Do these CAT4 results suggest extra help/assessme is needed?

[N00bie]

I'm new to the forum (and the world of 11+/senior school applications) and have come across a few posts suggesting that CAT4 scores that vary by 10 points or more between different categories could suggest that additional support is needed in certain areas.

My child took their first CAT4 test (on a computer at school, presumably run by DL Assessments) in September, at the start of Year 4, and their results seem to me to be varied. They are a keen reader and comprehension seems fine, but their VR and Spacial scores were over 10 points below their top score in QR. Is this likely to improve with familiarity of the style of question, or should we be seeking some extra support? I was expecting VR to be their top score so don't want to leave it too late if a bit of help is required.

To avoid drip feeding, scores are: QR: 131, NVR: 126, VR: 119, SR: 113, Overall: 122

[yoyo123]

“average” is usually taken to be 85 to 115 on norm referenced tests
(2 standard deviations) So they are not low at all. I wouldn’t be worried. Perhaps practice some VR and Spatial reasoning stuff if you are considering doing 11+.

Jigsaws, word puzzles, etc

[N00bie]

Thanks Yoyo, that's very useful to know. School only sent home scores, no stanines etc, so I've found these forums very helpful in making sense of it all.

Child has never been good at jigsaws actually so that makes a lot of sense. There are problems with vision as well (possibly no 3D vision) but I don't know whether that's relevant?

I've seen a few comments on these forums and elsewhere that a difference of 10 points or more can be a bit of a red flag though, so although the scores themselves seem to be OK I wondered if that discrepancy was worth looking into. Or do you think some targeted practice alone should cover it?

[PettswoodFiona]

DD has never been good at spatial, we worked on it a bit as it was in the Kent test but in lots of tests it isn't a feature. We gave up trying too hard as we were worried it would dent her confidence in other areas and agreed it was a loss she could take as her scores in other areas were brilliant. If it had been maths or English I may have worried more but for spatial we probably nudged her score up a bit and then told her not to worry about it! She just got a clutch of 9s at GCSE and is now in lower sixth so it can't have hindered too much!

[yoyo123]

I struggle with spatial ones, things like nets drive me up the wall!

[summersun]

Spatial is always an outlier for my 2 kids on Cat4 and for other kids I know.