Age brackets

[AnonyMouse_75704]

In the tracking section of Tapestry, is it possible to alter what determines "below actual age" "at actual age" and "above actual age".

For example, a child who is 48 months old. Achieving 30-50 Developing in Making Relationships. This is labelled as "Below actual age" and highlighted pink as per the key.

Technically he is still ok to be in that age range (as he's 48m) especially as we do not expect children to be wholly in 40-60 whilst still at pre-school.

Is there anything I can alter here? Am I making sense?! or being pedantic!

When analysing I just would prefer to clearly see those children that are really at risk of delay (pink) and not mixed in with children like in my example, who are not.

Thanks in advance!



 

[Helen]

Whether a child is reaching ARE or not in snapshots can be calculated in two ways and is shown in the form of colour coding. The first way calculates it in the same way as the attainment section in analysis (by splitting each age band into 3 ranges for emerging, developing and secure). So, for your child of 48 months, we would expect him to be secure in 30-50 (emerging is 30-37, developing 37-43, secure 43-50)

The second way is based purely on the age band, so, if a child was 49 months old, but had been assessed as 30-50 emerging, they would still show as on track.

You can set your preferred way from the control panel. Simply go to Settings > Summative assessments then, in the EYFS section, tick the second tick box titled 'Use refinements when assigning the colour coding for whether a child is above, at or below expectations' and press ‘Save’.

[AnonyMouse_64704]

A child of 50 months shows as on track in 30-50 secure but below track in 40-60 emerging.  I understand why in that 40 -60 emerging age expectation would be (40-47mths) and 30-50 months secure is (43-50months) but it skews our analysis when it suggests being in a higher bracket is underachieving.  Is there a way to change the criteria that tapestry have set without removing the refinements for analysis?

[EmilyTapestrySupport]

Hi Nicky_Prance,

I'm afraid it's not possible to change the settings on Tapestry so that a child of say 50 months would be shown as working on track if they were assessed as 40-60 emerging. This is because the age bands themselves are not linear and when calculating whether children are working on track using the refinements each age band has to be split into three.

If you are looking at children's summative assessments what you could consider doing is not having the option my colleague Helen mentioned in her reply above, 'Use refinements when assigning the colour coding for whether a child is above, at or below expectations' enabled on your account. This means when looking at the summative assessments the colour coding will only be based on whether a child's actual age falls within their age band. So, if you had a child of 50 months and they were assessed as 40-60 emerging, they would then show as working at their actual age. 

You can find this setting by going to the Control Panel -> Settings -> Summative Assessments, then in the 'Early Years Foundation Stage' section, you can untick this option if you have it enabled.

If you are looking at the attainment scores for a child then I'm afraid it's not possible to change how these are calculated, but you could take a look at some of the other screens to show you attainment. For example the GLD screen will allow you to set the target or the child comparison screen (but only choose one term to see attainment) will just show you where a child is, and won't make a judgement as to whether they are working on track or not. 

I hope this helps, do let us know if you have any more questions.