Testing SEND and EAL students

Broadly, we recommend the following regarding accommodations for NGRT. The advice may vary depending on the purpose of the assessment and the needs of each individual child. The access arrangements differ depending on the type of test selected. For most accommodations, we broadly recommend selecting the paper format of NGRT. Please see below. 

Paper

The following test accommodations CAN be used with NGRT Paper: 

• Additional time (alternatively the test can be easily split into two sections and delivered over 2 sittings within a week) 
• Scribe/transcribe 
• Prompt (prompting students to keep them on track) 
• Rest break 
• Coloured overlay 
• Enlargement 

The following MIGHT be acceptable to use with NGRT paper, please contact us for further details:

• Reader (it is acceptable for the instructions to be read to the student, but not the questions themselves as the assessment is testing their reading ability) 

Digital

The following test accommodations CAN be used with NGRT Digital: 

• Prompt (prompting students to keep them on track) 
• Rest break (please note that the student’s work will only be saved once the ‘End Test’ button is selected, so consider this when planning timings and Rest breaks) 
• Coloured overlay 

The following test accommodations CANNOT be used with NGRT Digital: 

• Reader (audio is provided for all relevant instructions. For students with a hearing impairment we recommend using the paper test where a Reader can be used) 
• Enlargement (we recommend using the paper test for students who require enlargement) 

The following test accommodations MIGHT be acceptable for use with NGRT digital, please contact us for further details: 

• Additional time (student’s work will only be saved once the ‘End Test’ button has been selected so please consider this when planning timings)
• Practical assistant (you may wish to consider using the Paper version in this instance) 

If you have other accommodations or needs that are not listed above, please contact us:

• UK customers: [email protected]
• International customers: [email protected]

It is important to note that these tests have not been standardised using Access Arrangements. Therefore, when providing these during the test process caution is made to the impact that this may have on scores.

NGRT tests a student’s reading ability within the English language. It is possible that EAL learners will score low if they are beginning to learn English. Statistically, non-EAL students perform better than EAL students by an average of 3.6 SAS points. The difference is significant and exists at all age groups. EAL on its own does not give an indication of a student’s proficiency in the English language as other contextual factors such as  how long the student has been in the country or the age of the student on arrival in the country etc. also need to be considered.

The NGRT test can be used to support personalised learning and target setting and as it can be sat up to 3 times a year, can be used to measure progress.