Can anyone tell me about the MidYis test?

[LongChalk]

Hi! DS had his meet and greet for secondary on Fri and has been told he'll sit this test in Sept. They were told it's untutorable and online and it will adapt the questions to suit their ability. All good. Only issue is he's slightly aspie. No diagnosis but consistently told he falls in the 'grey area'. His biggest issue is anxiety over the unknown. I don't want to practice and frankly, it would be blood and stones but if I could tell him it was say, VR or NVR or maths or comprehension based or a mix then he could prepare his mind if that makes sense. I understand it's online with earphones which will suit him very well so that's great. The school website just says something about Durham university CEM.

As I said, I'm not interested in practice papers or anything like that. Just an overview to help stop him worrying between now and Sept. Thanks

MidYIS = Middle Years Information System operating in over 3000 secondary schools, created by The Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring at Durham University.

The test measures students’ ability and aptitude for learning rather than achievement. It is not an IQ Test. It is computer based divided into four parts: vocabulary, maths, non-verbal and skills.
The feedback from the test will allow teachers to gain a better understanding of where each pupil’s strengths and weaknesses lie.

Thanks, ami! So 4 parts; I'll let him know that. What does 'skills' entail? I just don't want anything to panic him.

Proofreading is a key part of the skills test.

It takes approximately an hour and he will have different questions to his peers other than perhaps the first couple in each section.

Waste of time IMO, DD1 was predicted As and Bs and a couple of Cs in MIDYIS, she was mortified as tended to do well in exams and ended up with at least a grade higher in everything and three grades higher with the Cs.

It's not an accurate prediction, it compares similar pupils and provides an percentage chance of getting certain grades in the future. Some children will do better than most other similar children have done in the past, some will have done worse, some similar to the masses!

we were told the results would not be made available to us or told to the children. it was just to inform the teachers.

Thanks everyone. I'm not actually too concerned about getting the results although I'm sure they would be interesting. I just want to make sure DS isn't panicked by the format and he knows what to expect. Not so much the content as I have zero intention of prepping him. More the area of learning. The way his mind works, he could sit a comprehension paper and his results would vary dramatically depending on whether he had been told the night before or not.

I've posted on your other thread.

Thank, Foxy

The test in online and the questions wander off like branches on a tree depending on whether answers to preceeding questions were correct or incorrect. DS did it at the start of year7. It's useful for highlighting strengths and weaknesses but is not an intelligence test per se. Our school said it's just one test on one day. A poor score in one area is not a bad result it can help teachers tailor the teaching. An overall good score is apparently hard to fake. At yr7 the results are not used to predict GCSE outcomes as it's too early. The test is redone at the end of yr9 for those indications.

Link to an informative explanation if you have the time
www.cem.org/attachments/publications/Using%20MidYIS%20IPRs%20Booklet.pdf

Thanks, isee! I'm not too fussed about his score. I just want to make sure he's not hindered by his difficulties. From what I can see there's some maths, some comprehension, some pattern work and some skills. I've told him about the first 3 but I don't know what skills is so I need to try and find that out so he is prepared.

Copied from that document;

Skills Score

The Skills score is calculated from the Proof Reading and Perceptual Speed and Accuracy (PSA) sections of the MidYIS Test.
In the Proof Reading section pupils are asked to spot mistakes in the spelling, punctuation and grammar of a passage of text. We often rely on computers to do such tasks but some of the mistakes the pupils are looking for are of the type that may not be picked up by a computer, for
example mistakes such as the mis-spelling of words like ‘there’ and ‘their’. The Proof Reading subtest efficiently measures this highly important skill that anyone producing a piece of writing has to
develop.
The PSA section asks pupils to look for matches between a sequence of symbols on the left and a number of possible choices on the right. Given enough time most pupils would probably get the answers correct this section measures how quickly pupils can find a correct match... The PSA section allows speed to be demonstrated free from the demands of memory.
The Proof Reading and PSA tests are tests for the modern world, and are designed to measure fluency and speed. They rely on a pupil’s scanning and skimming skills, skills that are desirable