The Complete Digital Solution (CDS) is a ready-made digital package of 11 of our leading assessments, with unlimited use. It will help you to enable a smooth transition back to school following lockdown and give you an unrivalled understanding of your pupils’ potential and achievement right through school.
These assessments will provide you with the data to baseline your pupils, at the right time for you after they return. They will also support you in understanding current levels of attainment, including pupils’ reading ages, helping you to identify any gaps in knowledge across core subjects and aiding your curriculum planning. Additionally, our PASS measure will allow you to gauge the attitudes and mindset of your pupils as they return to school after this period of absence.
CDS includes:
Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT4)
Baseline and Baseline Progress
The Progress Test Series (English, maths, science)
New Group Spelling Test (NGST)
The assessments cover ability, attainment in core subjects, reading, spelling, dyslexia, dyscalculia and pupil attitudes:
Tailored, easy to access reports enable you to share results with different audiences, including inspectors and parents.
It’s statistically robust, with national benchmarks for all assessments based on impressive pupil numbers. The PT Series (for example) was standardised against a UK sample of over 100,000 pupils, with benchmarks verified every year based on analysis from half a million pupils. PASS was standardised on 600,000 children.
CDS offers great value for money – it will save you over 60% on the cost of the individual assessments within the package.
The assessments cover ability, attainment in core subjects, reading, spelling and barriers to learning including pupil attitudes. As the assessments are digital you save on marking time and results and analysis are instant so you can act straight away. Combination Reports analyse data from CAT4 together with PTE (English), PTM (Maths) and NGRT (reading) so you can easily identify the children who may not be achieving their potential and plan interventions.
As tests and reports are set within the context of national benchmarks, you know that your recommendations have a sound basis, making discussions with stakeholders more focused. Individualised pupil reports give a snapshot of each child’s strengths and weaknesses. They are specifically designed to support conversations with parents, avoiding technical language, and suggesting strategies for support in the home.
You can use as many of the assessments within the package as you wish and when you wish. All assessments are digital except Progress Test Series in YR and Y1, where paper tests are deemed more appropriate.
Assessments can be taken annually, bi-annually or, at most, termly, ensuring testing is both timely and manageable. Easy to access reports matched to the needs of groups, individuals and parents are available for each assessment.
The assessments within CDS are widely used in primary and secondary schools. For example, over three quarters of a million pupils take CAT4 each year.
Continued support for you and your team is an important aspect of what we offer as part of your subscription to our assessments.
We provide a range of online and face to face training and our Assessment Insights team also helps you make the best use of your assessments through one to one consultations. From talking through the findings of your data to showing you which reports are most useful for your school’s needs. The team consists of educators with a mix of classroom experience, curriculum design, SENCO provision, intervention support and implementation of teaching and learning strategies.
The innovative Nagoya International School, which follows the IB curriculum, is embracing its own philosophy of critical and creative thinking by using CAT4 and PASS to get a holistic view of their students
Using the Cognitive Abilities Test: Fourth Edition (CAT4), Ashoka Universal School has developed a more personalised approach to teaching and learning, ensuring their students make excellent all-round progress.