Does anyone know about CAT scores for year 5?

[tigi]

I am about to make a school appeal, and school has given me CAT scores for my child. They were done in Y, he is Y6 now. I've searched about a bit on the web to see if they seem any good, but not found a lot! Can anyone give me an idea of what would be a good score please, or what I would be looking at. If his isn't that brilliant, I won't waste my time appealing!
Thanks

do you mean SAT scores?

No, it's CAt - Cognative ability tests- they sit them at years 5 and 7....

My ds1 had CATS (cognitive ability tests) done in Year 7 - very frightening as they are done in the first week at secondary school and are used (partly) to stream him and even predict his GCSE results. They are basically IQ tests (which have always been done in schools): verbal , non-verbal and quantitative. A score of 100 is average and they are banded into 9 stanines. Bands 4-6 are average, 3 being below, 7 above. My son's were particuarly 'spiky' (ie uneven) which surprised me. Apparently they are repeated in Year 9 (will coach him next time! I did psychological testing for my dissertation, I wish I had known beforehand). I am very surprised the school even tells the parents what they are.

never heard of them - sorry

sorry don't know much about them. Have you asked for his sats predictions?

They have practice sats next week, so I will have the scores of those at the end of the week. I hadn't heard of cats until another parent told me to ask for them. Aparently you are only given them if you ask. The year 7 cats are a good prediction of gsce results. My sons are better for quantative, and maths, than for verbal, which drags his overall score down

yes it was Celia.... His maths is that, but the other scores fall down. I don't want to appeal, and then he struggle.

theyre really hard i know that!my ds has got to his CAT test at the secondary school hes going to start in September, hes got the test at end of May. a few years back i was a helper, you know walking around and checking that they could read properly and stuff, i was shocked at how confusing the test is and am now dreading my son doing it as he gets in a right panic.

just found out that apparently 98 is about average

My DD still gets upset over her Yr7 CAT results (115) as was expected to do much better. Based on these she was predicted 6,6,7 for Yr9 SATS & got 7,7,8, (top in Maths & English, 5th in science) & the predictions for her GCSE's was 9 A*-C's, but she has just got 10 A's & 1 B in mocks.

She has never been good at these sorts of tests, hence failed to get into grammar, but will slog & slog until gets to top of class in every subject, which makes me more proud as it is not just "lazy intelligence".

Don't bother with any coaching - just encourage the general work at school.

I averaged my 3 scores out and got 110, but then school said not to aveage them, they should be quoted individually, so maths is good, and non verbal, but verbal is lower, so pulls it down to 110 if i used an average.We were told that the english is also much harder to get in sats too.

You can't really average the 3 scores Tigi, they measure different things (standardised for age). A score of 110 borders on 'above average' ie stanine 7. To be statistically accurate they should say that they can be 90% confident that his score is within a band of about 10 'points' so he could be 100-120 depending on how he was on the day. The overall mean (average) for all tests is 101. At Year 7 they are supposed to predict KS3 levels with 80% confidence 'bands' (so a range of maybe Level 5 A-C) and GCSE at 80% confidence (maybe 3 grades?).

Celia2, is that really the mean? I thought that would be about the pass mark. In our area they only mark verbal, non verbal and maths unless you are borderline then the English is marked and taken into consideration. How fair is that!

They quoted stanines to me, but I had no idea what they were on about! 116 is for maths, but verbal is only 104! So a big difference!

Thanks. Sorry - too late for my brain to function properly.

I'm a teacher, but don't specialise in CATs. These can be done at any age, and give a general inidcator (not a prediction) of the type of intelligence a child has. they also get adjusted according to the age of the child on the date they take them. Don't know if you can coach children - they are meant to test thinking ability, rather than knowledge, e.g. how they approach problems (hence the inclusion of verbal tests). they can highlight certain issues - e.g. child with high verbal cats, but low attainment could have a specific learning difficulty or could just have been bored in the test. they should also be considered alongside sats results - for yr 6 a score of 4,4,4 is meant to be the benchmark as far as govt is concerned. ask the school if these are the raw scores, or adjusted (allows for age) as this can make a difference. did the school you're appealing to know his cats scores? can you find out more about why they said no?