What is the CAT4 used for?
The CAT4 can be used by schools in a number of different ways and the wealth of data can provide educators with an objective approach to determining teaching methods:
- School entrance exam – as part of the school’s admission process to ensure children accepted into the school have similar abilities to learn.
- Measure Learner Styles – to better understand the learner styles in a particular cohort of students and modify the teaching approach creating more effective learning experiences.
- GCSE Predictor – the CAT4 has been shown to be an excellent predictor of future academic performance, in particular the CAT4 Year 8 seems to correlate directly with future GCSE grades.
Although it may seem harsh and possibly ethically / morally questionable but private and selective schools generally don’t want children who are too far apart in academic abilities. Teaching then becomes difficult and endd up slowing down to teach to the lowest common denominator. There is of course room for peer learning and differentiated learning approaches but many schools are not willing to compromise on the basic cognitive skills they want each and every child to have.
Many schools are using the CAT4 to determine how they should teach a particular cohort and also to predict a child’s future performance – particularly during their GCSE. Each child learns in a different way and each cohort of children may lean more towards a particular learning style which educators need to identify and use to inform their teaching methods and materials.
By developing your child’s cognitive skills in terms of thinking, reading, learning, remembering, reasoning, and paying attention your child will outperform many other children over time even with a starting point of low topic knowledge, furthermore these skills will support your child in every way and last a lifetime.
Can’t children be assessed in the classroom – why do we need the CAT4?
In a classroom the teacher only sees a few aspects of a child’s ability. Sometimes the child simply hasn’t ever felt the need to really use their cognitive abilities. Verbal skills are easy to identify but this hidden potential by determining reasoning ability, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, make a huge difference to future academic performance. Academic ability and topic knowledge is only one part of the puzzle. The teacher / schools needs to be able to assess the full profile of a child and the CAT4 is an excellent tool to break that down into simply, understandable parts.
Why the CAT4?
The CAT4 is one of the UK (possibly worlds excluding the USA of course) used test of reasoning abilities. It uses at least 25,000 students standardised results to provide an accurate baseline against which your child can be measured. There prove indicators for national tests and examinations during every stage from KS2, SATs, GCSEs and A-Levels. Provide a real insight into the way a child thinks.
