Cost for per school G&T assessment

[livingstondaisy]

How much have people paid to have a full assessment for a child who may be G&T?

We have contacted a local assessor and was staggered at the cost. Just wondered what the "average" cost has been for others. The assessment is for a per schooler who will be going into reception in September.

I have never heard if this. Usually it is top 5% of cohort. G&t is measured differently in every school.

Not sure why you would want or need this done. There is no extra funding I am aware of. Surely the class teacher will just set appropriate work.

At such a young age I would use the term bright as peers may quickly catch up.

Just a suggestion but the HV may be able to help. When DS was 3yrs it was mentioned that he was very able with his language and our HV offered to do some further assessment which might lead to some funding or additional support before he started school. We didn't take her up on it but might be worth asking??

The first question I would be asking is why you feel the need to have an assessment at this early stage? If once your child has settled in school you feel that it is failing to meet his or her needs sufficiently well, that would be the time to do something. Right now, turning up with an expensive assessment from an outside source would be unlikely to have any effect on the provision the school makes for your child, since they would, rightly, want to do their own assessments first.

It has been raised from a young age that our daughter is ahead of her peers and adjustments are made in pre school to adapt the plan to ensure her needs are met.

She is clearly more able than expected for her age group in terms of reading, writing, maths etc. I am happy that any school will be able to set work appropriately for her.

Where we are worried is about how to support her emotionally and deal with the irrational fears which stem from her having a little bit of knowledge and her vivid imagination runs away with her.

We are concerned about her emotional well being, she is able to reason beyond her years but lacks the maturity to establish context. We wish to establish how we can help her best and it has been suggested that a full assessment would be the best starting point.

I don't want to be questioned as to our motives, we simply want to support her best. I just want to know how much these types of assessments have cost others.

I will follow up with the HV but please share the process others have taken to gain this type of assessment.

Have you looked at assessment through Potential Plus (formerly NAGC)? That should give you a guide as to age/cost.

Can you really tell a g and t child at preschool age? I am a teacher, I thought g and t was defined by being in the top 5% in a certain subject.

Surely preschool is too young?

I think it depends on what kind of assessment you're looking for. If you're looking at this in terms of IQ and how best to support dd in her learning, then I presume you're considering an Educational Psychologist's assessment?

My ds had this done via the school (he has autism to go with the high IQ scores), so it didn't cost anything. The going rate for a private assessment seems to be anything from about £300 to £600+.

Ds' assessment included IQ testing, and looking at which methods of learning would suit him best. It was a very useful report and described him very accurately.

In your position though, I would consider carefully whether your child's new school are likely to pay any attention to it or whether they will prefer to get to know her for themselves and teach her accordingly.

The other issue is your child's age. My ds was still a pre-schooler when he had his first assessment with an Ed Psych. That first assessment really wasn't all that helpful or accurate as there were still so many unknown variables at that age. His second was carried out when he was in KS2 and was far more useful and gave a much clearer picture of how he could best be taught. If I'd paid hundreds of pounds for that first assessment, I would have considered it a waste of money.

DD had a referral from the health visitor so we didn't pay but we still got a copy of the invoice it was about £600 odd 3 years ago.

Thanks for the comments.
We have done some research and the Ed Psych report is around £600
We are not pushy parents or looking for a label for her, we are actually very worried about her emotional well being and want to be as prepared as we possibly can be to help her.
She is more than able to say when she is finding things easy and so academically we are not worried at all. It's the emotional side of things we need help with.

Coppertop Was there any difference in the IQ number between the 2 tests?

The Ed Psych wasn't able to carry out the full test when ds was pre-school age, as ds found it difficult to sit still for a long time. The Ed Psych picked out some of the tests for him to try, eg the one where you copy patterns with little blocks, answer questions about pictures etc.

She was able to get some rough scores for the sections he completed, but not enough to give a proper score. From what I can remember though, ds' scores were generally higher the second time around.

The second test was much better. I think it also helped that the teachers were also able to give a much fuller description of what did/didn't work for ds during lesson times. The Ed Psych was also able to spend time in the classroom and see how ds interacted with other adults and children.

If you're worried about emotional development, maybe something like play therapy is more what you need? (Or read a book about it)

We were advised, by an educational psychologist, that it's best to wait until 6 for testing as the results are pretty inaccurate before then.

I think your best bet - and a much cheaper one - would be to join potential plus, which is the organisation for parents of gifted children. There are no entrance requirements. You'd get their fact sheets, which can be very helpful re the emotional development side of things, access to a forum, and can also chat to them on the phone. I actually think this - and perhaps going to some of their events - would be much more use to you than an assessment at this stage. These sort of difficulties aren't unusual, and there will be plenty of helpful suggestions there.

I don't understand how a full assessment of cognitive talent would lead to understanding what emotional support a child needs. Because plenty of very clever people have no emotional problems or can't communicate (Erdos!) and plenty of thickos are basket cases. I don't see a link.

How old is she? We paid privately for an EP assessment of ds1 when he was 7.5 re concerns about Aspergers, rather than a desire to see his ability measured.

I think 7 was the best possible age, I don't regret the money spent at all: it was a real turning point for us and definitely worth it.

We paid about £400 I think, from memory, but that was 9 years ago. He was assessed as being in the top 0.01 - 0.1% of the population; ie 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000.

His early promise has been fulfilled and he got A* in all his GCSEs, including full marks in many exams.

We didn't pursue a dx of Aspergers, though some of his behaviours remains 'spectrumy'. We received lots of useful advice and further reading from the EP.