The First Session

The first session is designed to gain an understanding of your needs and to determine what, if anything, needs to be done to explore your student's situation. The outcome will vary according to the presenting problem:

• Further assessment may be required.
• A referral to an external specialist may be suggested.
• In most cases, a course of action will be proposed for your approval, e.g. Workshop, counselling, private teaching.
• No written report is prepared on this session.

Psychological Assessment

Should it be agreed that a more extensive psychological assessment is required, it is helpful to
understand what might be involved.

Psychological assessments require contact time with the person being assessed and a great deal of
time behind the scenes in data analysis and interpretation.

At all times, we seek only that information from assessment which is cost effective and practical in
helping to determine a pathway of improvement for your child. We only test if we are clear in our
minds that it is warranted. We, like you, want to see action and improvement for your child.

There can be up to four main parts to a psychological assessment. They can occur independently or
in combination with each other:

1. Ability Assessment

Often a student who is performing poorly may have an unusual way of using information, or the student may have more ability than school performance indicates. To help someone improve his/her learning, an exploration of these issues is often vital. It may well determine such questions as teaching style or direction of future schooling.

2. Personality Assessment

A psychological test or inventory will usually be used to help create a portrait of the attributes of the
individual.

3. Specific Needs Analysis

We use a range of psychometric measures to assess a specific need. If, during the initial
consultation, an area of concern arises we are able to more specifically assess the nature of the
need. Some examples might be, suspected depression, chronic anxiety or suspicion of a psychiatric
disorder.

4. Vocational Inventory

This assessment addresses significant interests in fields of work and helps to isolate combinations of interests. A profile usually arises from this assessment which will capture dominant interests,
personality traits and beliefs.

Educational Assessment

An educational assessment specifically examines knowledge and skills needed to learn. There are
two key aspects of an educational assessment:

1. Diagnostic

Diagnostic assessments usually comprise a measure of reading function and spelling.

2. Educational Performance

In order to measure educational performance for age, we use measures which yield scores on
Reading and Spelling. This can be useful to benchmark a student's level of performance.

Outcomes from Assessment

The purpose of all assessments is to enable a clearer understanding of a student's needs.  This is a useful part of working with families and students to decide the best possible approach to meeting students needs.