What are these CAT tests

I agree StarBallBunny. My dyslexic DS's CATS bear little resemblance to his full IQ test which is much higher. My friend's DS totally flunked his CATS - well below average intelligence and predicted Es but got an A* for Maths and is now doing A Levels. It concerns me that teachers consider them "very accurate".

Very accurate if your not bursting to go to the loo (having not been told there are three parts) and aren't dyslexic.

Weirdly it's not, as I said VR that throws her, it's numeracy.

As far as I can see, and example questions are as rare as hens teeth, it's very working memory heavy and very tight on time.

Sequences and putting operators to get a certain answer, very DD unfriendly without time and scribbling paper.

Has no bearing at all on the fact she'll probably get an A for maths GCSE.

Did mean she wasted Y7 in set 3 redoing stuff she already knew

Essentially IQ tests.

Used for setting and predicting GCSE results. Surprisingly accurate but not usually shared with parents.

They are to see how good they are at miaowing and catching mice.

I think it's totally up to the school, whether to use CATs and a lot of schools start GCSE syllabuses in Y9 so don't group as and when DDs school did.

(Loads of rearranging going on, so DD2 may get something different. She did Y7 CATs, no idea what she got. No excuse to ask as she's in the sets she should be.)

I don't think DD did any in yr9 - its probably up to the school if they want to use this metric.

Yes, verbal reasoning, numeracy and non verbal reasoning.

I found out DD1's marks because I asked. They'd used her numeracy result to justify barmy setting. (long story, suffice to say the numeracy test and dyslexia don't mix).

Generally they just give schools a general idea of the children's potential. Your DC quite probably did them at primary without realizing.

They do them again in Y9 and then we do get the results as they use them to give a ball park idea of which GCSE band DCs fall in.

They absolutely don't want DCs to practice, there are about three example questions on the web. Marks like IQ tests average 100, 120 grammar school kind of level 130 very good.

Yes... I'd forgotten what the C stood for! They probably are a bit hard for a kid to explain if they've not come across them before. They deliberately don't prepare them at all as they want raw ability and in some ways, lower scores at this stage can (I've heard) make the school's value added scores look better. They'll be using reports from primary, yr6 sats as well so they aren't too big a deal.

They are more like 11+ reasoning/maths than SATs. SATs are attainment tests (testing what you've learned); CATs are aptitude tests (assessing potential).

They do these tests near the start of yr7 to get a baseline to help work out setting/streaming and target levels (in combination with other data). I don't think they are statutory. We didn't see the results when DD did hers - the target grades are probably more relevant.

HTH