PP1 and PP2 Assessment: What Portfolios and Observation Checklists Actually Mean

PP1 and PP2 (Pre-Primary) are the only two years in the entire CBC structure with no formal exams, no BE/AE/ME/EE bands, and no scored assessment at all. For parents used to hearing about KJSEA, KPSEA and report card bands from older siblings, this often reads as "no assessment happens," which isn't accurate. Here's what actually replaces testing at this age, and why it's built this way deliberately.

Why Pre-Primary Doesn't Use Formal Testing

CBC treats Pre-Primary as a fundamentally different stage from the rest of the curriculum, one built around activity-based learning rather than content delivery. A 4 or 5-year-old's development in language, motor skills, social interaction and early number sense doesn't translate meaningfully into a written test the way Grade 4 mathematics does. Assessing this age group through formal exams would measure test-taking readiness far more than actual developmental progress, so the system deliberately avoids it.

What Actually Happens Instead

Two tools carry the real weight of Pre-Primary assessment:

• Observation checklists. Teachers watch and record how a child engages with specific activities, does the child correctly sort objects by colour or size, can they hold a pencil with an appropriate grip, do they follow a two-step instruction, rather than testing these skills in isolation on paper. The checklist format means the same set of developmental markers gets tracked consistently across the term.
• Portfolios. A collection of a child's actual work over time, drawings, early writing attempts, craft projects, photos of activity participation, that shows development directly rather than through a score. A portfolio comparing a child's drawing or early letter formation from Term 1 to Term 3 often communicates progress more clearly to a parent than any number could.

What This Means for the Learning Areas

Pre-Primary covers Language Activities, Mathematical Activities, Environmental Activities, Psychomotor and Creative Activities, and Religious Education, the same broad areas that continue into Lower Primary, but delivered entirely through structured play and activity rather than lessons in the traditional sense. A parent looking for a "Mathematics score" at this stage is looking for something that doesn't exist by design; what exists instead is an observation record of whether a child is engaging appropriately with early number concepts through activities like sorting, counting objects, and simple pattern recognition.

What Parents Can Actually Do With This Information

• Ask to see the portfolio, not just hear a summary. The actual collected work shows more than a verbal update from the teacher can.
• Ask which specific developmental markers are being tracked on the observation checklist for your child's age group, so you know what "on track" actually refers to.
• Don't compare a PP1/PP2 child to older-sibling milestones from a scored system. There is genuinely nothing to compare, this stage isn't a lighter version of Grade 1 assessment, it's a different kind of assessment entirely.
• Support the same skills at home through play, not worksheets. Sorting household objects, simple counting games, and craft activities reinforce exactly what's being observed at school, in the same activity-based format.

Where This Fits

For how assessment changes once a learner moves into the scored, strand-based system from Grade 1 onward, see our guide to reading a CBC term report card. The shift from observation-based Pre-Primary assessment to strand-level BE/AE/ME/EE bands in Grade 1 is a real transition worth understanding ahead of time, not something to be caught off guard by.