Lumping pupils into large, broad and quite vague categories like levels (or the popular ‘emerging, expected, exceeding’ model) practically guarantees that some pupils will be miscategorised. Pupils who genuinely struggle or excel at a subject will be placed in the same category as pupils who are much closer to average.

Take the example of a quiet, hard-working and well-behaved child who has an average level. She may still have great difficulties with reading, but have developed coping mechanisms that hide her struggles. Because she is so diligent and has an average level, a teacher may not pick up on her struggles.

Standardised tests can help to identify such pupils. They report a pupil’s performance on a much finer and more nuanced scale than levels. Standardised scores run from approximately 70–140, meaning that individual differences can be seen with much greater clarity. Second, the structure of tests like GL Assessment’s New Group Reading Test (NGRT) allows you to diagnose where a pupil’s difficulties might lie – for example, when she reads, is she struggling with vocabulary, or with decoding words?

Assessment in Focus

Who gets missed

How can we identify and support 'hard to spot' children?

Introduction