We Stopped Assessing Everything. Here's What Happened.

I'm going to say something that might sound reckless.

At Fetcham, we've stopped trying to assess every objective for every subject.

Before you close the tab, hear me out.

We're an infant school. Our children are four, five, six, seven years old. And for years, like most schools, we tried to track everything. Every curriculum objective. Every subject. Tick, tick, tick.

The result? Teachers drowning in data. Assessments that were technically complete but practically meaningless. And absolutely no improvement in the things that actually matter: whether children can read fluently, whether they have secure number sense, whether they're curious and confident learners.

So we made a change.

Back to Strong Foundations

We went back to Ofsted's Strong Foundations in the First Years of School report. Not as a compliance document, but as a permission slip. The message is clear: focus on the fundamentals. Foundational literacy. Foundational numeracy. The knowledge and skills that unlock everything else. If you nail the foundations, the broader curriculum follows. If you don't, no amount of topic coverage will save you.

This Isn't About Narrowing the Curriculum

Now, I want to be clear: this isn't about narrowing the curriculum. We still have Wild Wednesdays. We still value play. We're not becoming a phonics factory.

But we've stopped pretending we can do everything well. Because we can't. And the cost of that pretence was our teachers' wellbeing, and ultimately, our children's learning.

The Bravest Thing We Did

The bravest thing we did? We said: "This is what matters most. Everything else can wait."

What would you stop doing if you had permission?