Supporting student success in Japan with baseline assessments

What are baseline assessments?

Baseline assessments provide powerful insights into a student's aptitudes and abilities that help teachers to unlock their potential.

Students sit a short, adaptive, digital test which helps you determine what your students, your class and your year group already know and can do, while supporting you in deciding the best next steps.

Using a baseline assessment helps you get to know your students quickly. It focuses on your students' starting point and enables you to measure each student's aptitude for learning and their potential.

Find out more about baseline assessments

Benefits of using baseline assessments in a bilingual school

Recognise individual needs and tailor your teaching to meet those needs
Differentiate between delayed second language and reading difficulties
Raise expectations of staff and EAL students
Support conversations with parents
Evaluate and enhance school performance

International schools in Japan and Japanese schools using an international curriculum can boost their bilingual student support with baseline assessments.

The benefits of a baseline assessment for students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) are the insights into their actual ability. Rather than assessing content knowledge, a baseline assessment measures the skills and abilities that apply across the curriculum and are more indicative of their true potential – non-verbal ability and skills such as pattern recognition and logical reasoning.

Used alongside English Language Tests, the information from a baseline assessment can help teachers identify whether a student struggles with language or the subject. A baseline assessment can also show teachers how well a student may pick up learning English and what level of support they will need.

We know typically in bilingual schools that English vocabulary is often a weak area for students because they are operating in their second or even third language. The baseline assessments from Cambridge provide individual student profiles that break down the results in this key area. Understanding the vocabulary score is particularly useful for really understanding English as Additional Language (EAL) learners and what is needed to help them succeed.

Feedback from students also tells us that they prefer a Cambridge baseline assessment over others because it is just one short test: 50 minutes to an hour maximum, and it covers a range of questions.

Read the full case study from Beijing International Bilingual Academy

Quick

Holistic

Identify areas of support

Set targets

Individual / class / year-group overviews

Founded on world-class research.

We are part of the University of Cambridge and the quality of our data and research is unrivalled.

Research and evidence are the foundation of all our assessments. Based on extensive trialling and experience from the past 40 years of working with schools, the information provided by Cambridge baseline assessments help provide teachers with the insight to understand their students and support their journey to success.

Learn more about research using Cambridge Insight

Our latest research is exploring student wellbeing in schools.

After the pandemic and all the changes it brought to education across the world, wellbeing has quickly become a major focus. How does student wellbeing impact academic success? We are very excited to work with Dr Ros McLellan, Tania Clarke and Susan Steward from the Faculty of Education, in the development of our Cambridge Wellbeing Check – an assessment that helps teachers understand what wellbeing looks like in their classroom.

Discover more about our wellbeing research

“The data has given us a basis from which to work with staff on ensuring the pitch of teaching matches the potential of the children. We want teachers to have as much information as they can to make sure they have a really clear steer on what the children need.”

The British School in Tokyo