Can anyone explain secondary school cats, ptm and pte scores to me?

[Gintonicsandlemon]

They are the test children do in y7. But can anyone explain what they are used for. To show ability, predict GCSEs? Show progres.

What is a good score and what is low? If some are low and some much higher is this a sign of Sen/need for more help at school?

I asked yesterday in education, but reposting here for traffic. Thanks for any advice.

www.tes.com/magazine/archive/cat4-data-quick-guide-everything-you-need-know

All explained here

Not helpful, but never heard of them and I have a Yr 7! Sounds like bullshit, like the sats more to benefit govt./offsted statistics than students.

@sparepantsandtoothbrush thanks for the link. Looks useful but only talks about the cats. How do these relate to the pte/PTm?
Thanks 🙂

Genuinely thought from the title that cats were a thing in schools now - a school cat, like a ship’s cat.

Disappointed that’s not the case

I have a year 7 and thought initially your DC
must be at the same school as mine as they have a cat that turns up every time they do outdoor PE. They all love it - the teacher not so much. Other than that, I have nothing for you. I hate the constant testing so have shown limited interest.

Oh wish our DCs school did have a school cat. 🐱 That would be a great idea.

@Libre2 I'm not a great fan of testing either. But my DS is struggling so I'm hoping the tests will help me understand better where the problems are, and it's harder for the school to fob me off as they are the ones who did them 🤣

CATs give an underlying assessment of intelligence. Supposedly you can't prepare for them, but I'm pretty sure if you've seen one before you will do better than if you just get presented with one.

If the maths and/or English marks are widely different from the CATs it suggests something needs looking at to figure out why the difference.

My kids school just do CATs. They use them to roughly assess ability - as in the 300 kids in the year split into 3 loose groups.