Every child enters school with their own set of experiences, skills and abilities. These skills form a foundation for future learning. Students need to develop these skills to be able to communicate complex ideas, think critically and engage with the world.
The Best Start Kindergarten Assessment (BSKA) provides teachers with:
- the opportunity to sit with a child one-on-one, focusing on what that child can do.
- another rich source of information on how to best support that child’s next steps.
The BSKA is available as an opt-in assessment for non-government schools.
Calls for registration for participation in BSKA open in October the year before students start Kindergarten.
BSKA features
BSKA allows schools to enter student information during the first five weeks of school into an online NSW Department of Education tool, referred to as PLAN2.
- The BSKA items are available for analysis and auto-mapped in PLAN2 to the:
- Literacy and Numeracy Progressions
- NSW K-2 English syllabus documents
- NSW KL-2 Mathematics syllabus documents
- Data generated by the assessment may help inform families about their child’s early literacy and numeracy development.
Professional learning to support teachers
Teachers can access online professional learning to assist with the administration of the assessment and the analysis of the students results.
Contact
For more information regarding accessing BSKA and/or PLAN2 please contact karen.ferrante@csnsw.catholic.edu.au.