Milestone Assessment Toolkit (MAT)
The Early Years & Childcare Service is delighted to bring you an exciting new resource, the Milestone Assessment Toolkit (MAT) which will:
- enable practitioners to meet the requirement within the Early Years Foundation Stage 2021 (EYFS) and SEND Code of Practice 2015
- aim to ensure a standardised approach to assessment
- assist with the monitoring of children’s progress
- identify when a child is not on track towards the Early Learning Goals
- support with implementing the Kent Graduated Approach
- link with Kent documentation such as transition, the Progress Check at Age Two, and Early Years Local Inclusion Forum Team (LIFT) paperwork.
The aim of the toolkit is to establish children’s starting points and to strengthen the early identification process to ensure that all children can flourish.
The MAT consists of two key elements:
- Milestone Assessment Documentation
- Milestone Assessment Tool – electronic programme
Milestone Assessment Documents provide a clear and simple criterion to enable the key person to make an accurate assessment about the level of learning and development at each milestone. These are divided into each area of learning and development and broken down further into the Early Learning Goal headings.
The milestones at each 12-month checkpoint enable the key person to map the child’s learning and development journey to ensure that they are ‘on track’ at each point and implement the Kent Graduated Approach where they are not. These milestone assessment checkpoints have been collated from a range of non-statutory child development guidance and documentation and link back to the EYFS 2021.
If you would like to learn more about the Milestone Assessment Toolkit, please click here to access our webinar ‘Understanding the Milestone Assessment Toolkit (MAT)’. This is KCC funded for settings within Kent.