Cognitive abilities underpin the ease and speed with which pupils can grasp new concepts and ideas across the curriculum. These Verbal Abilities Tests provide a reliable tool for assessing academic ability, particularly in verbally-based subjects and among pupils for whom English is the first language. As such, they give an objective indicator of individual pupil potential which can help to establish appropriate teaching and learning expectations. The tests also help to identify underachievers and pupils needing learning support, while allowing teachers to 'benchmark' new intakes, review value added and evaluate school performance.
The tests are especially useful for assessing groups of wide chronological age and ability, making them ideal for quick screening and as a guide to grouping for teaching. Two overlapping tests cover ages 6–10 and 8–13, and can be used at any time during the school year: each test takes about 55 minutes to administer to a full class, at a pace determined by the teacher. The presentation is non-threatening, allowing all pupils to engage with the varied range of question-types. All items are objectively scored, and norms – derived from a UK-wide standardisation sample of more than 14000 pupils – given as standardised scores (quotients) and percentiles.
The parallel Nonverbal Abilities Tests are also available from H&S.
Compared to the year-on-year Reasoning Progress Tests (RsPT), by the same authors, these tests offer a wider age coverage and range of item-types, and are better suited to ‘one-off’ assessments. They also yield more precise measures of children scoring close to the ceiling or near the guessing threshold on the RsPT.