CAT testing, what exactly is it?

[Iamnotminterested]

Is it verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning skills? Can a child "practice" or is the whole point to get a picture of a child's skills without any practice, IYKWIM! Are there any resources to look at if it's a good idea to get used to the question type?

Cognitive Ability Tests.... ours consisted of Verbal, Quantitative and Non-Verbal. I think there are variations on this. I think they are similar to 11+ tests so it wouldn't do any harm to become familiar with them. They are not as reliable as individual IQ tests.

CAT's test a pupils basic cognitive ability. The results are fed into a computer and the pupil's score is compared with historical data and they 'predict' how well a pupil may do at GCSE. So, if 90% of the the pupils who scored the same score as your child went onto achieve grades A-C at GCSE it will tell you that your child has the potential, based on their cognitive ability, to go on to achieve the same. At one school I worked in the results were shared with parents and pupils. I had to sit and explain to an 11 year old and her mum that, according to the CAT's, she was likely to achieve GCSE grades D-F in her GCSE's. The parent pointed out, and I completely agree, that this information was completely demoralising because it made her child feel like no matter what she did she wouldn't be 'clever' enough to achieve grades C and above at GCSE. The tests do not take into account how hard a pupil works or their attitude to learning which are very important. The results should not be taken as gospel.

Totally agree MamaBear17. We get given them at our school. My friend's son was predicted Ds and Es and has just got a A* for maths. It can work the other way around too - if you are predicted As for everything then you might lose the incentive to work really hard.

When my DD did her CATS tests in Y7, it told us that she would achieve 'U' grades. This was because at the start of Y7, she was still working towards NC level 1. By the end of Y9, she had made so much progress that the teachers stopped using the data from the CATS and SATS, and started doing their own predicted grades for DD, that told us she was a 'C/D' grade student. She had a MASSIVE developmental leap in Y8/Y9.

Verbal, non verbal and numeracy tests.
Individual and combined marks, centred round 100 like an IQ test.

They absolutely don't want you to practice if you google you can find the same 3 example questions and that's it.

DD does well at VR, very well at NVR and badly at the numeracy.

This is stupid because she is good at maths. The test seems to be a very limit range of sequence and put the +- signs in things that her dyslexic short term memory panics over.

No way should she ever get a higher mark for VR than numeracy, so as other have said they aren't gospel.