Verbal reasoning scores, can someone explain?

[muppetgirl]

I've just been handed an 'assessment' sheet for ds. Lots of things on there but it has

verbal reasoning 130+
What does this mean?

Thank you :o)

If there's no "out of" number (IE 130 out of 150) could it possibly be his IQ estimate based on that specific test type? Shot in the dark though...

if they get full marks in the test they cannot quantify the score so they can just say its above x
i though VR/NVR were marked out of 140 though (but I might be wrong),

is it a standardised score?

Yes it says standardised. Any ideas?

Sorry, just seen the earlier messages.
Doesn't give an 'out of' score so I have no idea what 130+ means!

Strange....

a standardised score of 130+ is above average - a high score

Thanks for that Ladyofcornsilk o)

A standardised score of 100 would be average
130+ is very good
It means, that if 100 children of his age took the same test, the probability would be that he would score as well as or better than 98 of them (ie he would be in the top 2%).

More fully explained here:
www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/research/assessment/eleven-plus/standardised-scores.cfm

Well done mini-muppet!

Dh and I have just said 'so that's good then?'

He's 7 .1
Fab!

Yes - very good!
The + bit (as in 130+) probably indicates that his mark was at the top of the scale and they were unable to define it further - so it's possible that on another test with the possibility of a higher mark he could have gained an even higher standardised score! It is difficult to say this for certain though without knowing the test but I think that is what the plus bit usually means!

in y3 and 4 they get really high scores and DD2 and DS1 got full marks on either VR or non-VR- can't remember which,but by Y5 and especially Y6 they are a lot harder.

Your link is for 11+ ones I don't think that bell curve applies to the tests for younger ones-unless my DC go to a school for geniuses

The bell curve applies as it is a normal distribution and therefore works for any standardised scores - Obviously the tests for 11 year olds are harder than those for 7 year olds, but the same rules for standardised scores still apply!
A child who scores 130+ at age 7 can be said to be in the top 2% of all 7 year olds doing that test. A child who scores 130+ at age 11 in another test can be said to be in the top 2% of all 11 year olds doing that test.
Standardised scores are commonly used for 11+ but also for many other things such as IQ and other psychometric testing. You expect many natural phenomena (such as children's abilities in a test, heights of dandelions, shoe sizes at a particular age, weights of dolphins, distances that 10 year old boys can spit etc etc) to follow a bell curve unless there is another factor at work skewing the results! I've used a bell curve to analyse radioactive dose distribution data for workers in nuclear power stations!
I chose the 11+ webpage to link to as it explained the concept quite simply and clearly.
Your DC may indeed go to a school for geniuses (or it may have selected children on ability or have more parents who support and encourage their dc's learning than average or the teachers may be (shhhh) coaching them in how to do these types of test with a view to getting as many as possible through 11+ and independent school entry exams)
Despite skewing factors, 130+ is still a very good score in my opinion, as many children would find it hard to reach that even with coaching.

Thank you very much for this o)

We've had problems with ds writing ie that for some reason he just won't. He can write he just doesn't when asked to/needs to for school. SO his writing score are low for a child of his abilities -currently 2b. He's seen an ed psych and has some areas where he's 3 years ahead but it flagged up that he's not where he shoud be for writing and this impacts on ds in that he thinks he's stupid as he doesn't write what other children do but he can't see that WHAT he writes is rather marvelous. Also what he says has always been good but it never translates into written work. He has working memory/processing problems so the Ed Psych says that a blanke piece of paper would terrify ds, which it does o(

We are having issues with ds's self esteen with writing o(

re my origional question -He's bright and the school used different ways to assess acheivement V intellect I think. I think this is good as it shows there's intellect there it's not being reflected in his written scores whereas he's been assessed as 3+ for his reading level (he's year 2 and this was last terms assessment) and the ed psych found that his reading comprehension/knowledge of the world was 3 years ahead.

sarahfreck... wow you are really good at explaining things... you know i think i used to know that way back when I did a levels (badly) but could not have explained it...

blackeyedsusan :D
Thank you for the compliment!