Academic Profiler: cognitive abilities benchmarking assessments

What do your child’s academic strengths and weaknesses mean for their next step in education?

Empower your child’s learning and help them achieve their goals with objective data to plan the best pathway towards future success.

Academic Profiler is a powerful, statistically robust cognitive abilities assessment for children aged 7-16 that gives you a detailed snapshot of your child’s academic strengths and weaknesses.

This assessment benchmarks your child’s academic skills in four core areas; it is not a test of factual knowledge, so can be taken by students in any English-speaking school curriculum system.

  1. Incredibly robust benchmarking data (30,000+ dataset), giving you an accurate snapshot of your child’s current academic strengths and weaknesses

  2. Topic-by-topic breakdown of core skills in four areas that underpin academic success, including 11+ skills for selective UK schools

  3. Personalised feedback from experienced teachers on inferences that can be made from the data, with suggestions on next steps to support your child’s learning

Academic Profiler is priced at £465 GBP. Book your child’s assessment:

Why Academic Profiler is a vital tool for any parent

This assessment equips you with actionable information to help you make the right decisions about your child’s journey towards future academic success.

— Planning a change of schools

Understand your child’s academic performance in comparison to others in their cohort, and against the entry standards of selective schools.

This will allow you to shortlist ambitious yet achievable school options for your child.

The assessment is adaptive and age-weighted, meaning that it will provide an appropriate level of challenge for candidates aged 7-16.

— Identifying what support your child needs

Expert teachers will give you comprehensive feedback, talking you through the inferences you can make from the data and suggest clear, actionable next steps for your child. This allows you to focus tutoring or home learning on improving areas where your son or daughter can make significant, meaningful progress.

The objective, statistically robust results data, including topic-by-topic snapshots of core subjects, will uncover any learning gaps your child may have. This insight cuts through fluffy school reports full of vague descriptors like ‘emerging’ or ‘greater depth’.

— Moving overseas to a different school system

Gain an objective, data-driven snapshot of your child’s academic performance – Academic Profiler measures skills in four core areas, rather than factual knowledge of any one curriculum or exam syllabus. In other words, this assessment challenges your child to demonstrate their intellectual adaptability and problem-solving capacity.

This makes it immensely valuable if moving overseas to understand how your child might perform academically in a different context, e.g. a British school to an IB international school overseas.

Polly – happy parent, review on Google:

“highly sensitive to our children's individual needs and even thought strategically about the best way to pitch the various school options to them, understanding that their buy-in was all-important”

How does Academic Profiler work?

Accurate, objective insights about your child’s potential

The aim of Academic Profiler is to give you useful, actionable data about your child’s performance and potential at school. Your child’s results are expressed a standardised scores – showing you how they performed in a huge range of academic skills in comparison to other children their exact age, in years and months. This cuts through vague progress descriptors like ‘emerging’ or ‘meeting expectations’ (what are the expectations?) or subjective teacher judgements. The dataset for Academic Profiler is 30,000+ children, mainly in UK schools, meaning that you have incredibly robust insights on your child’s strengths and weaknesses.

Tailored to your child’s age and schooling level

This assessment is available for children aged 7-16. Your child sits the assessment at home, which takes approximately 1.5 to 2h to cover the four separate tests; candidates are grouped into three age bands, with older students sitting a longer test to allow fuller exploration of a wider range of skills. Wherever you are in the world, you can use Academic Profiler to plan your child’s educational pathway, as the tests measure academic skills in four core areas (English, mathematics, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning) rather than factual knowledge covered on a particular school’s curriculum.

Adaptive assessment challenges your child, whatever their age and academic abilities

Academic Profiler is what is known as an adaptive assessment. Every child sits a different test, drawn from a bank of thousands of questions. If your child answers a question correctly, then the algorithm is designed to stretch your child with a more difficult next question. No matter what your child’s starting point is, they will be challenged to demonstrate the full range of their capabilities.

Academic Profiler is very similar to the computerised, adaptive tests used by some selective schools as admissions assessments, making it a useful practice exam for (among others) the London 11+ Consortium, ISEB Pre-Test, GL or CEM grammar school 11+ assessments, or UKISET for international students.

Individual debriefing on your child’s results

After your child has sat the academic assessment, you will receive a results data report, broken down by subject and individual topics and sub-skills. You will also receive a debrief by video conference with global education expert Adam D’Souza and an assessment specialist to feed back on your child’s individual results. The purpose of this call is to highlight inferences that can be made from your child’s scores and to learn more about your son or daughter’s personal interests, character and motivation.

By drawing together the data from your child’s scores with this contextual understanding of them as a human being, we can make a tailored recommendation of specific next steps, including a targeted learning plan with suggestions of topics or skills to practise if required.

“His skill, enthusiasm and unique approach was inspiring and engaging.”
— Carolien, happy parent

What does the assessment measure?

Your child will be assessed on their academic skills in four facilitating areas, with scores showing how they performed against other students their exact age in years and months, allowing accurate and meaningful comparisons. Academic Profiler does not test factual knowledge covered on a particular school curriculum, so this assessment can be taken by children aged 7-16 anywhere in the world.

English

This section assesses command of the English language and tests comprehension, grammar, spelling and punctuation. Comprehension tasks will consist of questions on a short piece of fiction or non-fiction to assess how well the candidate understands the text.

Candidates need a good grasp of English and have a wide vocabulary, but equally important is their ability to read questions carefully, remain calm and work within the time limits.

Questions look into the meaning and use of words – and whether candidates can derive meaning from contextual clues by interpreting texts and analysing information.

Mathematics

The maths test is designed to see how well a candidate understands numbers and can solve mathematical problems.

  • Number - which will include decimals, percentages and fractions as well as the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).

  • Algebra - which will include equations and formulae.

  • Shape and space (geometry) - which will include volume, area, co-ordinates and nets.

  • Data handling - which will focus on statistics and probability, the idea of chance and averages.

Verbal Reasoning

The verbal reasoning (VR) section is intended to test a candidate’s ability to understand and reason using words, and are a test of skill, rather than of learned knowledge. It involves thinking about text, solving word problems, following written instructions to come up with a solution, spotting letter sequences and cracking letter and number-based codes.

Verbal reasoning is often seen as the underlying skill for critical thinking, problem-solving and ultimately, intelligence and often makes up a large proportion of an IQ test.

The majority of verbal reasoning questions are word-based but some are numerical. Although these questions require maths, the main principle is to test the candidate’s ability to solve problems based on written instructions.

Non-Verbal Reasoning

Non-verbal reasoning (NVR) is best described as problem-solving using pictures, diagrams and shapes. Unlike verbal reasoning, these tasks are not reliant on the candidate’s mastery of language; rather, the questions use abstract drawings, shapes or codes, and the candidate is expected to spot patterns, similarities and differences between these images.

NVR tasks are designed to assess critical thinking and problem-solving using logic. They indicate the potential of a candidate’s broader mathematical capabilities and their powers of deduction.

NVR skills are often seen in people with good spatial awareness, those who can easily orientate themselves in maps or follow visual diagrams. Like verbal reasoning, NVR is used as an indicator of academic potential and intelligence rather than a measure of learned knowledge or facts.

Your questions answered

  • No, Academic Profiler is an online assessment that your child completes at home. The assessment is adaptive so every child gets personalised tests – it invigilates itself. The results debriefing is done as a video call.

    If you would prefer to work one-to-one with an education expert, then our tailored school search might be more suitable for you.

  • Academic Profiler is available for children aged 7 to 16.

    It is a standardised assessment that compares candidates to other children their exact age. The dataset includes over 30,000 children so the results are statistically significant.

  • It is banded into three age groups, with a shorter test for younger children, and a longer test for teens to go deeper on a broader range of skills.

    The primary to secondary transition / middle school (9-13 age group) assessment lasts approximately 2h.

    The assessment is made up of four separate tests; rest breaks between each of the tests are allowed and encouraged!

  • Yes, children with an identified specific learning difficulty or SEND need are allowed extra time. Simply note this when booking your child's assessment and this will be included.

  • Yes, definitely. Academic Profiler is ideal for international families considering English-medium schools, as the assessment compares candidates to a cohort of more than 30,000, mainly in British schools, giving a very accurate view of how your child might perform in a school entrance assessment.

  • Academic Profiler is not a diagnostic assessment for specific learning difficulties / special educational needs. However, it can act as a useful first-stage screening, to guide whether further, full investigation by an educational psychologist would be helpful.

  • The aim of Academic Profiler is helping you benchmark your child's academic performance. This includes guiding your choice of selective schools to those that are ambitious but likely to be within reach in terms of academic entry requirements.

    Using Academic Profiler can help you understand the the likelihood of your child securing a place at a preferred school, but of course there are a huge number of variables with children this age.

  • This assessment can give an indication of your child’s likely performance in an 11+ entrance examination for a selective school. Of course, there can be no guarantees, especially with children this age.

    Where this assessment is certainly useful is identifying your child’s academic strengths and weaknesses, so that you can support their preparation for an 11+ entrance exam in the UK. It is also useful practice as a ‘mock 11+’ for certain types of adaptive tests, especially the ISEB Pre-Test, London 11+ Consortium, CAT4 or GL/CEM type computerised grammar school assessments.

  • Academic Profiler is only available in English at present, so is most suitable for children currently studying in an English-speaking school system, or moving into an English-medium school.

    Candidates who do not speak English as a native language at home are allowed extra time to complete the tests.