Does anyone understand CAT scores?

[cheekychubster]

Hi all,
I'm just wondering if anyone understands CAT scores as DD has just received hers.

verbal Raw score 42
SAS 90
ST 4
NPR 26

Quantitative Raw 22
SAS 82
ST 3
NPR 12

Non Verbal Raw 16
SAS 80
ST 2
NPR 9

She is in Year 7. Her tutor has said she is doing very well and his only advice was that she needs to speak more in class

Is she doing very well?
From what i have googled it certainly doesnt look like it, but maybe i'm reading it wrong

Thanks

Hi, If you look at the NPR I think that shows you how your dd comapared nationally. So in VR with an NPR of 26 74% of children got a higher score. A stanine of 4 in VR is in the 'average' group of stanines.

I think the CAT are meant to show inate ability but I don't know how much an indicator they are of future success at GCSE.

(I'm not a teacher or anything - this is just what I understand from google :) )

NPR stands for 'National Percentile Rank' - so 9 is not very good :(

26 is fine, as the 'average' is 25 - 75 ( ie a bell shaped curve)

But there's a big discrepancy between her VR and NVR scores - which can indicate problems like dyslexia. (However, I thought for dyslexia you'd expect NV to be higher than V)

If I were you I'd try and find out more about what the discrepancy means. Even if it means asking a SENCO :)

Thankyou both for responding.
Wow, even the 12 NPR isnt very good then for quantitative. I didnt think it was, but the tutor seemed very happy with the results whilst i was more
I've had quite a few dealings with Sencos because of DS so maybe i will have to find out how approachable DD's is at this school.
Even the 26 falls into the very bottom end of average.
I need to find out why the school are happy with this. Are discrepancys indicative of problems? DD says she forgets what shes read or heard straight away and cant remember what to put on paper. She can read fluently and very fast but wouldnt be able to tell you what she has read or heard. Any ideas?
Thought i'd push my luck and ask
Thankyou again

What concerns me the most is she says she can't remember what she read!

A discrepancy of more than 10 between VR and NVR is indicative of a problem.

School being happy means nothing. It might mean they have very low expectations of your DD and therefore think 9th percentile is fine. :)

I think there is an underlying problem, and it's going to take you a while (and a bit of money) to sort it out. My DD has problems, and it's taken me about 3 years to get to the bottom of it.

It sounds like your DD has 'working memory' problems. There are lots of tests on Cognitive Fun you can do. Try the 'backward digit span' tests to test her working memory. If she can't do 5 digits I believe that indicates a poor working memory.

However, I'm not 100% sure what a poor working memory indicates :) I'm fairly sure that a poor working memory is still an indicator of another problem, and is not actually the problem you should be trying to fix.....

I've been reading a lot about vision problems today, and read that convergence insufficiency can cause you to not remember what you read.

Get a pencil and ask her to follow it as you move it towards her nose. Her eyes should go cross eyed as it gets close to her nose - and she should still be able to see the pencil, it shouldn't go double of blurry.

Here's a of how to do the test, and what her eyes should look like.

Also can she track an object with her eyes?

If you can afford it, I think Reading Plus looks excellent. I haven't used it yet, but my 3 are all due to start it in Jan. :)

Thankyou so much Indigo. I am going to start looking into everything you have written and try to get to the bottom of this. Its destroying her confidence and enthusiasm for school. I didnt realise she had interpreted her own results until she had a massive tantrum Thurs night about something completely different then confessed later that she understood her results were bad.
She has just turned 12 so if i dont sort this quickly i could be heading for some major probs if she has to stay in education for another 6 years and her self esteem is so low. She really does try so hard and is a total perfectionist so it must be soul destroying for her.
Thanks again.