Learning and achievement assessment

This assessment looks at the specific skills school runs on — reading, writing, spelling and number work — and at how a person performs on each when they are measured properly rather than judged by a report card. It covers specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia and dysgraphia, and it is administered one-to-one by a qualified clinical psychologist using internationally validated instruments.

Most families arrive with the same observation: a gap. A child who is plainly trying, and a result that does not match the effort. Reading that is slow or avoided. Writing that is physically hard work. Spelling that changes for the same word twice on one page. Tables that go in on Tuesday and are gone by Thursday. What an assessment does is find out where in that chain the difficulty actually sits, which is almost never where it looks from the outside.

Achievement assessment

Achievement testing measures attainment — what a person has actually acquired in reading, writing and number work — so that it can be set against ability rather than against a class average. It is frequently administered alongside IQ testing, because the distance between what someone can do and what they are producing is often the whole finding. Schools and examination boards generally require exactly this pairing before support or accommodations can be arranged.

PHC is an assessment-first practice. Nothing useful can be said about how someone learns until it has been measured.

1. An initial session.We ask what has been going on, for how long, what school has said and what has already been tried. Bring school reports and a sample of the child's written work, and the school's letter if there is one — it usually names exactly what is required. Nothing is administered before this conversation.
2. A decision about what is warranted.Which instruments are indicated, whether achievement testing and IQ testing are both needed, and whether attention rather than learning is the better question. You will not be given tests you do not need.
3. Administration, in person.Structured reading, writing and number tasks given one-to-one by a qualified clinical psychologist, with observation of how the work is done and not only whether it is right. Assessment sessions run about two hours for a child and about three hours for an adult. Where sessions are held daily an assessment is usually finished in about a week; more often it takes two to three weeks, and we do not recommend stretching it past three — the length depends on what the initial session found was warranted, and you are told before you come.
4. A written report.What was administered, where the difficulty sits, what this person does easily, and what would help — at home, in the classroom, and in any application for examination support. The report is with you in two to three weeks, depending on how complex the case is. The tests are scored and interpreted, the report is written, and Prof. Dr. Tahira Yousaf reviews and approves it before it is handed over.
5. A conversation about what follows.Remedial work on the specific skill, changes to how homework is handled at home, work on confidence where it has taken the hit, and structured support for parents, because most of the daily change happens at home. Where the finding points to attention instead, the route is a neurodevelopmental assessment.

Children and adolescents, most often between the first year a gap becomes visible and the year before a board year — earlier is easier than later, and you do not need the school to have raised it first. Adults are assessed too, most often when reading or written work has become a problem at university or at work.

It is not the right route where the difficulty is better explained by something else — and a real part of the assessment's job is to establish that. A child doing everything in English at school and living in Urdu at home is carrying a genuine extra load, and separating that from a learning difficulty is one of the things this assessment is designed to do.

Not sure whether this is us? Contact us anyway. We will tell you directly whether we can help, and refer you elsewhere if we cannot.

• Learning difficultieshow it shows up at home and at school, and when to raise it.
• Parenting difficultiesschool refusal, homework battles and structured support for parents.
• ADHDfrequently assessed alongside, because attention and learning are hard to separate from the outside.

PHC works directly with schools on student wellbeing, teacher support and parent awareness, including psychological assessment for students on site. Partner with PHC on school wellness.