As a co-educational school with 800students aged three to 18, there is no suchthing as a typical background for thestudents that enrol in the British School ofManila. Glenn Hardy, head of the primaryschool explains, “About 30% of ourstudents are British, 24% are Filipino andthe rest are a mix from all over the world.Many have parents on internationalassignments here, perhaps at one of thebanks or at the embassy, so some childrenonly stay with us for a short amount oftime. Entry can be at any point in the term,depending on when a place becomesavailable.”

BSM’s unique status in the Philippinesmeans that demand is high, so studentsneed to be assessed to go on to the waitinglist. “We’re a selective school, but nothighly selective.The most important criteriais that children are able to fully operate inEnglish. Beyond this we also need somepredictor of level – a standardisedassessment that is divorced from thecurriculum so that we can look at ourchildren as individuals, as well as a cohort. It

The British School of Manila (BSM)

is unique in the Philippines as it

operates entirely in English and

follows the UK’s national curriculum

up to age 16, after which students

study the International

Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

(IBDP). However, as children come

from different parts of the world

and have followed many different

syllabuses, BSM needed a form of

assessment that focused on

potential and capability rather than

knowledge.

How the British School of Manilabenefits from online assessment

casestudy

can’t be a curriculum-based test as, forexample, children from Korea or Japan willnot previously have followed the Britishnational curriculum so might score badlydespite being tremendously bright.”

GL Assessment’s Cognitive AbilitiesTest(CAT) assesses numerical, non-verbal andverbal reasoning as well as an element ofspatial ability.The school has been usingCAT for the past seven years, and made thedecision to adopt the digital version twoyears ago.

Glenn explains, “It made complete sensefor us to go online.We have an annual 15%turnover of students and with the rollingentry system, we need to administer CATliterally every week. By testing online, wecan get the results immediately and thedata is available to all the teachers.Previously, subject teachers and heads offaculty would have been made aware of thescores, but the fact they now have betteraccess has opened a lot of eyes to thevalue of CAT results.”

GL Assessment is a leading provider of assessment solutions for children’s education, mentalhealth and wellbeing. GL Assessment is a division of the Granada Learning Group alongsideGL Performance, a leading provider of management tools and resources that are designed tomaximise the impact of self-evaluation, school development planning and school improvement.

casestudy

grades. It gives our staff a general pictureof the students’ overall ability and allowsquick identification of those at theextremes.”

Monitoring attainment

The senior school was keen to develop atracking system to monitor pupils’progress, and as CAT can be used as anindicator for future educational attainment,it was the obvious place to start.

Dinah Hawtree, head of the senior school,explains further. “Over the last year wehave really developed the use of CAT toenable us to work out ‘tracks’ for ourstudents, to help us ensure children arefulfilling their potential. Essentially, wecreated a formula to apply to the children’sCAT scores and this guides staff on thegeneral ability of a child when they takeover new groups.”

At age 14, BSM uses CAT to predictgrades for GCSE results. Dinah continues,“With so many of our children comingfrom backgrounds where education isvalued and parents have high expectations,our pupils tend to outperform children inthe UK.To allow for this, inYears 10 - 11, weuse the results as a target minimum gradethe pupils should be aiming for, and wouldexpect the children to do as well or better.InYears 12 - 13, we use it alongside theGCSE results to set challenging target

Ready, steady, go

Students sit the CAT assessment to see ifthey qualify to be added to the waiting list.Once they have a place, the primary schooltranslates the CAT results into a traffic lightsystem with green indicating children whoare performing above the level for their age,yellow showing that they are at an age-appropriate level and red highlighting anissue.

“The traffic light system is a simple buteffective way to identify any children thatare underperforming when a teacher wouldexpect more from them”.

As an international school, BSM felt theywould benefit from additional summative,reliable testing in Maths and English due tothe proposed changes in the UK’s nationalcurriculum key stage testing, along withuncertain arrival dates of the tests andrestricted availability. “We trialledGL Assessment’s online Progress in Maths(PiM), Progress in English (PiE) and SuffolkReading Scale for our admission testing onentry.This was easy to administer, gave usimmediate feedback in terms of a rawscore, a national curriculum level, and astandardised score compared to UKcohorts. Error analysis data was alsoimmediately available for all children sittingthe test, as well as for cohorts of children.”

Having successfully trialled these tests,BSM made the decision to use them astheir summative testing at the end of allyear groups from year 2 to 6. “Theassessments give us lots of usefulinformation to support our own teacher-assessed data gathered throughout theyear. Used in conjunction wIth CAT, they arean ideal replacement for Key Stage 2 SATsat age 11, before the students move intosenior school.”

In the senior school, Catherine Johnson,assistant head, sums up how CAT helpsthem. “We use CAT to help decide whetherpotential students will be offered a place, tohelp place a new student in an appropriategroup – such as which set for Mathematics– and also to help with tracking and target

For further information, please contact Danielle Morgan:

GLAssessment, 9th Floor East, 389 Chiswick High Road, LondonW4 4ALTel: 0208 996 3632 Email: danielle.morgan@gl-assessment.co.ukwww.gl-assessment.co.uk

GLAssessment is a division of the Granada Learning Group

GLA275

“It’s impossible to compare

curriculum based tests when

students enter the school

from many different countries

representing 46 different

nationalities. Looking at

cognitive ability levels the

playing field.”

April 2011

Benefits

• Accurate ranking of pupils regardlessof previous curriculum followed

• Reliable predictor of ability for allnationalities

• Quick and easy to administer, evenon a rolling basis

• No waiting time for results with CATDigital

• Can be used effectively to setchallenging targets for (I)GCSE andbeyond

grades for students beginning the IBDiploma.”

As well as levelling the playing field forstudents entering the school, all agree thatone of the key benefits of CAT lies in itsaccuracy. “In my experience,” says Dinah,“CAT is a largely reliable predictor of abilityand is simple to administer, both in terms oftesting and getting the scores.”