How can I share information about PAT with students, parents and carers?

Although PAT is specifically designed to help teachers and school leaders understand where students are in their learning, some schools may choose to share PAT results with students, parents and carers to help explain current strengths and weaknesses in a learning area. This helps to give students a sense of agency over their learning progress and engages parents and carers in their child’s education. 

The following topics are covered here:

• What to consider before sharing PAT results data
• Which reports are best for sharing with students, parents and carers
• Downloadable information sheet and report template to share with parents and carers

What to consider before sharing PAT results data:

• PAT is a 'teacher-facing tool', that provides teachers with norm-referenced assessment data that can be used both formatively and summatively to inform and guide teaching and learning.
• Each PAT assessment item (question) has been mapped to the Australian Curriculum, allowing teachers to make informed judgements, related to the curriculum standards, about student learning progress, strengths and needs.
• If teachers or school staff want to share the reports and results with students, it is important to sit one-on-one with students (or parents and carers where needed) to help explain and unpack the results and allow students to celebrate their successes and strengths whilst identifying their learning needs and setting learning goals and challenges
• When sharing report data with a student, it’s important to never show identifying information and results of any other students for data privacy reasons.
• PAT items are ACER's intellectual property and should not, under any circumstances, be provided to students outside of the testing environment. Instead, teachers can review the reports and share content descriptions, strands, sub-strands/strand-processes to find areas of strength versus areas for improvement for the student. Additionally, if the school has a current PAT Teaching Resources Licence, teachers can refer to the teaching activities to unpack and teach concepts related to content found within the tests. 

Which reports are best for sharing with students, parents and carers:

A student's individual report could be a useful tool for a one-on-one discussion with a student. The report shows both the student’s latest scale score and the student’s previous scale score which allows students to gain a sense of how they are progressing. Areas of strength can be celebrated and areas that need attention can be identified and become part of a plan moving forward. 

Using care and consideration not to share any other identifiable student data, staff could share a snapshot of the Achievement and/or Progress reports.

First highlight an individual student by selecting the star icon next to their name in the table, then compare them to whole class and/or norm samples using the box-and-whisker view. It is recommended that you use the export chart (PDF) option at the top of the report.

Generating reports with the ACER Data Explorer

Downloadable information sheet and report template to share with parents and carers:

Linked below are two documents that you may find useful if choosing to share information about PAT and/or PAT results with students, parents and carers.