learning and engagement

We do not sufficiently understand early learning pedagogy, the concept of play, how children learn and children’s rights. As a result, the learning environment does not support children to be curious, creative or to learn progressively through play.

Experiences and spaces do not consistently promote purposeful engagement or sustained motivation. Our children have limited opportunities to influence their learning. Transitions are not always well planned and this affects how well children's developmental and emotional needs are met. Our children are not consistently supported to understand expectations or manage their behaviour in ways that promote positive engagement and learning.

Illustrations of interactions to support learning

'Very good' interactions to support learning

We have a very good understanding of early learning pedagogy and skilfully put this into practice to support children’s learning. Respectful, responsive relationships and children’s rights are at the heart of all our interactions. We listen carefully to all children’s views and are attuned to their needs, interests and learning styles. We value their opinions and support all children to express their views.

Our interactions promote a calm, purposeful learning environment. We thoughtfully support children to understand expectations and manage their behaviour in ways that enable everyone to learn well together. We interact sensitively with parents/carers and involve them in all aspects of their child’s learning.

Our highly-skilled staff know when to observe play and interact using well-considered questions, commentary and modelling to support and extend children’s learning. We encourage and support children to be independent learners as they develop, apply and consolidate their skills. We make highly effective use of digital technologies to enrich children’s learning and teaching. We have a well-considered approach to our use of digital technologies and take into account children’s developmental stages. Children learn about and use a wide variety of digital technologies in a safe and creative way to support and extend their learning.

‘Weak’ interactions to support learning

Our interactions do not consistently support children’s development or extend their learning. We are not confident in using questioning, modelling or commentary to enrich play. Children’s learning with and through digital technologies is limited.

Our relationships with children and families are not sufficiently responsive or respectful to support meaningful engagement. Children’s rights and views are not strongly evident in day-to-day practice.

Illustrations of planning and assessment

'Very good' planning and assessment

Working with parents/carers, children, partners and colleagues, we gather a relevant range of information about children and their prior learning. We are highly skilled in observing and documenting children’s significant learning and achievements. Together this robust assessment information provides reliable evidence about children. We use this to form a holistic picture of the child and make accurate judgements about children’s progress and future learning.

Our approach to documenting learning empowers children to talk about their achievements and consider what they might learn next. Our planning for children’s learning is both responsive and intentional to ensure an appropriate balance of child-led, adult-initiated and adult-directed experiences. We take account of children’s ideas, interests and needs and use imaginative and appropriate ways to involve them in planning learning. We plan high-quality experiences that are relevant to children and families.

Our staff use assessment information with children and their parents/carers to plan appropriate next steps to help children continue to make progress and deepen their learning. Through talking together with colleagues within and beyond our setting, we have a shared understanding of children’s progress and achievements as they grow and learn.

‘Weak’ planning and assessment

Our planning is not informed by a clear understanding of children’s interests or the skills they are developing. There is an imbalance between intentional and responsive learning, and children are not meaningfully involved in planning their learning.

Our observations of children’s learning do not accurately reflect individual children’s skills. Assessment information is limited and does not support children, staff and parents/carers to reflect on children’s progress or achievements. As a result, children’s next steps in learning are not personalised, well-judged, appropriate or ambitious.

Illustrations of tracking and monitoring

'Very good' tracking and monitoring

Staff use very effective systems to monitor, record, evaluate and report on children’s progress across the curriculum, including children who may experience barriers to their learning. We take into consideration the views of parents/carers, colleagues, and partners in this process. Parents/carers have a clear understanding of what is working well for their child and how they will be supported to make continued progress.

Our robust tracking systems demonstrate children’s progress over time and identify where further support is required for individuals or groups of children. This data informs our planning to ensure we provide breadth, depth and challenge across the curriculum for all children. We monitor progress carefully to support children’s learning to ensure interventions are having a positive impact.

‘Weak’ tracking and monitoring

Our systems to track and monitor children’s learning do not accurately reflect the progress individual children make. We do not take full account of the views of children, parents/carers, colleagues or partners when identifying next steps in learning. The reliability and use of our data limits the impact of our interventions or additional support provided.

A lack of robust tracking, monitoring and moderation of children’s progress results in our knowledge about children as learners being insufficient and inaccurate.

Challenge questions for learning, teaching and assessment

The following challenge questions can support your self-evaluation:

In what ways do we motivate and engage all children in their learning? How do we ensure high-quality learning is sustained?
How well do we plan and manage transitions throughout a child’s day?
How do we ensure that we use a rights-based approach to learning, teaching and assessment? In what ways do children have the opportunity to be independent, responsible, and lead their own learning?
How well do staff use high-quality interactions to support, challenge and extend children’s thinking and learning?
In what ways do we support children to make effective and creative use of digital technology to enhance their learning?
In what ways do we use our assessment information to inform planning for children’s learning? How effective are we at involving parents/carers?
How well does the balance of intentional and responsive planning allow for breadth, depth, challenge and progress across the curriculum? In what ways do children influence planning to take their interests forward?
How robust are our processes for tracking and monitoring to identify children’s strengths, individual needs, or gaps in their experiences or learning?
How well do staff and senior leaders use their robust discussions about children’s learning to make sound judgements about their progress? How reliable is our professional judgement?