11+ atom learning - difference between stanine and decile score?

[SamPoodle123]

Hello. Can anyone please explain to me the difference between the stanine and decile score? What is more important? For example a math mock, my dc got a 118, which is a stanine of 7 (out of 9), which made me think...okay we really need to work on her math. But then I saw for the same test her decile score is 10, which then makes me think...okay, maybe her math is fine.

I know both stanine and decile compares her scores with others also doing atom, but what is the difference? Why would her stanine by 7 out of 9, but the decile 10 out of 10?

And apologies if this is a silly question, I just want to know what number I should focus on when understanding her results and what we need to work on. She is from a state school, applying for competitive London secondary schools.

Atom has good a support function. Use the chat or email them and they'll explain it to you.

Many thanks, yes, I sent an email last night, but thought I may get a faster response here since its the weekend :) Plus might be helpful if anyone else ever wonders the same to have it on here if someone does a search.

Sorry that sounded a bit blunt - I didn't mean you were wrong to ask here, was just in case you didn't know that they're pretty good with their support! I can't answer your question unfortunately - I don't know the difference either!

Ah no worries 😀 if someone happens to know I’m sure they will post. Otherwise, I’ll update when I get the answer.

As I understand it stanines are a way of banding the scores into categories (the scores are standardised using national level data and this builds a normal curve). So top stanine would be classed as very high and then continue downwards.

Deciles is a way of banding against children in the equivalent year group actually using atom.

As the decile is higher than the stanine score it means they are performing very well against other same aged children using atom but not as well against children at a nationally standardised level (but still very good). Obviously the decile is very dependent on which children are using atom.

Sorry for the typos - my phone’s autocorrect is very odd!

The table below shows the stanine bands.

@makeitsonumber1 Many thanks! That is very helping for me to understand it better.

And amazing. Thanks for that chart! Very useful!