How and why do children get IQ tested?

[bayesian]

In what likely situations did this Henrietta Barnett pupil of higher IQ than Hawkings get her IQ tested? My understanding is that children do not usually get an IQ test unless they have some learning issues. In what situations would children without learning difficulties/concerns get IQ tested?

My understanding is that children do not usually get an IQ test unless they have some learning issues.

Having a very high IQ means there will be learning issues at school. The standard curriculum won’t suit these children. They need a differentiated timetable, tailored instruction.

I was referring to a different poster and what she said. I know that's not always the case. I have found (in my experience personally and a few friends and anecdotes are obviously not facts) that it's the opposite. Teachers would randomly drop into conversation things they noticed, I'd be confused and ask them about it and they'd tell be not to do anything because I was smart (even though I was struggling in the classroom but lots of study and masking got be through bot completely though).

I also think more teachers and staff need to learn the signs for girls ans BAME students (who can present differently and often do), but staff lack the cultural competency to recognise the cultural nuances and not play into harmful microaggressions that I experienced as a 'strong Black women' and adultification in which they always saw me as more mature and we know this happens regularly to Black and BAME girls and impact their diagnosis for SEND, and they are often diagnosed later, as are girls in general.

I'm not discounting your experience btw, you're probably right - we just have different experiences. I think perhaps for autism (don't have much experience of this) they may prioritise those who can do well academically but you don't know if in other areas their autism is affecting them very badly and they still need acess to those services. There is a useful conversation as to whether at that stage the school should pass on to GP's and focus on those who have academic concerns but don't ignore those who likely have SEN but aren't (or aren't yet) academically too affected as they still go through the process. That didn't happen at all with me and many people I know. I've seen this more with dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD and auditory processing issues.

I know, I was responding to another different poster. I know this isn't always the way of diagnosis, I was just referring to trends among how staff in school sometimes (not always) approach it.

What do you mean by "very high"?

As I said above, more than 10% of the children at my DC's state comprehensive school have an IQ in the top 2% so are eligible to join Mensa. They certainly don't all have learning issues.

161 is the ceiling of the Cattell test used by mensa. It is junk - it uses norms which are invalidated by the Flynn effect and it has a standard deviation of 24. 161 indicates a performance about 2.5 standard deviations above the mean, so in the top 1% but not that exceptional - there would be a kid in most year groups of most comprehensives capable of getting it.
When you see claims of an IQ of 161, greater than Hawking/Einstein, usually you will find some combination of (a) mensa looking for free publicity (b) a "psychologist" (often the same minimally qualified one associated with mensa) trying to drum up business for their private practice, (c) a lazy or gullible journalist willing to publish any old puff piece, and/or (d) some infatuated parents who don't realise that plastering their child's name and photo across the internet is spectacularly unwise. Nobody is thinking of the best interests and right to privacy of the child.
Properly administered, modern IQ tests can play an important role in guiding educational provision for students who are outliers in ability on both extremes of the ability spectrum, but the only people who need to know are the family and teachers.
Einstein and Hawking never had their IQ tested so claims of "higher than" are doubly false. A little research on the part of the journalist would have told them that Hawking referred to those who bragged about their IQ as "losers".

CAT scores are on a similar bell curve to IQ scores I believe, with 100 being the average.

Learning issues at school, simply meaning that the curriculum isn’t really designed for them.

Just to add to this - the WISC and BAS which are the cognitive assessments usually used by ed psychs have the more typical standard deviation of 15 - the average range being 85-115.

What this means is that 2 standard deviations above the mean on WISC is a score of 130 whereas on the cattell it's 150. So the cattell is great for vanity as the scores are inflated and sound more impressive.

So you literally cannot get an iq score of 161 on a WISC or BAS.

Having said that this young woman is obviously exceptionally good at learning.

An IQ of 160 is nothing like 1%. An IQ of 140+ already puts you in the top 0.1%.

1% of people who attempt the MENSA test get 160+, these people are already fairly sure of their high IQ.

Have read about this girl before. She's obviously got an exceptional brain, but what the hell?! 23 A-levels??

I am curious as to how the school manages this? My DCs sixth form is very, very firm that they can only do four Alevels maximum. It's a very academic school that gets great results, and I imagine that pushier parents might gun for kids to do one or two more if given the chance 🙄

It seems this girl did some A-levels at school but the rest privately? Does the school have any say in that?

I imagine her parents paid for it. The girl was obviously very bright (many people over use the word bright, when their child is just average intelligence - it used to mean very clever to me) and I think it’s important t to know if someone has exceptional intelligence, the same way someone is tested who has a low IQ. It can assist that education is tailored and for children to flourish and nurture their talent.

I think it’s a shame that such children are t given more strategic direction and challenge, it could be individuals like this offer significant contributions to society compared to the rest of us. Eg Hawking et al. People like this come around very rarely. Provided they are happy to br given that direction and opportunity of course.

Let’s face it, she knows more than most of her teachers.

You have misunderstood the standard deviation difference that @extrastrongmintz and myself have tried to explain.

On a test with a standard deviation of 15 like the WISC or BAS , 130 is top 2%

On the tests Mensa uses, the standard deviation is 24. So two standard deviations from mean - top 2% - is not 130 like on WISC or BAS, it's 148.

161 is the top measurable IQ on these mensa tests at 2.5 standard deviations and is equivalent to around 140ish on more usual tests. 145 is top 0.1 percent iirc.

Yes, that's the point. To add to this, the Cattell norms are as old as the hills, so people taking it nowadays receive scores boosted (i.e. invalidated) by the Flynn effect. It's not a valid test, and the artificially high numbers it generates are spurious if compared to other tests, the vast majority of which are recently normed and have standard deviation 15.
The old stanford binet also generated higher numbers and could go above 160 for different reasons. It was a good test in its day. But again, a slightly different standard deviation and the Flynn effect preclude direct comparison with modern, recently normed tests with SD 15. And again, these numbers were sensationalised (abused) by mensa and the "psychologists" associated with them for free publicity.

Also interested to know how school managed.

DD's comp often has kids sitting 16-18 GCSEs (and getting top grades) and they do that via twilight classes and bespoke timetables. Basically if you want to do them, they will facilitate... they're also good with the reverse and organising bespoke timetables for those who need a smaller workload due to SEN.

Helped by having 450 pupils in a year, huge numbers of options and teachers. I suspect easier in either a very small or very large school.

I do pity the exams officer at Henrietta Barnet though!

I think this lass must teach herself and school just accommodate her exam. Amazing but I hope she has some friends too, how on earth does she find the time?!

The standard grammar school leve in the 1950s was about 120 IQ and same for university entrance in general on the whole. Mine was assessed when I was about 8 or 9 simply because my psychiatrist father had a psychologist colleague who wanted to try some tests out (I still have the report) and then I did a Mensa one just out of curiosity when I was about 20 in a supervised forum. At the end of the day hbow we do in life is a mixture of things. I do think my IQ scores were about right (fairly high and I got best A levels in the school, top of year at university (law degree) etc and I do grapple with some fairly complicated law and write law books etc so I think it would be fair to say I am quite bright rather than just well educated. We had a test on our 5 children at various time just almost out of curiosity.

As for how many exams people should do that is up to them but I think 3 or 4 A levels is enough in the sixth form because you also want to develop other hobbbies too. Eg I was pretty good at music, 4 grade 8s etc and that has been a lovely hobby and I am glad i did loads of that instead of eg a 4th or 5th A level. I am glad I made time for hobbies at university and then in my 20s made trime for children. Life is not just a list of exams passed but a rounded thing where you develop all minds of interests and skills that can make you happy whether your IQ is low or high.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow - 16-18 GCSEs?! What school is that? The most I hear of at schools like St Paul's/Westminster is 12!

In 2024 only 390 students in the country took 12 or more GCSEs.
A school "often" having kids taking 16-18 GCSEs is ... fiction.
If one broadens the scope to "GCSE or equivalent level 2 qualification", the numbers would be significantly higher, because kids can fairly easily rack up half a dozen level 2's in music, drama etc. with many being done outside school and/or not in the same year as their GCSEs.
It was also more common to take larger numbers before the 2016 curriculum reforms. The reformed curricula tend to be bigger/more rigorous, putting downward pressure on the number taken. Schools are also disincentivised from allowing large numbers of entries by (a) the cost of the entries, and (b) accountability measures like attainment 8.
The head of one leading school referred to bright kids collecting umpteen GCSEs as being like scouts collect badges, implying quantity over quality.

@extrastrongmintz - yes agreed. I know of kids doing the odd extra one outside school -usually languages early if they happen to be fluent or bi-lingual - but have never heard of 16-18 GCSES. 😝It seems standard to do 9-10, 11 and 12 is considered a lot.

Be great if you can enlighten us @OhCrumbsWhereNow !

The highest score for under 18s is 162, which DS2 g0ot back in year 9 or 10, when his school decided for some reason to facilitate testing (possibly some commission from those who subsequently chose to join MENSA? No idea. DS2 decided not to and no comment was made). He just did it out of interest, really, although he did mention it in 'one of the things I've discovered about myself this year'. Definitely no further differentiation offered or sought on the basis of the outcome, but he was already demonstrating that he was near the top of his year - state selective school - anyway.

Not on a gold standard ed psych type test like BAS or WISC. They don't go this high.

Highest I have ever seen in almost 30 years of doing these assessments was 147 though I believe 160 is theoretically possible....

I would assume anonymised statistics are collected from standard school tests.

So you literally cannot get an iq score of 161 on a WISC or BAS.

I don't know about 161, but 160 certainly has been possible on WISC in the past.

In a Gaussian distribution with mean 100, standard deviation 15, a score of 160 is expected about 1 occurrence in 30,000. 147 is expected about 1 in 1,200. Would you say that the number of assessments you've done is closer to 1,200 or 30,000?

I don't believe WISC claim to be normed accurately to a Gaussian beyond about 3 standard deviations, but they have given higher scores than that in the past.

You're absolutely right that this is true for the British edition of WISC, and presumably the BAS.
For the US editions of WISC-IV and WISC-V, extended norms were published a few years after the main tests, allowing scoring beyond 160, but they required standardisation against populations of gifted kids which was a long, slow process conducted by some of the main centres in the US dealing with gifted populations. The same can't/won't be done here - there are no equivalent centres in the UK and it wouldn't be economically worthwhile for the test publishers given our smaller population. The most recent Stanford-Binet also had/has an extended scale going (in principle) past 160 - I don't know anyone who uses it in the UK, though I gather it's a bit more common elsewhere.
In practice, scores extending to/past 160 on a modern SD 15 test should only occur in around 1 case in 30,000 so even testers using them for decades will never encounter them or have use for extended norms, unless they have a special interest in gifted populations. But a related and perhaps more common issue is that children may hit the ceiling on 2 or more subtests, and this may artificially lower their scores on the downstream indices. It behoves testers to be aware of ceiling effects even if the full-scale IQ does not appear pushing towards the test ceiling.
It's equally important to look at the profile of index scores, rather than focussing on a single global summary number ("full-scale" IQ). A child with a spiky profile and low processing speed will present very differently to one with a flatter profile. This is another reason why the gold standard modern tests are far superior to the old tests which give a single number. The profile of index scores is as important (or more important) as IQ.