What is it?
The New Group Maths Test (NGMT) is a termly, digital, adaptive assessment for students aged six to 12 years. It's a standardised test designed to measure students' mathematical knowledge and skills by benchmarking results against the national average, thereby allowing teachers to identify potential or any barriers to learning precisely and quickly.
Why is it different to other assessments?
NGMT is adaptive, which means that the difficulty of the questions adjusts in response to each individual student's answers. This makes for a highly personalised test experience, as well as one that is also standardised against national norms.
How inclusive is it?
Its adaptive nature makes it extremely inclusive. NGMT is designed to support every student - whether they are good at maths or not, whether they are confident or not.
What is the student experience?
A key consideration in the development of NGMT was that it should be as positive an experience as possible for each student. No practice or preparation is necessary, and assessments are personalised and adapt automatically according to the answers the student gives - wrong answers trigger easier questions and correct answers harder ones.
What does it cover?
Number and algebra, fractions, decimals, percentages, proportion and ratio, measurement, geometry and statistics.
Is NGMT intended for specialists?
No, the assessment has been developed specifically to ensure that it delivers the most useful information to all teachers, regardless of experience, to enable them to make informed judgements and targeted interventions.
Who should take it?
NGMT has been designed for children in Years 2 to 7, allowing for rigorous monitoring of attainment and progress across a child's primary years and at the important transition point into secondary education.
When and where should it be taken?
The assessment can be taken termly on a PC, laptop or tablet and usually takes children between 45-60 minutes to complete. It can be particularly useful at transition, between schools or year groups, by providing an assessment of student attainment as well as areas of strength and challenge. And it neatly complements our other adaptive assessments - the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) and New Group Spelling Test (NGST).
Does NGMT only measure attainment?
No, it measures curriculum effectiveness, within and across schools and also identifies areas of relative strength and those for further development for individuals and groups, thereby helping teachers provide the right support for each student. Moreover, it can be used as a screener for potential dyscalculia - something that affects 6% of all children and which translates into one or two children in every class.
Is it available on paper?
No, the adaptive nature of NGMT makes it unsuitable for non-digital formats.
How accessible is the data?
NGMT's reporting system, accessed through GL Assessment's online testing platform Testwise, offers flexible data visualisation and analysis options. The system can be customised to meet the differing needs of various MAT and school roles: from school leaders and data managers to maths subject leaders and classroom teachers. You can scrutinise your data for different groups of students in whatever way you need.
How does NGMT complement other assessments?
One of the benefits of NGMT is that it complements schools' use of other assessments. Schools using NGRT and/or NGST will have consistency in testing and reporting, while NGMT can help to provide additional touch points for schools using Progress Test in Maths (PTM) as an end-of-year summative test. The triangulation of NGMT data with other sources, such as the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT4), will give teachers an enhanced picture of students' abilities and attainment to support classroom-based decision-making.
