School Readiness

School readiness assessments gauteng. Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

School readiness assessment

School readiness means each child enters school ready to engage in, and benefit from early learning experiences that best promote the child’s success in elementary school.

School readiness encompasses intellectual, social and emotional maturity and is a stage in a child’s development when he learns easily, effectively and without emotional disturbance.

It is generally accepted that there are five domains of children’s learning and development:

  1. Language and literacy development
  2. Cognition and general knowledge (including early mathematics and early scientific development)
  3. Approaches toward learning
  4. Physical well-being and motor development
  5. Social and emotional development

These five domains are skills that children develop simultaneously.

School readiness is a complicated “product of the interaction between the child and the range of environmental and cultural experiences that maximize the development outcomes for children.” The five domains help parents and educators understand what it means to be “ready for school”.

For children to become effective learners, they need to develop their curiosity, creativity, independence, ability to cooperate, and persistence. For this reason, children who enter school too early, or too late, places stress on the family as well as the educator.

This makes the question of school readiness of utmost importance, not only for the child, but for his/her support network.

The assessments iGoli Net do for school readiness.

Aptitude Test for School Beginners (ASB)

The aptitude tests aim to generate a comprehensive picture of specific tendencies and evaluates the cognitive aspects of school readiness.

Because the ASB provides a good indication of the abilities the child acquired during the pre-school years, it is an effective tool in the investigation of school readiness and therefore the level of the child’s cognitive and perceptual development.

The purpose of the aptitude test is to:

  • determine the strengths and weaknesses of the child’s perceptual, cognitive and language development,
  • compare the child’s assessment results with the reference group to give the score meaning,
  • plan teaching as dictated by the needs of the child.
Subtest of the ASB

A number of sub tests help complete the picture. They include:

  • perception – determine visual perception
  • spatial – the ability to visualize
  • reasoning – assess logical thinking
  • numerical – assess the ability to count, comprehend quantities, proportions and numbers
  • gestalt – physical structures as a whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts
  • co-ordination – evaluating the child’s motor skills
  • memory – visual memory
  • verbal comprehension – comprehending the spoken word
Assessing the skills the child needs to enable him to cope in a public school class situation.

Language Development

Child should be able to:

  • recite nursery rhymes
  • use expressive and receptive language
  • follow instructions
  • be able to produce the different sounds of his first language – command of the language
  • construct sentences to make him/her understood
  • conduct an alternating conversation

Pre-reading skills

Cognitive skills

Numeracy

Social skills

Physical skills

Emotional skills

How does ASB benefit child and the parents?

School readiness is defined by two characteristic features on three dimensions.

The characteristic features are ‘transition’ and ‘gaining competencies’, and the dimensions are

  • children’s readiness for school, schools’ readiness for children, and families’ and communities’
  • readiness for school

Read more about the Unicef School Readiness Conceptual Framework (pdf download)