Y7 CATs: Ignorance is bliss?

[PiqueABoo]

DD's school told the parents what their children scored in the CATs.

I've never wanted to get her IQ tested or anything like that, because at some level I didn't want to run the risk of being disappointed by the results and/or being trapped i.e. feeling compelled to Do Something[tm] as a consequence.

This is different from SATs somehow and I'm growing to hate knowing: it's like we've taken an unpredictable, fluttering butterfly and pinned it firmly to a board so everyone knows exactly where it is for eternity.

Is this a weird reaction? If not do you get over it by-and-by?

[I do know what they do and don't tell you, the reliability and so on but that doesn't help.]

It is not weird at all. My DD's school only tells you if you ask and I have decided not to. They use the CAT's to re-set the children as well after half term. I have therefore decided to wait and see whether she goes up (fingers crossed) or down in her subjects and deal with any additional support she needs she may have. I dont need to know what her CAT score is.

What they did do which I quite liked was, based on their CAT scores, they gave each parent a short report on their DC's preferred learning and studying style. It was really interesting.

"they gave each parent a short report on their DC's preferred learning and studying style"

That sounds fun. Was it hits or misses?

Can I just say my Dh gets dreadful scores in iq tests - we're talking in the 90's. He graduated from Cambridge with a 2-1 and is very successful at his career but is still quite shit at intelligence tests, he practices a bit before interviews but they are never glowing.

One of his colleagues is incredibly bright, very high IQ but has limited social skills, he's incapable of dealing with people who he perceives to be of lower intelligence to himself in a tactful way, he can see this is career limiting but he is unable to modify his behaviour.

My dsis is in Mensa but she did quite poorly at school, she managed to get 2Bs and 3Cs in her GCSEs, she has a great career despite getting quite low school results.

A high result doesn't make you successful and a low result doesn't prevent you.

The school sent us a copy of their Cats results and they were filed away and never mentioned again.

The CAT score does not define your child. All it measures is how she happened to score on that particular day in that particular type of test. There are many other aspects to intelligence that are not measured by that sort of test, and it is not an IQ test. Try your best to ignore the result, and move on.

Don't take it seriously! As PPs have said, It's just a measure of how she did on a particular test.

My DD was like Luxaroma's DH. She didn't get into a Grammar school, and her Yr7 CATS gave her a predicted 6 GCSE's at A-C. She got 11 A*s and also a great degree from Cambridge. She still could not pass the 11+ though.

The brightest girl in my tutor group had the lowest CATs score - her score reflected someone with quite serious learning difficulties. I'm assuming that in her very conscientious manner she spent so long checking her answers she didn't finish the test. I was going to ask her about it but I didn't want to make an issue out of something that really doesn't matter.

My DCs school won't give out the results which is probably a good thing. If we were offered them, I couldn't resist knowing, but then I'd worry myself stupid if they were bad. Some great stories here though and very encouraging to know that those with a low IQ or not particularly great exam passes can still be very successful further down the line.

"they gave each parent a short report on their DC's preferred learning and studying style"

They should do something with more grounding in reality, like prescribing them homeopathic learning medicine based on their star sign, or selecting their GCSEs based on the bumps on their head.

We don't give out CAT scores unless a parent particularly asks, and most of them don't. Dd1's school has never told me her CAT score, and I'm not in the slightest bit interested, she's doing well and is ambitious, that's enough for me. I think most parents have a pretty good idea of how academic their child is, and that can obviously change as they mature. Don't let a CAT score define your child.

I'm not disappointed or worried about DD's scores, it is just that irrational feeling that possibilities have narrowed.

Significant margins of error are typical for everything, but it just hadn't crossed my mind that we might get such serious CAT/IQ-score defiant cases, so those stories were interesting.

Does a CATs score indicate which set a child will be taught in?

We weren't told CAT scores until we went to choose options for DD and discovered that she couldn't do GCSEs in science or languages because her score was too low. She'd come to the evening wanting to be a doctor! We fought this with the school and she's now in Yr11 and on track for good results in triple science and French. There's a 40 point gap between my DDs according to the tests. I can't see this myself and feel sure that if they were accurate I'd be able to detect a difference.

Dd1 is the same with these IQ type tests, she always overthinks things. If there was a picture of three birds and a mouse and she had to choose the odd one out, she'd go for bird 2 because it isn't a primary colour! The mouse is too obvious.
Her predicted grades a couple of years ago (YELLIS test) were quite low and she was devastated. With time they seem to integrate actual achieved marks into the predictions and they moved up every significantly and were accurate by the time she got to GCSEs, she got 10A* which was way above the early scores suggested.
We were told that it was very possible to get aberrant low scores.

We weren't told CAT scores until we went to choose options for DD and discovered that she couldn't do GCSEs in science or languages because her score was too low.

Jesus, it's like Cyril Burt wasn't a fraudulent charlatan who made up data with the help of his imaginary research assistants, isn't it?

Schools that engage in this sort of shit are what "special measures" was invented for. Educational testing is like measuring jelly with a tape measure made out of knotted elastic, and the research base for almost of it (IQ testing included, or indeed especially) is laughably thin. Gould's "Mismeasure of man" has dated, and, tristis dictu, like others of his books the science has moved on. But his basic thesis, that measuring people's "intelligence" is just an instrument for power, prejudice and bigotry to dress itself up in science, remained entirely correct.

It's not helped that school teachers are largely not trained in research and are therefore extremely credulous when presented with "research". That farces like "brain gym" and "VAK learning styles" can gain such traction shows the danger of people who will accept anything with a spurious whiff of "science".

CAT testing might, just might, be useful as a baseline. Every other use is almost certainly going wildly beyond its limitations.

Schools that engage in this sort of shit are what "special measures" was invented for.

I should point out that school is in fact rated 'Outstanding'!

On the upside and with the benefit of hindsight that low CAT result is one of the best things that has happened to my DD. She is really determined and she views every A* result as a personal victory over that ridiculous decision. I am so proud of her, but I suspect that for every one like her there are many who give up in the face of what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle.

"Educational testing is like measuring jelly with a tape measure made out of knotted elastic"

Can I just offer you some by way of saying thanks for this phrase. :-)

My friend's DS just finished A Levels and got 2 A*s and 1 A. His CATS scores were atrocious. My DS has had a proper IQ test (SEN reasons) and his CATs scores were wildly different and significantly below this real IQ test (possibly testing slightly different things as well as one being verbally administrated). I wouldn't take the CAT scores too seriously and would hope that teachers don't either. Thankfully I had the real IQ test scores because otherwise I would have been upset at the CATs results.

Thankfully I had the real IQ test scores

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Yes, I was totally blinded by the "real" ones!

My DD had a score in the 90s when she did a NVR CAT test in Year 5. So I think it's highly likely she has a spectacularly low Year 7 score. She won the highest achiever prize at her grammar school last year.

She did, however, get 140 for the NVR paper in her 11+, thus proving categorically that it is possible to be tutored for non-verbal reasoning.

My dd (now 17) is complicated - I adopted her aged 7 and she comes with a myriad of baggage but academically she always functioned at average to slightly above at primary school. When she got to high school her behaviour and academic achievement plummeted. I put it down to her EBD issues stemming from developmental trauma sustained when she was little. My dd scored solid 4s across the board with a 5 in reading at primary school. I was expecting her Y7 CAT scores to be around the 100 mark or slightly higher given these KS2 scores against a background of neglect and extensive LAC status during KS1. I was surprised/shocked instead with these scores: VR 92 NVR 78! and QR 81 giving an overall score of 83. Now I don't think the school has a blanket policy of using CAT scores to set but I do think it's interesting that my dd went from a happy, confident student, usually working on table 2 out of 5 at primary school to the low sets across the board at high school. The senco (whom I eventually formed a great relationship with) offered her 1:1 reading support within the first few weeks of Y7. Why? Reading had never been a problem for her. I finally came to realise that some of the weaker departments were just looking at CAT score predictions and putting those on reports, when at the end of Y8, dd came home with a PE grade of 4C. This is the child that was one of the best players on the school rounders team and regularly represented the school at borough wide athletics competitions. When I queried this 4C, I never did get a response, though her next school report (Autumn of Y9) showed that she had miraculously jumped to L6.
So my warning to parents is that if you know your child's academic achievement to date is much stronger than the CAT results show, make sure you are constantly on the schools case to make sure your child doesn't under achieve.
With CAT scores like my dd, GCSE predictions (though not what school were predicting I should add) were a raft of Es. She actually achieved 6Cs and 1B and this with an EBD statement and attendance in the low 70s.
I personally do not like CAT scores, they are often wildly inaccurate and in the wrong hands can lead to unrealistic expectations - either too high or too low.