Background

Hammond Park Secondary College in Perth is an innovative public school committed to supporting student success through tailored learning pathways. As part of this commitment, the school recently introduced Renaissance’s CAT4 as part of its Academic Extension Programme, which is specifically designed to identify and support students with high learning potential from Year 6 onwards. Students with high learning potential are often intuitively recognised by their respective teachers but for teachers to find credible objective measures to support these intuitions can be challenging: hence, the implementation of CAT 4.

Karen Corbett, the school’s Pathways to Success Coordinator, had had previous success in using CAT 4 in her school in the emirate of Sharjah in the UAE, and, therefore, understood its potential. She advocated for its use as a tool that would help to determine academic achievement but, as importantly, as a means of measuring a given student’s learning potential.

As she says, “PAT testing was good for measuring what students had already achieved, but we wanted something that revealed their potential. That’s where CAT4 comes in.” Karen said.

Implementation

To this end, Hammond Park School began using CAT4 in 2025, focusing initially on Year 6 students who were identified as being able to benefit from the Academic Extension Programme. In all, around 55 students sat the first round of assessments and, in conjunction with their SAS scores, 32 students were identified as having the potential to benefit from the programme.

Further, the results and respective student reports were shared with both teachers and parents in order to foster a clearer understanding of each student’s cognitive ability profile. Such has been the success of the programme that the school plans to test all current students in the programme (≈105) so that every teacher has an up-to-date learner profile from 2026 onward.

“We’ll be giving the reports to teachers so they can see students’ biases, what strategies work best, and how to boost learning. Next year, every teacher will have a CAT4 profile for their students.” Karen said.

Early Insights and Next Steps

Although still in its early stages, as stated above, the CAT4 initiative is already influencing planning for 2026. For example, in the Specialisation by Cognitive Strength component, students from Year 8 onwards who have stronger verbal reasoning may specialise in English and Humanities, while those with higher spatial reasoning may focus on STEM subjects. In addition, collaboration among teachers is being facilitated by allowing faculty leaders and subject heads to shape class groupings and aid targetted teaching by using CAT 4 profiling.

“Unlike NAPLAN, CAT4 offers context and strategies. It helps explain why a student might be struggling and gives parents and teachers practical steps to support them.” Karen said.

As alluded to earlier, intuition is often proven to be well placed but, when data is available to back-up or, otherwise, identify students with potential, Karen emphasises that standardised cognitive data helps to add credibility and accountability to decision-making.

“It’s a rigorous, standardised piece of data that shows this isn’t based on opinion – it’s an objective view of each child’s learning potential.”

Expanding the Use of Data

Beyond the Academic Extension Programme, Karen sees further opportunities for CAT4 insights to inform other initiatives at the school. As part of her responsibilities, she oversees engagement programmes for students who have disengaged from learning and believes cognitive profiles could reveal untapped strengths or hidden challenges for these students.

“For students who’ve disengaged, a CAT4 profile might show that underachievement is linked to particular reasoning areas. That insight would give teachers a clearer path to re-engage them.” In fact, it could also act as a window through which parents could see more clearly the reasons behind some of their child’s behaviour, resulting in obvious benefits for all stakeholders.

Broader Goals

Alongside the introduction of CAT4, Hammond Park is pursuing a wider goal of lifting achievement through literacy and numeracy initiatives with this year’s focus being on reading engagement. Next year will see a whole-school writing instructional framework with an ongoing numeracy intervention for students requiring additional support. These initiatives and their attendant enhanced student outcomes will be familiar to most schools but CAT 4 will be an integral part of the process.

Karen’s approach reflects a holistic view of student development—combining cognitive data with literacy, numeracy and wellbeing priorities.

“Start small – test a manageable group and see what you learn. If possible, include the key transition years, from Year 6 into 7 and Year 9 into 10, to set students up for success.”

Going forward, Karen’s advice is to:

Advice for Other Schools

As always, it’s important to follow-up and evaluate initiatives in order to steer future endeavors and at Hammond Park this will take place during 2026. As a minimum the following will be explored:

How teachers have used CAT4 data in practice
The impact of specialisation pathways
Feedback from teachers and parents
Observed shifts in student engagement and progress

It is, of course, hoped that with the help of CAT 4 teachers, school leaders, parents and students will have greater visibility into the potential that is locked inside each of us.

Summary

School: Hammond Park Secondary College (WA)

Contact: Karen Corbett, Pathways to Success Coordinator

Focus: Introducing CAT4 to identify and support high-potential learners in the Academic Extension Programme

Key Themes: Personalised learning | Cognitive insight | Parent engagement | Teacher collaboration | Data-driven progress

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Hammond Park Secondary College, Perth