What are these CAT tests

[kitnkaboodle]

that my son did the other day at his new secondary, Year 7?? Are they kind of like the SATS in style (ie straightforward Maths and English) or are they more like the 11 plus reasoning stuff? Are they statutory? Will we be able to see the results? He seemed to spend almost a whole day doing them...

I too would ask for caution when screening for dyslexia. My dyslexic DS got about 110 on his VR (which was higher than Non Verbal score). His teacher told me didn't indicate dyslexia - his actual verbal IQ (involving no reading) tested by a professional was 30 points higher (top 1%).

thanks kitchendiner but he definately has dyslexia, already screened etc in primary school

Grants, verbal reasoning called that cos it's all comprehending words...except it isn't always! Stuff like, you get a sequence of letters in pairs and have to predict the next pair, or maybe find a word hidden in a sentence, or break/make codes (DD hated codes, especially up against a time limit, but her scores overall were usually very good!). Sometimes you get a question that complex verbally, but the answer's in numbers too. It's a weird paper, but there are lots of places to practice online/Youtube: I'm not sure I'd bother in Y7 though, as I agree that attitude is much more important than the scores themselves.

DD's writing atrocious, punctuation worse, spelling depends whether she's trying or not...reads very, very well, so clearly not dyslexic, but you wouldn't know. I did think about getting her screened for dyspraxia, but decided in the end that, if she wasn't going to get extra time in the exams for it, it probably wouldn't be helpful for her to have a label to "blame" stuff on.

Lots of dyslexics do read well. I don't rely entirely on CAT data, but it is useful as a starting point when getting to grips with a new year group. Primary school data is passed on, reading tests done and subject staff and TAs will flag up concerns.

We are using CAT 4 which also has a spatial reasoning element.

NVR I think flags up good scientists, DH, Me and DD1 are all very good at them and DH and me have science degrees and DD1 want's one.

I think NVR also needs a certain degree of confidence, you work through the puzzle and then they give you 4 answers to make you doubt your conviction.

I think good scientist and mathematicians too are just a bit arrogant, they see no reason why they shouldn't understand things.

Does anyone know what the Quantative paper measures? My understanding is that there are 3 papers - VR, NonVR and Quant. My DD got a really high mark in quant but it wasn't really explained and the teacher kept harping on referring to her less high mark in VR. I SO want Quant to be something super impt but it feels like the poor relation!

Also, I thought that the CAT results, because they measure "innate intelligence" were relatively fixed but I saw my dd's results from twice in Y4 (her school do them twice a year) and they were honestly like a completely different child - each paper a good 10-15 points different from the previous time.

Star, that is really interesting about NVR.

DD got a massively higher mark in NVR than anything else (130ish). I would say she is okay academically but no genius (handful of As but mostly Bs at GCSE even with a decent amount of effort) but she loathes and struggles with science and maths. She needed intensive tuition from me to scrape her B in maths and really lacked confidence.

Her talent is really Art and Design and all things creative. I reckon she would be a great architect but probably lacks the maths skills.

Quantitative measures ability with numbers, on the paper my year 7s sat they were looking at sequences and how to get from one number to another using plus,minus,times or divide

Eg 2 4 6 8 ? And 2>4 5>10 4-->?

So more important than verbal really, but a low mark in VR could be a concern. 90-110 is 'average' 85-89 'low average', 111-115 'high average' and numbers outside that above or below average. Bare in mind though that the most accurate testing is only 95% accurate, so one in 20 results are anomalous.

Not really 'innate' intelligence, but more potential ability. So many factors affect academic ability it will sometimes change over time. I had a dyslexic student whose NVR reduced year on year, I'm sure that as his confidence diminished his ability to perform on the test reduced. The scores are standardised age scores, so they are adjusted to compare performance against other children of the same age. Two students with the same answers will get different scores if they are born in different months.

Most schools do them early in year 7, and then later they are factored in as one of the things determining predicted grades. Ours always say, they will be doing them, they will need a pencil and do not need to prepare, and that's the end of that.

Then those, with SATS, FIsher family thingy, performance so far etc, all contribute to what their predicted grades will be in year 10.

Moomin I suspect that some if the skills needed art and science and certainly art and engineering over lap a great deal.
DD1 and I both have arty edges, DD1 is doing art at GCSE.

But it's most obvious of all when you see DH and my engineer DDad talking. They'll describe technical things to each other that are basically NVR problems from hell without the diagrams. It's quite mind boggling because they are quite obviously and calmly seeing the same thing in
their heads.

I'm ok if they draw it, but I can't just visualise things in 3D. Your artistic DD probably can.