The CAT4 test, explained for parents

Many secondary schools in the UK give CAT4 early in Year 7, and many primary, independent and international schools use it from Year 4 or so. Teachers use the results to see how a child learns best, to spot a child whose ability is higher than their school work suggests, to set targets and, in some schools, to group pupils or help with admissions. GL's guides describe all of these uses.

There is no pass mark. Each child is compared with children of the same age, to the month, across the country, so a September birthday is not an advantage over an August one.

Each battery has its own guide with free practice and worked examples: verbal, quantitative, non-verbal and spatial.

GL's timing charts give the same clocks on paper and on screen. The first session is usually the two non-verbal tests, and the verbal, number and spatial tests follow in GL's order, though schools can arrange the sessions to fit their timetable. The younger levels, Pre-A, X and Y, have one test per battery in two sessions of about 30 minutes.

The practice examples are untimed and can be repeated, and GL's advice is that a child should understand what each test asks before it starts. For a child who freezes when something looks unfamiliar, that short practice still comes with a clock straight after it. That is the moment a little familiarity helps.

Sources online disagree about which level goes with which year, partly because GL gives an age range as well as a year and partly because schools adjust. The CAT4 levels page goes through GL's own table and the reasons a school might choose differently.

A Standard Age Score compares your child with children of the same age in years and months. The profile compares their verbal and spatial scores with each other: a child with a "spatial bias" tends to learn well from pictures and models, one with a "verbal bias" through talking and reading. No profile is better than another. The CAT4 scores page explains each number and what schools do with it.

GL Assessment says plainly that it advises against any kind of practice before CAT4 and does not endorse any practice materials, ours included, because CAT4 is not a test of learnt knowledge and coaching could make a score less accurate. We take that seriously. Our questions are for meeting the formats once or twice so nothing on the day is a shock, not for drilling a child towards a number.

The things that make a real difference are ordinary ones: a good night's sleep, breakfast, knowing that a blank scores no more than a wrong answer, and knowing that nobody finishes every test. If your child would like to see the formats, the free CAT4 practice test has all eight on GL's clocks.

There are more, from all eight tests, on CAT4 sample questions.

The two overlap in style: 11+ papers often include verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and children who have seen one will recognise parts of the other. But CAT4 has its own formats, such as folding and punching, and its own short clocks. If your child is sitting CAT4 for a selective place, ask the school which level it uses and whether results are used on their own or alongside interviews and other tests.