Hearing the Call: The St Andrew’s Story

In the heart of Sydney lies St Andrew’s Cathedral School, founded in 1885 and home to around 1,450 students across its multiple campuses. Common to many schools, St Andrew’s has a rich diversity of students or, put more simply, many children who share the same age but not necessarily the same background or learning styles: uncovering each child’s personal potential was the challenge. Sound familiar?

Traditionally, results from achievement data were the metrics used to tell the child’s story but, of course, this only tells part of the story and typically starts at the end, when the child is tested. Teachers could see how students were performing, but these measures didn’t always reveal their true potential – especially for students whose circumstances made typical classroom assessment difficult.

The Head of Gifted Education at the school, Estee Stephenson, summed it up for her school:

“The measure was based on achievement, not on ability, and was therefore not identifying gifted students in line with best practice.”

She needed a different approach.

Her research into best practice in the field led her to adopt Renaissance’s CAT4 approach, in which children are asked to process information, solve problems, and reason across four key areas: verbal, non-verbal, quantitative, and spatial. It proved to be a game-changer – not only for the Primary school but, as it was rolled out across campuses, for the whole school. As Estee says:

“What’s interesting is that this was a gifted problem – we didn’t know who our most gifted students were – but then going through the options and finding a solution, ended up being a solution for everybody. It’s not just for the gifted kids, it’s not just for the English as an Additional Language (EAL) kids, it’s for the whole school.”

The CAT4 approach also had an unexpected benefit for one particular child which turned out to be life-changing for him. He was hearing-impaired, bright, and deeply engaged, but his previous academic results didn’t clearly reflect his potential. Traditional classroom methods and supports had not been targeted to his learning needs and, therefore, his potential had been undiscovered. Without deeper insight or evidence to the contrary, teachers could only react to what they could see in class – and that did not allow them to confidently place him in a more advanced pathway.

When the school introduced CAT4, thankfully, this student’s learning potential was revealed.

The data showed a more ‘whole student’ picture altogether: this student had extremely high underlying reasoning ability. The potential was there — it just hadn’t been visible through traditional performance measures. On the strength of this data, St Andrew’s Cathedral School placed him into their gifted classes, and he has been acing them ever since.

A further development directly attributable to CAT4 is how parents have reacted to class placement since its inception. Estee notes:

“In the past we have had parental complaints about class placements. Last year we didn’t have any complaints at all, meaning that our identification has improved and parents are reassured that we’re seeing what they see at home and we are making the appropriate placements.”

This outcome is, of course, hugely significant and gives both parents and teachers more confidence that each child is being placed on a pathway to personal success.

This, of course, is a story about the whole school, its principles, its teaching and learning ambitions, and its fierce desire to uncover the learning potential of each child – regardless of how elusive that may seem. School-wide, CAT4 has been adopted as an objective, proven and trusted method of uncovering a child’s potential and helping to confidently inform the support that child will need in order to flourish to the best of their ability.

The outcome of implementing CAT4 on gifted education and learning support can be measured in terms of data and academic success but, harder to quantify, is the confidence it engenders in knowing that you, the teacher, are doing all you can to see each child’s potential.