About the National Tests

Online assessments in reading and numeracy are designed to help teachers and learners understand how a learner’s reading and numeracy skills are developing and to plan next steps. They are designed to support learning and teaching as part of schools’ wider assessment arrangements under Curriculum for Wales. The assessments are for formative use, so that all maintained schools have information on the reading and numeracy skills of their learners and a common understanding of strengths and areas for improvement in these skills. 

The assessments are mandatory; this means that learners in Years 2 to 9 in maintained schools (including community, voluntary-aided, voluntary-controlled and foundation) must take the personalised assessments in reading and numeracy at least once during the school year. Numeracy is taken in 2 parts: Numeracy (Procedural) and Numeracy (Reasoning).

The assessments are ‘adaptive’ which means that questions are selected based on the learner’s response to the previous question or questions. When learners answer questions correctly they will receive more challenging questions, and when learners answer incorrectly they will receive easier questions. This personalisation means that every learner will see a different set of questions, and the number of questions will vary.

This process continues until the assessment system has covered areas across the curriculum and gathered sufficient information on the learner’s responses.

Instructions for parents to access the assessment results and understand them

https://hwb.gov.wales/curriculum-for-wales/reading-and-numeracy-assessments/personalised-assessments-information-for-parents-and-carers