Our Year 4 through 6 learners sit PATs. These are a set of standardised tests in Literacy, Mathematics and Science.

Teachers use a variety of tests to determine what level students are at, what progress they are making, and where they may need extra help. STAR and Progressive Achievement Tests, commonly known as PATs, are one of the main sets of tests schools use.

PATs are multiple-choice tests designed to help teachers determine achievement levels of students in Mathematics, Reading Comprehension and Listening Comprehension. The test results help teachers decide what kinds of teaching materials are needed and which methods or programmes are most suitable for their students. PATs are also important because they identify the progress a student is making from year to year.

Each year we select the PAT tests that are appropriate to the needs of our school. These may include any of the following: 

PAT: Reading Comprehension assesses how well Year 4 to 10 students understand the text they are reading. Each test is organised around several extended pieces of writing which include stories, poems, reports and explanations.

PAT: Listening Comprehension measures Year 3 to 10 students' ability to understand spoken material. Students listen to a passage and then answer questions. It helps teachers detect children with poor listening skills and is also useful in identifying those children whose listening comprehension performance is significantly different from their ability to comprehend written material.

PAT: Mathematics covers number knowledge, number strategies, algebra, geometry and measurement, and statistics for Years 3 to 10. 

PAT: Junior Science - Thinking with Evidence is explicitly linked to two aspects of The New Zealand Curriculum: the Nature of Science strand of the science learning area (which embeds the science capabilities), and one of the key competencies–thinking. Students are asked to think critically about and use evidence from a range of interesting contexts of relevance to New Zealand students. For Years 4 to 6. 

All tests are completed online.