FAQs
Find common answers to your questions.
Are you a school already using CEM assessments?
Find answers to your assessment-specific queries on our new online help centre, which is accessible via your secure site login.
Are you a parent looking for information about a CEM assessment?
Are you a student looking for information about a CEM assessment?
Types of assessment and how they help schools and students
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What is a formative assessment?
A formative assessment is any assessment of how a student is doing before and during their educational experience. They can be baseline or diagnostic, carried out through formal assessments such as CEM’s computer-based tests, or through teacher observation and in-class quizzes.
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What is a baseline assessment?
A CEM baseline assessment is simply a tool to help teachers and students find out what the student already knows and can do at a single moment in time.
A baseline assessment is usually used at the start of a course of study, to give teachers an understanding of the student on entry to their school, year group or class. The information is then used to inform teaching and learning to best support the student’s abilities and help them to reach their full academic potential.
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What is a summative assessment?
These are high and low stakes exams that prove what a student can do. Qualifications such as GCSEs and A-Levels are summative assessments, taken at the end of a course of study.
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What is an adaptive assessment?
An adaptive assessment uses a student’s responses to each question to decide whether to progress to more challenging questions, or to return to easier ones. Essentially, the assessment automatically adapts to a student’s ability.
Because most CEM assessments are adaptive, they are shorter, more motivating and satisfying for students to complete, and can pinpoint a student’s abilities more accurately.
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Can CEM assessments be used as an entrance assessment?
We provide a computer-based entrance assessment (admissions test) for schools called CEM Select. This is different from our baseline assessments.
We don’t recommend that the baseline assessments are used as entrance assessments as they are adaptive in nature – so each student will experience slightly different questions.
CEM assessment coordination and organisation
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How do I purchase a CEM assessment?
CEM assessments can only be purchased by schools and educational establishments.
If you are new to CEM you can subscribe to any of our products on this page of our website. If you would like to contact CEM to discuss your requirements you can contact us here.
If you are an existing customer, your 2021-22 subscription will automatically be renewed for next academic year on 1st May 2022. Keep an eye out for emails from our customer support team about your renewal and how to adjust your student numbers.
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How are the assessments carried out?
CEM’s assessments (apart from the paper-based 11+ tests) are computer based. They are accessed through secure websites. When your school subscribes to a CEM assessment, you receive login details and instructions to help you set up the assessments in school.
Online and offline versions of the assessments themselves are available. If your school internet connection is unreliable, we recommend you use the offline version when students are sitting the assessment.
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At what point in the school year should I use these assessments?
Most schools use one of our baseline assessments at the start of the academic year, the start of a course of study, or shortly after a new student joins.
Our InCAS assessment for ages 5-11 (now evolved into Cambridge Primary Insight) can be used at any time of year. Many schools choose to use this in the final term of the academic year to check and track student progress.
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How often should I use a CEM assessment with my students?
Most CEM assessments are intended to be used once a year. The BASE Progress and BASE Inspection Ready assessments for ages 4-5 have a start and end of year assessment to help track progress in key skills in a student’s first year of school.
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How are the tests administered?
Each student will sit the assessment at a computer.
Our ASPECTS and BASE assessments (for ages 3-5) are teacher-led and can be stopped or started at any time. They are designed to give children valuable one-to-one time with their teacher. Our MidYIS (for ages 11-14), Yellis (for ages 14-16) and Alis/CEM IBE (for ages 16-18) assessments are student-led.
You can choose to test all students in a class or year group at once (if you have the computer facilities), or to spread testing over several sessions. The assessments offer you flexibility to set up and test students when it works best for your school.
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Do teachers need to be trained for CEM?
No – guidance and support is available through our online help centre and customer support team. When you first use CEM assessments with your school, you will receive instructions to help get you started.
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What support do you offer schools who are using CEM assessments?
Guidance and support is available through our online help centre at all times.
Our friendly customer support team are available on the phone and email Monday to Friday between 08.30 and 17.00 (UK time).
What CEM assessments measure – content and sections
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What do CEM assessments measure?
All our assessments for secondary school age students test vocabulary, mathematics and non-verbal ability. MidYIS (for ages 11-14) also tests skills such as proofreading and perceptual speed and accuracy.
Our InCAS assessment (for ages 5-11) (now evolved into Cambridge Primary Insight) measures reading, spelling, mathematics, mental arithmetic, developed ability and attitudes.
Our BASE and ASPECTS early years assessments (for ages 3-5) measure early literacy, numeracy, communication and language and personal, social and emotional development.
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What is non-verbal ability?
It is the ability to analyse information and solve problems using reasoning. In a CEM assessment, this is tested using shape and pattern-related visual questions to test visual and spatial skills.
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What is developed ability?
Developed ability is the capacity to learn – we use questions to assess how good a student is at picking up new skills.
The InCAS (now evolved into Cambridge Primary Insight) developed ability section includes picture vocabulary and non-verbal ability questions.
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Why don’t you test Science?
All CEM assessments measure the core skills that research shows are linked to future academic attainment in any subject, in any curriculum. This makes the assessments quicker to run, and they provide robust and reliable predictions to all subjects (including the sciences) without having to test subject-specific knowledge.
CEM assessment reports and data
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What do CEM reports tell me?
Each assessment provides you with a number of reports at a student, cohort and school level.
This includes individual student reports to help you identify students’ starting points and diagnose gaps in learning, predictive data to help you set targets and plan next steps, longitudinal data to help you monitor trends in your school over time, and value-added data to help you review success and share best practice.
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What is a standardised score?
A standardised score compares a student’s performance to those of all students in the relevant student population.
For example, a year 7 nationally-standardised score compares a year 7 student to the national population of year 7 students. Normally standardised scores are based on a mean score of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.
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How many students have CEM assessments been standardised on?
Our standardisation is based on 600,000 students, using data from schools over the last six years.
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How are the predictions calculated?
Schools have provided us with the exam results of many thousands of students who have taken CEM assessments over recent years. We match the baseline measure to the exam results, to see the correlation between baseline scores and the grades achieved.
We use this correlation (the regression line) to calculate a prediction based on a points score.
See our blog post from CEM statistician Andy Lyth for a more detailed read about how we make predictions of future exam outcomes.
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What is value-added?
Value-added is simply a measure of how far a student has progressed, and a fairer measure of how a school has brought a student on.
CEM’s value-added scores are calculated by comparing the baseline (starting) point of a student through one of our computer-based assessments with the final exam result they achieved.
Our MidYIS, Yellis, Alis and CEM IBE assessments all offer value-added reports (once exam results are uploaded) as part of your purchase.
The concept of value-added was pioneered by CEM founder Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon as a fairer measure to support teaching, learning and leadership.
Read more about value-added and how it can help your school.
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Can I share the reports with parents?
Yes you can! It is up to you which information and reports you share with your students and their parents. Many schools choose to use CEM assessment reports to inform discussions with students and parents about goals, learning plans and how a student can best be supported.
Some of our recent webinars explore how school leaders and teachers have used CEM data to support discussions and improve student outcomes.
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How do other schools use CEM assessment reports and data?
In our collection of case studies, schools share their experiences of using CEM assessment reports and data to improve teaching and learning. You can also hear from teachers and school leaders that we work with around the world in our recent webinars.
Webinar FAQs
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How do I join a webinar?
After you register to attend one of our webinars, you will receive an email from GoToWebinar containing the joining link to use to attend the webinar on the day and the option to add the webinar to your calendar.
To ensure you can access the webinar on the day, configure access for GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar in your firewall settings by following these instructions.
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What if I have technical difficulties?
If you encounter any technical difficulties when trying to join or attend one of our live webinars, please email our team at CEM@cambridge.org. We will do our best to help you join the live webinar. We will also send you a copy of the video recording and presentation as soon as possible.
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Will I receive the video recording and presentation slides?
We always post the recording on our website one week after the webinar takes place. We will send you a recording and a copy of the presentation slides as soon as possible. You are welcome to share the recording and presentation slides with your colleagues.
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Are certificates provided?
Certificates of attendance are awarded to delegates that attend our live webinars. You will receive a certificate of attendance delivered to your inbox one hour after our live webinars finish.
Still need information?
If you have any questions please get in touch.
