Cognitive assessment is booming; around one and a half million pupils now sit tests every year and the numbers are rising. Originally tarred with the brush of the traditional IQ test, cognitive assessment fell from favour in the wake of comprehensive schooling and accusations of determinism and narrow cultural bias. But it is now back in force. Schools are using the tests in setting and streaming, to set targets for pupils and staff, to rescue under-achievers and to measure the value they have added to pupils’

attainment.

With its verbal and non-verbal reasoning questions, cognitive assessment still seems similar to IQ testing, yet its proponents insist that it is very different.

“People remember the 11-plus and the idea of static and unchanging ability, but cognitive assessment is not a measure of fixed potential. Good teaching can change scores and outcomes,” explains Dr Steve Strand of nferNelson.

Its battery of cognitive ability tests (CATs) is taken by about a million pupils a year, mostly in Year 7 or Year 9. According to the company, the tests give schools a picture of pupils’ reasoning skills, their ability to relate different concepts and their capacity to work with novel problems fluently and creatively. Research has shown that all these qualities have a significant impact on future academic performance.

The CATs’ main rival in the assessment market is MidYIS, a baseline assessment system for Years 7 to 9 introduced in 1997 and now used in a third of English secondary schools. This measures similar abilities to the cognitive tests, but it also includes a test of proof-reading skills or perceptual speed and accuracy, which is said to be another accurate predictor of future academic success.

The main difference between the two is length: CATs comprise three separate assessments : verbal and non-verbal reasoning and mathematical ability; MidYIS is one 45-minute test. nferNelson has cast doubt on MidYIS, suggesting that it is too short to be reliable. The company also questions whether the system has been around long enough to make robust predictions about pupils’ future performance.

Thousands of pupils are tracked from Years 7 to 11 to gauge the relationship between performance in cognitive tests and GCSE grades. Both testing systems can offer graphs indicating pupils’ likely GCSE grades in a range of subjects. Carol Fitz-Gibbon, professor of education at Durham University and the originator of MidYIS, says it is at least as reliable as CATs at predicting GCSE grades. Her system, she says, is not designed to label children, but to indicate how difficult it will be to get them through exams.

Whatever the merits of the two tests, instead of regarding pupils’

potential as fixed, many schools are using the results to improve students’

performance. At the St Philip Howard Catholic high school in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, for instance, staff set targets for each student by taking the GCSE grade predicted by the CATs score and “adding a grade”. The school believes that parents have a right to know how their children are doing. Staff explain how the tests work and exactly how the targets have been set.

The tests are also invaluable in identifying under-achievers. At West Calder high school in West Lothian, staff use Year 7 CATs scores to predict what pupils should score in school exams. If a pupil consistently falls 10 per cent below their target, they will receive support and their parents will be informed. Students who are doing well - 10 per cent higher than predicted - will be rewarded.

Despite their increasing popularity with schools, tests such as CATs and MidYIS are still viewed as narrow and rigid by some psychologists.

“They are a very poor indicator of potential for children from deprived backgrounds and ethnic minorities,” says Julian Elliott, director of research at Sunderland University’s school of education. He is a supporter of dynamic assessment, which measures how much a child can benefit from instruction. Here, a child is shown how to do a task and then assessed. He believes this is far more effective than conventional testing. “If you were trying to work out how good at golf your child might be, you wouldn’t just give them two clubs and a ball and see how they got on. It would be much better to give them two or three lessons before you rated their chances,” he says.

Joan Figg of WS Atkins, which runs the educational psychology services in Southwark, south London, argues that cognitive assessment discriminates against pupils from ethnic-minorities. Conventional tests, she says, are based on skills such as sequencing, which are unfamiliar in some cultures.

“We prefer to work out where pupils could get to with the right kind of help,” she says. In Southwark, dynamic assessment is used with pupils who have special educational needs.

Pioneered in Russia, the system is now being used all over the world. It is also advocated by Professor Robert Sternberg of Yale University, who believes that “successful” intelligence is “the ability to adapt, shape and select environments so as to accomplish one’s goals”. Successful intelligence requires creative and practical as well as analytical abilities, qualities which could be measured by dynamic assessment.

As assessment continues to grow in schools, it seem certain that debates about different ways of measuring ability will also flourish.

Further information: CATs: www.nfer-nelson.co.ukMidYIS: www.cem.dur.ac.uk