Literacy and Numeracy Testing

In addition to liaising with primary schools to get to know our students’ academic strengths and areas for improvement, we also run a literacy and numeracy testing session in early September to help us to build our student profiles and plan effective programs to provide every opportunity for our students to achieve success.

All Grade 6 students attending St Albans Secondary College, will complete the Progressive Achievement Test in Mathematics (PAT-M) and the Progressive Achievement Test in Reading (PAT-R). The tests will assess student achievement levels in mathematics, reading comprehension skills, vocabulary knowledge and spelling.

Collecting and understanding student learning data allows us to plan for differentiated instruction to make sure every student has an appropriately challenging and stimulating learning environment that reflects their particular needs.

This testing is not an entrance test and it is not a conclusive statement of a student’s ability. It is just one of the measures we use to inform a snapshot of each child to allow us to better understand, monitor and support their development as they progress through each year level.