CATS

[purepurple]

DD12 got level 5 in all her Sats last year, and I know she is clever. Honestly!! But just got her CATs from school and she scored 88, which apparently puts her just below average. I am a bit baffled cos I know she is more than capable. What I want to know is, will these results affect her chances of good GCSEs? Should I be worried? Will she get moved down in sets and not pushed or challenged enough?

My DD took these too at the beginning of this school year. DD had at that point under gone at least 10 tests in various things. When it came to CATS DD was mightly naffed off. When it came to the NVR - the you'll get an A* if you can sort these shapes out test DD had lost the will to live -they'd done the other 2 papers that day and Dd told me she'd done as Auntie A did in her Chemistry all those years ago - made a pattern for the last two sections. I never got DD's CAT scores. Her school sets in Maths and Science - DD is top for Science and in middle set for Maths hoping to be in the top set soon. She was setted on the basis of the in house assessment and movement between the sets is down to a half termly test. If your DD is capable of the work I can't see them moving her down on the basis of one set of tests. If she's struggling with work then obviously they would.

Oh and Auntie A got a B in o level Chemistry!

that's what is confusing me. She just had a commendation from her science teacher saying how they were pleased with her marks and effort. So what is the point of these CAts then? Help I'm confused. And to think I hated SATS

The CATs are Cognative Ability Tests and are made up of 3 separate tests: one for Verbal Reasoning (literacy-based); Numeric reasoning (might not be called that exactly but it deals with numbers and number-patterns) and one called Non-verbal reasoning, which is perhaps the most interesting one as it deals with spacial awareness and recognition of patterns & shapes amongst other things.

Each gives a reading between 70 and 130 with 100 being the average (like IQ tests).

The verbal CAT indicates ability with words but is designed to also look at understanding of concepts like opposites, similarities, etc. (an e.g. of a typical question might be "large is to big as small is to .... wide/little/low" and the child picks the best fit).

It is quite possible for a child to score highly in one or two of the three tests and lower in one so that their average goes down.

You'd need to find out which if the tests your dd got the score of 88 in or whether it was an average of the 3. Tbh, I'd trust the CAT scores anyday over the SATs, because the CATs are looking at actual inate ability rather than anything that can be revised for and learned. And it certainly doesn't mean yyour dd won;t do well in her GCSEs; it just might mean she finds some areas of her learning harder than others.

Dh and I did these tests ourselves when I was using them at my school just to see how we did. My Verbal score was really high and non-verbal ok but numeric was rubbish! Dh's numeric was very high as was his verbal but non-verbal just foxed him completely even though he's a clever bloke. He can't read maps very well and that seems to fit in with the scores he got.

CATs are used by the school to set targets for the years ahead. At my school, we get the results for the kids in our class but mainly use them to look through and see if there's anything surprising (usually kids who score highly on CATs but not in class and are therefore underachieving for some reason). Really, the results are irrelevant for the students themselves. We don't set based on them (though some schools might) - instead they are number-crunched and used to predict, for example, what percentage A*-C that year are likely to get. Then as the cohort move up the school we can see whether, as a year group, they are doing well or not. It's not really about the individual as such (although you can use them to predict an individual's number of GCSE passes etc and this might be used to provide guidance on appropriate option choices at 14).

Interestingly, the non-verbal reasoning one is the most important in many ways, as performance on this is a powerful predictor of future success. But it's only about probabilities, and it won't affect how teachers treat students as individual children.

results are:
verbal 104
quantitative 81
non-verbal 80
she is artistic and loves reading, science and computers but doesn't like maths and lacks confidence in this area
her reading age is 11/9 which surprised me, as I thought her reading was at a higher level than that. When i was 11 my own reading age was 18. I think that she needs more encouragement as i think she has found settling in to high school quite difficult.

DD had the same verbal score, but a high reading age. 3 years on and she has been moved up to top set English is predicted A* and frequently has her work read out in class, much to her embarrasment.

She came on in English because she reads avidly. So encourage your DD's love of reading it can really help them achieve.

IT's also worth bearing in mind with both the CATs and the reading age tests that one or two wrong answers can have quite an effect on the final score. CATs and the reading tests are useful but they're not the be all and end all.

I'm not terribly familiar with CATs, but baseline testing does seem to be quite robust. 88 is a low score and out of synch with her SATs, although SATs can be heavily coached for.

I would want the school to do further tests, such as processing speed. For your DD's sake, they need to find out if there was an anomoly on the test, or what the specific problem is.