This article provides information and advice about when and how frequently to administer PAT Early Years Maths tests to your students.
Related article: Choosing the right PAT Early Years Maths test
PAT Early Years Maths provides four tests across a two-year period, which aligns to testing times every six months, rather than once a year for other PAT assessments. This is because learning in the first two years of school generally occurs at a faster speed than learning at other times in formal schooling and requires more frequent monitoring of progress and potential gaps.
The assessments are designed to be diagnostic and to pinpoint strengths and gaps early so that monitoring of long-term progress can be better followed. Therefore, administration times of the tests can be adjusted to the needs of the student. For example, by allowing longer than six months between tests for a struggling student (while using other resources and teacher judgement to indicate when they will be ready for the next test) and allowing a shorter period of three or four months for a student who is improving rapidly and working beyond their expected level.
The PAT Early Years assessment data is reported on the same scale as the PAT Maths 4th Edition and PAT Maths Adaptive assessments, enabling longitudinal tracking of students from the early years of school through to Year 10. The PAT Early Years strands are the same as those reported in PAT Maths.