PAT Spelling Skills (2022) is a set of online spelling assessments that allow you to identify the extent of students’ English spelling skills, to diagnose gaps, identify strengths and weaknesses, and to monitor student progress over time.
PAT Spelling Skills is a substantially revised and improved set of spelling tests. The older PAT Spelling (2011) is still available for schools choosing to continue tracking student progress on the previous spelling scale.
This article provides more information about the differences between these two assessments:
Year levels
PAT Spellings Skills can be used with students from Foundation to Year 10, while PAT Spelling is aimed at students in Years 2 and up.
The focus on letter skills at the lowest levels of PAT Spelling Skills should provide valuable diagnostic information for teachers looking to understand how to support the spelling ability of early years students.
Tests
PAT Spelling Skills comprises twenty audio-based tests organised into five sets, while PAT Spelling only includes eight forms. By providing multiple tests of similar difficulty within a set, PAT Spelling Skills provides more flexibility to monitor spelling development with more frequent test administrations.
Items
New features in the PAT Spelling Skills assessment allow for more authentic spelling tasks, including:
- the identification and correction of misspelled words;
- dictation, where students hear and then type in the correct spelling of a word;
- multiple-choice questions, where students hear and then select the correct spelling of a word;
- completing a word, where Early Years students hear a word and drop the missing letters into place.
PAT Spelling utilises two item types in each test. In the first, the misspelt word is identified for the student, who then has to correctly spell the word, while in the second the student has to identify the misspelt word before correcting it.
Achievement scales
Due to the significant differences between PAT Spelling and PAT Spelling Skills, the two assessments use different scales. Scale scores cannot be directly compared between the two assessments.
Comparison data
Students who complete PAT Spelling can be compared to a norm sample reflective of national Australian achievement. Students' relative achievement is reported as a percentile and stanine ranking against this national data. This norm sample is based on pen-and-paper tests completed in 2007 and is unlikely to be updated.
PAT Spelling Skills is a newer assessment with reference group comparison data that was published in 2023. Students' relative achievement is reported as a percentile ranking against this smaller but more recent set of comparison data.