Special Education Needs

Please can you provide us with more information on EAL and HI norms?

No normative information is available for children with EAL or HI. The focus of BAS3 is to provide a solid, reliable and up-to-date test normed on a general population. However, we hope to encourage the collection of specific data for such groups after publication via the online scoring service.

Please note specific groups were not excluded from the standardisation if they were being taught in mainstream classrooms.

Will the colour changes make some of the tasks more cognitively complex for some children, i.e. pupils with visual impairments?

Colour was added to the Picture Similarities scale to make it more engaging, realistic and easier for children to relate to. We regarded it as more beneficial to improve the scale for the larger majority of children without visual impairment, than for the smaller majority of those with a visual impairment. Users therefore need to make a clinical judgement about the use of this scale if they think a particular child cannot cope with the pictures.

What measures have been taken to make the materials accessible to children with disabilities?

BAS3 takes the same measures as BAS II in response to children with disabilities.

Nearly all responses require either pointing or one-word replies; very few require physical manipulation. BAS3 also contains relatively few timed tests, which obviously helps children with disabilities complete the tasks within their own time. The Verbal Comprehension inset tray is now also significantly bigger than previously, which makes it easier to manipulate for children with disabilities.

In addition, the new Recognition of Designs scale eliminates the drawing elements previously needed to generate a GCA.