The Nursery Assessment Toolkit 2026: Making Assessment Work for You

Assessment should help you understand a child, not prove that you have been busy. In this fourth session of illumine's nursery toolkit series, following the Induction, Settling-In and Observation Toolkits, Early Years Leader and Education Strategist Lara Hudson was joined by Elizabeth Fields, Vice President (VP) of Curriculum and Professional Learning at Learning Beyond Paper. Together they looked at what counts as evidence, how to turn evidence into insight, how to avoid assumptions and how to make assessment accurate, meaningful and manageable. Purva Goyal of illumine hosted and showed how learning and assessment work in illumine. This is the written recap. The full recording is at the top of this page.

Key takeaways

Why assessment needs a fresh look

Elizabeth opened with how Learning Beyond Paper thinks about learning: children learn through relationships and interactions. Tummy time, naming what a toddler is looking at and helping a four-year-old through a problem are all learning experiences. Knowing children well means noticing the strategy a child tried, the words they used or the moment they managed with a little less help. Families add a perspective too, because home may show something school has not seen. Assessment becomes meaningful, she said, when it is used to decide what comes next.

An opening poll asked how often settings review their curriculum and lesson plans. Lara said that in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) it is usually once a year, often as a summer project, but this year's new quality framework is prompting more settings to adjust as they go. Children change from year to year, and events earlier in the year affected children too. Most attendees chose every term or once a year.

Two more polls set the tone. When asked what first comes to mind with the word "assessment", nobody chose "data and tracking cohorts" or "something we have to do". When asked what assessment should be about, attendees leaned toward understanding the child, informing teaching and supporting next steps. Lara said the gap she sees most often is beautifully written observations with the next steps missing.

Evidence or assumption?

Lara returned to an example from the Observation Toolkit session. A practitioner wrote that Leo "obviously knew" the names of the farm animals. The evidence was narrower: Leo picked up the cow and said it was the mother cow. The assumption was that he knew every animal's name.

Her tip was to ask a second practitioner to read observations and highlight any assumptions, because they are hard to spot in your own writing. Attendees were split on whether assumptions show up in their settings. Lara encouraged directors to dip into observations often, compare practitioners and share the best practice they find.

Seven sources of evidence

Evidence is much more than photos and videos, Lara said. Together, these sources build a full picture of a child:

Elizabeth added that growth in vocabulary over time is often not captured. Lara suggested language-agnostic tools, voice recordings and notes of exactly what a child said, especially for children learning English as a second language, and paying attention to how well they speak their home language.

Four talk strategies for richer evidence

High-quality interactions produce high-quality evidence. Elizabeth described them as being present, connecting and extending: getting down to the child's level, responding to gestures, taking a genuine interest in their stories and beginning with the child. She shared four strategies:

What makes evidence strong

From evidence to insight: five questions

Lara suggested printing these on lanyard cards or posters, so practitioners can use them when they turn evidence into an assessment judgment:

Two examples from the session

Leo with the farm animals. A short observation showed a lot: early classification skills, such as sorting babies from adults and by size, a growing knowledge of habitats, since he knew cows eat grass and live in a field, and clear reasoning.

Maya in the construction area. "Cognitive skills" is too vague, Lara said. Maya's observation showed early problem solving ("these are too big"), comparative language, growing independence in counting and an interest in construction. Attendees also spotted balancing and hand-eye coordination. Her next steps could include other types of construction and irregular blocks that challenge her problem solving.

Lara suggested a staff meeting activity: take a few observations, ask everyone to pull out the assessment judgments and compare what each person found.

The golden thread

How learning happens: scaffolding and the zone of proximal development

Lara explained Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD): the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can do with help from a more knowledgeable other. Give children time to try things on their own and notice what they manage. Then scaffold by modeling, offering hints and prompts, breaking the task down and encouraging resilience.

Her example was cutting. Start with a straight line, then zigzags and wiggly lines. Show the child how to hold the scissors, and at first the adult can move the paper while the child cuts.

Elizabeth said that if a curriculum is only adjusted once a year, it can miss each child's ZPD. Learning Beyond Paper writes its curriculum in a specific scope and sequence, with scaffolding built in. Lara added a UAE-specific reason to keep adjusting: the age cutoff has moved from 31 August to 31 December, so children in the same group can be almost a year apart in age. Teach to the child, she said, not the age.

Responsive teaching as one continuous cycle

Elizabeth described responsive teaching as a cycle of observing, planning, teaching and reflecting that runs through the day, rather than four separate jobs at different times of year. For Maya, that could mean offering another building opportunity later the same day with blocks of different sizes, introducing words like "base" and "balance", and noticing whether she tries a new strategy with more or less support.

Calibrating quality across a team

Lara said reflection reveals the bigger picture, and suggested a staff activity: "Show me the evidence for this judgment." Just as the previous session calibrated observations, teams need shared language and expectations for assessment. If two rooms for two- to three-year-olds expect different things, quality is inconsistent. Staff also need to understand progression from one age group to the next, so they can build it into planning and interpret assessments consistently across the setting.

Elizabeth added that every child learns differently, through different modalities, groupings and prior knowledge, which is another reason to plan more than once a year and to set individual goals.

The three-question rule

To keep assessment manageable, ask three questions before you document anything:

Assessment is not about proving learning. It's about discovering it.

Lara closed by reminding attendees that they came into the early years to learn alongside children, and not to get bogged down in bureaucracy.

Learning and assessment in illumine

Purva showed how assessment works in illumine on the web and the mobile app, using the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework that many UAE nurseries follow:

This is how observation evidence flows straight into assessment, without teachers hunting through notes at the end of term. Learn more about illumine's assessment software.

Questions from the session

How can leaders make good assessment a habit across the team?

Lara said induction alone is not enough, because staff who join mid-year miss it. Bring an observation and assessment to a staff meeting each term and work through the insight questions together. Use supervision sessions too. A director-level view helps you find your strongest practitioners, so they can mentor others, and target support where it is needed. Leaders, she said, need to know their team.

Should classrooms be organized into learning corners?

Lara said she is not a fan. Learning happens everywhere: art can happen outdoors, and play dough tools can come from other areas. Corners were often a way for practitioners to show curriculum coverage, and a "reading corner" sign is one most children cannot read. Maya's block play alone showed communication, sequencing, color and tessellation. Most nurseries are moving toward free-flow classrooms, and she suggested visiting other settings to see how they set up their environments. Elizabeth added that corners can also limit the responsive teaching cycle.

Which app do UAE nurseries use for observations and assessments?

Lara's advice was to look for a fully integrated app that handles everything in one place, rather than separate tools. She said illumine ticks those boxes, and suggested booking a demo to see it for your own setting.

The AI suggestions in observations work on desktop but not on the mobile app. Why?

An attendee raised this during the session. The illumine team offered to look into it with them directly. If you see the same thing, contact the illumine team or book time through the link shared in the session, and they will walk through your setup with you.

Resources mentioned

• The Nursery Assessment Toolkit, sent to attendees by email with the recording.
• A personalized demo of illumine's learning and assessment module, requested through the in-session poll.
• Earlier sessions in this series, recapped in The Nursery Observation Toolkit 2026, The Nursery Settling-In Toolkit 2026 and The Nursery Induction Toolkit 2026.

What to do next

For more on observation and assessment, read our guide to purposeful observation in the early years, teacher observations for UAE nurseries or writing effective assessment reports. To see how illumine supports nurseries, explore nursery management software or book a live demo.