The Cognitive Abilities Test: Fourth Edition (CAT4) provides a robust, standardised measure of cognitive reasoning ability, without reference to curriculum-based material and regardless of previous achievements or first language.
The information on this page will help you to understand how the tests can be used and how to interpret the data that they generate.
CAT4 Level X is now available to complete on PC and tablet for students in Year 2/Grade 1, allowing you to gain insight into the abilities of your young learners.
A 10 page guide that details the benefits of CAT4 and how to begin analysing your data from the reports:
CAT4 Quick Start Guide
Parent letter templates to be edited by school pre-CAT4 and post-CAT4 assessments taking place:
A PowerPoint presentation to be used by school staff to enable them to feel confident in their discussions about CAT4 with parents:
CAT4: Communications with Parents – Advice for Schools
A PowerPoint presentation that can be used by staff to support discussions with parents at events such as parents’ evenings:
CAT4 is available in paper or digital formats and can be administered individually or in a group setting to produce robust and rigorous results from age 6.6 to 17+ years.
It is important to select the correct level for the students being tested, and to follow the administration guidance to ensure an accurate result.
Click on the links below for further information :
Test level age guide
Digital administration guide
Digital demo
CAT4 teacher guide
Scoring and Reporting Service
What do I need to buy?
A short guide that is aimed at non-teaching, admissions staff to enable them to identify key information from the CAT4 reports:
CAT4 Guide to Admissions
First, administer all four CAT batteries in the standard way. If a student has specific language difficulties, then this should be revealed in the profile of his or her scores across the four batteries. We might expect the Verbal score to be significantly lower than either the Quantitative, Non-verbal or Spatial score. (Significant in this context means a difference of 10 or more Standard Age Score points.) If this is the case, then you have independent evidence to confirm the student's difficulties in reasoning with words as compared to numbers, patterns or spatial concepts.
Second, to isolate a specific problem with reading, you could read some of the verbal questions to the student. If their response to these questions is markedly better than on the first occasion this might isolate reading as the problem. This would suggest that the student's 'true' reasoning score is obscured by reading difficulties. In CAT4 it is recommended that students with a stanine score of 3 or below on the Verbal tests should be administered a reading test as a follow up.
Yes, the indicators for KS2, GCSE and AS/A Levels have all been updated for CAT4.
If you need to re-run the Group report for teachers in order to produce a series of reports for small groups of students such as tutor groups or you need to add in late arrivals, there is no charge.
Effective use of the data from CAT4 allows schools to personalise teaching and learning, set realistic but challenging targets and identify where interventions are needed.
The combination reports bring together data from CAT4 and other assessments to add context to students’ attainment and progress.
Definitions of each of the scores to support your interpretation of the assessment reports:
Standardised Scores Explained
