At The Southport Preparatory School, gaining a deeper understanding of every student means looking beyond academic results alone. In this case study, school leaders and teachers share how combining cognitive ability insights with student wellbeing data has transformed the way they understand, support and challenge learners across the school.
Finding the student within the child
how The Southport School Preparatory does it
[5:22]
Understanding the Whole Student
Background
Situated in Southport on the Gold Coast of Australia, The Southport School Preparatory (Primary) has an enviable reputation as a leader in primary education for boys. Its ethos is simple: to see the whole child.
As Jeff Symms, TSS Deputy Headmaster and Head of Primary School, explains on the school’s website:
“From our Preschool boys to our school leaders in Year 6, we invest in each student as individuals, acknowledging their strengths, weaknesses, and passions.”
This aspiration is shared by many schools across Australia and beyond, yet achieving it in practice can be challenging. Time pressures, increasing workloads, and the complexity of modern classrooms can make truly understanding every child feel like an unreachable goal.
At TSS Preparatory, this challenge prompted a deeper question: what information do teachers need in order to genuinely understand each learner – academically and emotionally?
The answer lay in adopting two complementary tools designed to work alongside existing assessment practices: CAT4 (Cognitive Abilities Test) and PASS (Pupil Attitudes to Self and School).
The Tools
CAT4 provides insight into a student’s underlying cognitive ability across four domains – verbal, non-verbal, spatial, and quantitative reasoning. PASS, meanwhile, offers a structured view of students’ attitudes to learning, self, and school experience.
Used together, these tools help teachers build a richer picture of how students think, how they feel, and what may be enabling or inhibiting their progress. Importantly, they allow staff to look beyond academic performance alone and access evidence-based data that supports more informed, equitable decision-making.
TSS is careful not to position any assessment as a singular solution. Research increasingly cautions against rigid interpretations of learning styles or over-reliance on any one framework. Instead, the school emphasises balance – exposing students to a range of learning experiences while remaining sensitive to individual strengths, preferences, and emotional readiness.
CAT4 and PASS were adopted with this philosophy in mind: not as labels, but as lenses that help reveal the learner within the child.
Understanding Potential Beyond Performance
As the school began exploring ways to deepen its understanding of learners, it became increasingly clear that traditional achievement data alone could not fully explain why some students were thriving while others, equally capable, were not.
For Jasna Giebeler, Director of Academic Talent Development Programs, this gap was immediately apparent.
“When I arrived, I needed a tool that could separate performance from potential,” she explains. “We were seeing bright students who weren’t achieving in a way that reflected their ability – but we had no data to explain the gap.”
In Jasna’s role, professional judgement needed to be supported by robust evidence. Any system adopted had to be psychometrically credible, validated, and supported by the school psychologist. “I needed something psychometrically credible, validated, and supported by our psychologist. CAT4 just hit the mark.”
The introduction of CAT4 provided the clarity she was seeking. By revealing domain-specific cognitive strengths, CAT4 helped uncover abilities that were often hidden in literacy-heavy assessment environments. As Jasna notes, “Boys often present unevenly. A boy may have average verbal scores but remarkably high spatial or quantitative reasoning. Without CAT4, he could go years without anyone recognising where his true strengths lie.”
However, Jasna was equally clear that understanding cognitive ability alone was not enough. Learning is deeply influenced by affective factors such as confidence, motivation, and emotional readiness. To address this, the school paired CAT4 with PASS.
“The thing that is really important about using the two together,” Jasna explains, “is that it allows students and teachers to see the student’s potential, but also the affective side of learning.”
Together, CAT4 and PASS gave TSS Primary a shared, evidence-based language for understanding learners – one that supported more meaningful conversations between teachers, students, and families about progress, support, and growth.
The Experience for TSS Preparatory
For classroom practitioners, the impact of this approach was immediate.
Joshua Beecher, Head of House Musgrave and Years 5/6, reflects on a longstanding concern that many boys – particularly those with talents beyond traditional academic measures – were not being fully recognised. He speaks of the importance of taking a holistic view of students, especially those whose strengths might otherwise be overlooked.
What began as a trial of CAT4 and PASS quickly proved its value. For more than five years now, both tools have been embedded as core components of the school’s assessment framework.
Teachers now access CAT4 data before the academic year begins, enabling them to plan learning pathways from the outset. This early insight supports informed decisions around grouping, extension, intervention, and differentiation, reducing the need for later course correction.
Joshua reflects that having this information upfront has transformed his practice. Understanding how students think allows teachers to design learning experiences that align more closely with students’ strengths, while still challenging them to grow.
Understanding the Affective Side of Learning
While CAT4 revealed what students were capable of, PASS provided insight into why that potential might not yet be visible in performance.
Jeff Symms describes PASS as a turning point in the school’s understanding of student wellbeing.
“One of the real benefits of PASS is that it gives us quality attitudinal data,” he explains. “CAT4 shows us what a boy is capable of, and PASS tells us why he may not be achieving at that level.”
PASS has enabled teachers and wellbeing staff to identify emotional and attitudinal barriers earlier, supporting targeted conversations around confidence, motivation, and self-belief. In many cases, this deeper self-understanding has helped students reframe their relationship with learning.
As Jeff notes, “We’ve had boys who, once they understood their own attitudes, completely reframed their approach to learning. Their confidence grew, their mindset shifted, and their performance followed.”
Teachers also report feeling more confident in discussions with parents, supported by clear, evidence-based insights rather than intuition alone.
Impact on the School
The impact of integrating CAT4 and PASS into everyday practice has been significant. As part of a broader suite of assessment tools, they are now essential to how TSS Preparatory understands and supports its students.
The school has strengthened its ability to identify potential early, personalise learning pathways, and support student wellbeing in a more intentional way. Most importantly, it has reinforced a culture focused on seeing beyond performance and behaviour to understand each child as a whole learner.
As one reflection from the school captures:
“Our job isn’t just to teach boys. It’s to understand them. CAT4 and PASS help us do that better than ever before.”