Reception baseline assessment: collection page
Information and guidance for schools administering the reception baseline assessment (RBA).
About the RBA
The RBA has been a statutory assessment since 2021. All reception pupils must take it if they attend a:
- state-funded maintained school
- special school
- academy, including free school
- Ministry of Defence (MoD) school
The RBA is an age-appropriate assessment, made up of 2 components assessing:
- early mathematics
- early literacy, communication and language
Schools must administer the RBA within the first 6 weeks of a pupil starting reception.
The assessment is interactive and pupils will respond to questions:
- by interacting with a touchscreen device
- verbally (interacting with the teacher)
- using toy bears for some mathematics questions
How RBA data is used
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.
Changes for the academic year 2025 to 2026
From the start of the academic year 2025 to 2026, schools will need to use our new assessment services via DfE Sign-in to administer the RBA.
The 2 new assessment services will be available for schools to access from Monday 2 June 2025. We will provide more information on how to access them in the 2025 RBA administration guidance.
Schools will also need a minimum of 2 devices to administer the RBA:
- one for the practitioner to administer the assessment
- a separate touchscreen device for pupils to respond to some of the questions
These changes support accessibility and align with developments in classroom practice. You can find more information about the changes and important dates for the academic year in the 2025 RBA assessment and reporting arrangements (ARA).
Further support
For further support and help to answer any questions you might have, you can:
- visit our RBA help centre
- use our virtual assistant
- contact us directly
- watch our RBA information video:
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.
Links to our full RBA guidance
Updates to this page
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Updated with details of changes and links for the RBA in the academic year 2025 to 2026.
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Removed guidance for participating in the 'try it out' activity for the 2025 RBA, which ended on Friday 13 December 2024.
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Added guidance on how to try out the 2025 assessment services for the reception baseline assessment.
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Updated to include the '2024 reception baseline assessment: assessment and reporting arrangements'.
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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.
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Updated for the academic year 2023 to 2024
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Updated to reflect that the RBA is now established and providing collections for multiple academic years
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Changes have been made to move current information from across two separate pages (guidance and collection page) to one page (this collection page).
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Added 'Reception baseline assessment: quality monitoring visit guidance' to the Reception baseline information collection.
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Added 'Reception baseline assessment: information for parents' and 'Reception baseline assessment validity report'.
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Added 'Reception baseline assessment: equality impact assessment' and 'Reception baseline assessment: assessment and reporting arrangements (ARA)'.
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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.
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First published.