CAT score question

[yotty]

my DS did his year 5 CAT last September. Does it mean anything significant that he got 20 point difference between his verbal and his non verbal? His higher score was the verbal and he had had no coaching in either test. He is pretty/very bright, but is a complete 'airhead'!

[lelly88]

A gap of 10 or more points is significant. My son has dyslexia and had the reverse of your DS scores, above average on Non verbal and Quantitative and lower average on verbal. Not really sure what the reverse means but here is the info from the NFER site that I found www.gl-assessment.co.uk/education/resources/cat3/faqs.asp?css=1#faq11
Was his Non verbal still in the average range?

[yotty]

Thanks for the link. His non verbal and quantative are still well into the average range. His verbal was well above. From these results you would think he would struggle at maths, yet last year when his year group (47 children) were tested in maths and English he came joint top. To be honest his headmaster was surprised by his low score and offered us a chance to resit the tests, just to see if he had had an off day. We all decided there was no point, as test was not going to be used for anything specific. I know he is not good at visual things and is not good at art and DT. Not sure how I can help him with this? Is it that important?

[camptownraces]

lelly88 - The CAT are really not valid for a child with reading difficulties, because they are presented in written rather than oral form.

Whether a 10 or 20 point difference is statistically significant depends on the size of the Standard Error - this is generally available in the manual.

The point of these tests is that they are assumed to measure attainment in children who have NOT had coaching, and have not been exposed to the test (for a particular age group) before.

[lelly88]

Hi camptownraces, according to the cats site reading is kept to a minimum in the verbal test (I presume you are pertaining to the verbal cat), however if a child has dyslexia it does not inevitably mean they cannot read at all, - it appeared to slow down my DS' capability of finishing all the paper in the time given, the CATs clearly showed his SpLD, which you would hope that they would do. The Non-verbal and quantitative indicated his above average strengths in those areas , and I am very grateful his was allowed to take them because it was the 1st time his strengths had actually been identified (he has since accelerated through 2 science/maths sets to the top of set 2 and if he continues will hopefully be in set 1 next school year) he was not coached and had not done anything like it before. Being excluded from the tests on the grounds of his disability making it "invalid" is horrifying, the tests also are supposed to highlight difficulties in those children who may need further investigations.

Sorry I don't have access to th manual only the FAQs on the site. The school probably have more data if they wish to examine it.

As Yotty says her DS is more verbal than visual and will very likely do just fine, but I also would be asking questions on seeing such a large gap in scores.

[camptownraces]

lelly88 - it's almost inevitable that a child who has had a reading problem, even if it's apparently a thing of the past, will process written material more slowly than his peers. It's this which slows the child down, and means that he will probably complete less of the (verbal) cognitive ability test than his peers.

Almost certainly a higher score would be achieved by such a child if the questions were presented orally. So you can expect the "verbal" score to be an underestimate of his ability in this area. Would a school wish to exclude such a child from such a test? Why do you think the school does CATs?

The thing about discrepancies is that some of them can arise simply because of chance, not because of an underlying factor.

[yotty]

I suppose if I was really worried about his level of ability I should get the school to re test him and see if the differential is smaller. I still think there would still be quite a big differential as visual things and code breaking have never really been his thing. However, just asked him to write an amusing poem to grandpa. He managed a pretty good amusing little ditty in 10 minutes.
So I guess this really only matters if he needs to do NVR to get into his next school. If so, should I start getting him to practice papers now? If a child has a really good report from headmaster, does really well in end of year exams in all subjects and interviews well, will a very academic school ignore the uninspiring NVR?

[camptownraces]

Scores on "non-verbal reasoning" styled tests are susceptible to significant improvement with practice.

The next school may publish its admissions policy in some detail, if a maintained school, so look to see what they do with the scores. Some will add all the scores on all the tests, some will demand a minimum threshold in each, some will weight each score differently.

If the next school is an independent school, there's probably no knowing what they do with the scores.

(There's no point in asking the school to retest him on the same test.)

[yotty]

I think we will just practice for the NVR test if he needs to do one. If he doesn't, then I won't have to worry about it. He is a very good student and fortunately when he has to do what I think of as a more conventional English, maths, science, history or French test he seems to do really well.