The CAT4 Test Explained: A Parent's Guide to What It Measures

If your child's school uses the CAT4, the first you may see of it is a report with a row of scores around 100. That report is useful once you know what each figure measures. This guide explains what the test is, how it is sat, and how to read the results, using GL Assessment's own published guidance.

CAT4 is the Cognitive Abilities Test, made by GL Assessment. GL describes it as the UK and Ireland's most widely used test of reasoning abilities for children aged 6 to 17 and over. It measures how a child reasons, which is a different thing from what they have been taught, and schools use it to plan teaching and to estimate what a child could go on to achieve. The facts below come from GL's CAT4 page and its guide to standardised tests, both read on 1 November 2026.

The four batteries

CAT4 is built from four batteries, each looking at one kind of reasoning.

• Verbal reasoning: thinking through problems with words. It matters most in subjects heavy with language.
• Non-verbal reasoning: solving problems set out as shapes and diagrams, with no words to lean on.
• Quantitative reasoning: using numbers to solve problems, a skill that reaches well beyond maths lessons.
• Spatial reasoning: picturing and turning shapes in three dimensions, which many science and design subjects draw on.

The value of CAT4 lies in the comparison between the four. Two children with the same overall result can have very different profiles, and a child who reasons strongly in pictures but less so in words learns best with different support from a child whose profile runs the other way.

How long the CAT4 takes, and how it is sat

GL gives two timings. Children aged 6 to 8 sit two parts of about 30 minutes each. From age 8 upwards the test runs as three parts of about 45 minutes each. Schools can give it on screen, on a computer or tablet, or on paper. Your child's school will tell you which format it uses and when each part takes place.

GL standardised CAT4 on 25,000 students and checks it each year against results from around a quarter of a million. That national sample is what lets a score mean something: every child is compared with children of the same age.

How to read CAT4 results

A CAT4 report uses several kinds of score. Each one describes the same performance from a different angle.

Source: GL Assessment, A guide to standardised tests. Read 1 November 2026.

Read the confidence band before you read the score. Take, as an example, a Standard Age Score of 104 with a band running from 98 to 110: it says your child sits around the average, and no single figure in that range deserves more weight than the others. Then look across the four batteries. The pattern between them tells you more about how your child learns than any one result does.

What schools use the results for

GL says CAT4 gives indicators for later national tests and exams, including Key Stage 2, the 9 to 1 GCSE, A level and the IB. Schools use those indicators as a baseline: a starting point to compare later progress against, and an early signal when a child's reasoning suggests they could achieve more than their classwork shows. An indicator is a projection from a large sample. Treat it as a guide to your child's potential, open to change, and never as a ceiling.

Can your child prepare for the CAT4?

CAT4 measures reasoning, so revision in the usual sense has little to work on. Our view is that a child who has seen the question styles once, and knows how the timing works, will not lose minutes to surprise on the day. Weeks of drilling are a different matter. They can raise a child's familiarity with the format faster than their reasoning, and a school planning teaching around an inflated score gets a less accurate picture of the child it is trying to help.

A good night's sleep, a calm morning, and a short explanation of what the test is for will do more for most children than practice papers.

Where LENS·Cognitive Profile fits

Some families want a reasoning profile outside school, on their own timetable, or alongside a school result they want to understand better. LENS·Cognitive Profile is an independent reasoning profile across the same four kinds of reasoning: verbal, quantitative, non-verbal and spatial. It takes about 40 timed minutes and reports a Standard Age Score, a stanine and a percentile for each battery, with plain guidance on what the profile means.

It is not the CAT4, it is not affiliated with or endorsed by GL Assessment, and it does not predict a CAT4 score. For the wider picture of how reasoning differs from school grades, our guide to why cognitive skills are worth testing goes further.