Calls for reception year teaching to be reviewed

The Teaching Schools Council’s Effective Primary Teaching Practice report has found inconsistencies in teaching reception compared to year 1.

As a result, the government has been called on to launch an official review of the reception year

The report, led by ex-primary headteacher Dame Reena Keeble, was based on visits to 20 primary schools across England It found that reception teachers use a counting based approach to calculation, but said that pupils are then taught “subtraction by complementary addition” in year 1.

This leads teachers “to have to teach pupils to avoid previously learnt approaches,” the report stated.

The report recommended the Department for Education (DfE) launch a review to “address the confusion and lack of consistency regarding curriculum and practice in the reception year.”

The report also found that homework had a very limited impact on achievement for primary pupils, with some evidence suggesting it actually had a negative impact on progress.

Other findings include a call for teaching assistants to be given access to the same training as teachers and for a profession-led body to conduct reviews of primary teaching, with results published every five years.