Entry tests at international schools

What schools are testing for

A new pupil walks into an international school from another country, often from another curriculum, sometimes in a second language. The school has a few hours to work out whether the child can keep up, whether they need English support, and whether the school can serve them well.

The entry test is how the school answers those questions in a defensible, comparable way. It is the only point in the relationship where the school sees the child without the parents' framing.

Three categories do most of the work: cognitive / reasoning tests (CAT4) that look at how a child thinks rather than what they have been taught; achievement / adaptive tests (NWEA MAP Growth, ISEB) that measure where a child sits against an international cohort; and school-set papers in English, maths, and sometimes a second language. Layered on top: language screens for non-native English speakers, and interviews for the child and parents.

CAT4

The Cognitive Abilities Test, Fourth Edition (CAT4), published by GL Assessment, is the most widely used cognitive test in British international schools. A school in Dubai, Singapore, Madrid, or Lagos that uses CAT4 is running the same instrument as a state grammar school in Kent.

CAT4 is four batteries, each about 25 minutes, around two hours in total with breaks:

• Verbal reasoning. Thinking with words.
• Non-verbal reasoning. Thinking with shapes and patterns. The most language-fair of the four.
• Quantitative reasoning. Thinking with numbers, not arithmetic speed.
• Spatial ability. Thinking in three dimensions. The strongest single predictor of later STEM performance in GL's longitudinal data.

The headline output is the Standard Age Score (SAS), normed at 100 with a standard deviation of 15. A child scoring 100 is at the median for their age; 120 is roughly the 90th percentile. CAT4 also reports a national percentile rank and a stanine (1 to 9). The teacher who picks up the new child the following Monday sees the SAS and the four-battery profile.

Use varies sharply by school. In a selective British school overseas, a sub-100 SAS on more than one battery may end the application. In a non-selective school, the same score is information for the class teacher and the child still has a place. A 15+ point gap between verbal and non-verbal scores is a flag in either school: often a child working in a second language, more rarely a specific learning need.

CAT4 cannot be meaningfully crammed for. Familiarisation papers from GL Assessment are reasonable; commercial coaching that promises a "CAT4 score" is not.

NWEA MAP Growth

NWEA MAP Growth (Measures of Academic Progress) is the dominant adaptive achievement test in American-curriculum international schools and a growing number of British and IB-stream schools globally. NWEA is now part of HMH; the test is the same.

MAP Growth is computer-adaptive: the next question depends on whether the child got the last one right. A strong reader is pulled rapidly into harder vocabulary and inference passages; a weaker reader is held at the level where the test can still measure them. About 45 to 60 minutes per subject, across reading, language usage, mathematics, and science.

The score is the RIT score (Rasch unIT), on an equal-interval, vertically scaled measurement scale. A 215 in Year 4 means the same thing as a 215 in Year 8. Growth from autumn to spring is therefore measurable in the same units, which is the entire point of the test: MAP is built for growth tracking, not selection.

Most international schools sit MAP three times a year. Schools see RIT, the projected growth target, the percentile against the NWEA international norms sample, and a Lexile range for reading. A Year 6 child arriving with a reading RIT of 195 is in the bottom quartile against international peers; 220 is in the top quartile.

Selective American-curriculum schools that use MAP usually pair it with school-set writing and an interview. Non-selective schools use the baseline to place the child and plan teaching from Monday.

ISEB Common Pre-Test

The ISEB Common Pre-Test (CPT) is run by the Independent Schools Examinations Board for entry to English independent senior schools, typically at age 11 to 13. 300+ senior schools in England, plus a smaller pool of British international schools, accept it.

The pre-test is online, about two and a half hours, in four sections: English, mathematics, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning. Results are age-standardised so children sitting at different points in Year 6 can be compared fairly. A child can sit the CPT only once in any academic year.

Some British international schools in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, and Switzerland use the CPT as their own entry instrument or as a bridge for families applying to UK boarding from overseas. A child sitting CPT in Hong Kong can have the result released to a list of UK senior schools without sitting it again. The travel logistics are the reason the test exists in this form.

A separate ISEB Common Academic Scholarship Examination runs at age 13 for scholarship candidates. Different test, different cohort.

School-set assessments

Beyond the published instruments, almost every international school sets its own written entry papers. Typically 30 to 60 minutes each in English (comprehension plus a short writing task) and mathematics, sometimes a science paper from senior school onwards, occasionally a second-language paper.

What schools look for in their own papers, rarely stated in the prospectus:

• Whether the child can write a paragraph. A two-line answer in shaky English when the child claims native-level fluency is the most common red flag in international admissions.
• Whether the maths the child has covered matches the year group. A child moving from Singapore Maths into a British system usually sits above year level; a child moving from a US elementary curriculum into Year 7 of a British school usually sits below it. Both are decisions the school needs to make before the child arrives.
• How a child handles unfamiliar question formats without panicking, without giving up, without copying.

In-house papers are marked against the school's own criteria. Asking to see the marked script is reasonable, and many schools will share it.

Language screening

For a child whose first language is not English, the language screen is the test that matters most. The cognitive score and the maths paper can be excellent and the school can still decline a place, or accept with EAL (English as an Additional Language) support attached, on the basis of the language result.

The instruments vary. WIDA ACCESS for ELLs / WIDA Screener is the standard in American-curriculum and IB schools. It tests listening, speaking, reading, and writing on a 1 to 6 scale, and most schools set a minimum band for direct entry. Cambridge English Qualifications appear in some British schools. In-house EAL screeners are common: a 20-minute conversation with the EAL coordinator, a short writing task, a guided reading sample.

What schools test for is not vocabulary range. It is whether the child can access the curriculum in English. A Year 4 child who can hold a conversation but cannot read a maths word problem will struggle in the year group regardless of how confident they sound. A Year 9 child arriving from a French lycée with strong reading comprehension but limited spoken English will usually catch up fast; the reverse rarely does.

Schools that take EAL learners seriously have a named programme with named staff, intake limits per year group, and a clear exit point. Schools that don't will accept the child, charge EAL fees, and place them in the back of an English Literature class.

Interviews

Almost every international school interviews. The interview is for the child, the parents, or both, and runs from ten minutes to a structured hour.

What schools watch for in the child: whether they can answer a question they weren't expecting ("What did you read last week?" rather than "Tell me about yourself"), curiosity and self-direction, and behaviour under mild pressure.

What schools watch for in the parents: whether the parents and the school are aligned on what success looks like, whether the parents will be partners or adversaries, and whether the school is the right move for this child. A small school that knows it cannot meet a specific SEN need will sometimes decline a place at interview, even when the entry test was strong.

Interviews are not weighted in any published formula. They are weighted heavily in the head's decision.

Selective vs non-selective

The same battery of tests does very different work depending on the school.

A school that says "we don't reject anyone on the entry test" is either a non-selective school describing its admissions policy honestly, or a selective school in non-selective marketing. The published acceptance rate carries the signal; the prospectus does not.

What entry-test results do and don't predict

Cognitive tests like CAT4 correlate moderately with GCSE results five years later. Achievement tests like MAP Growth correlate strongly with the next test, weakly with the test after that, and only loosely with IB or A-Level outcomes at age 18.

A motivated 11-year-old with a 105 SAS in a strong teaching environment routinely outperforms a 125 SAS in a weak one. Year 7 entry scores are useless at predicting whether the same child will choose Higher Level Mathematics at age 16, or what grade they will get.

The score is a snapshot. The teaching that follows it does the work.

Practical notes for families

A few things hold across most schools, with the caveat that different schools use the same test very differently, so the school's own admissions team is the source that matters.

• Sleep. The single biggest preventable hit to an entry-test score is a tired child at 9am.
• Familiarisation, not coaching. Familiarisation papers from the test publisher (GL Assessment for CAT4, NWEA's example items for MAP) reduce nerves. Long coaching programmes for cognitive tests rarely produce the gain parents expect, and schools can usually tell.
• Honesty about the child's English. If the child speaks English at home but at a lower register than the test assumes, the school needs to know before the test, not after.
• The post-test conversation. Many schools will not share raw cognitive scores. The useful question is whether there is anything in the profile the school wants to flag, and whether there is anything the school wants the family to surface that the application didn't. A school that won't engage with that has told you something.
• Second sittings are rare. If the child was ill, jet-lagged, or upset on the day, ask. Some schools will accommodate, most won't volunteer it.

The entry test is the start of a longer relationship, not its summary. The test is one input. The teaching that follows it decides the rest.