€95.00 – €310.00
The SPaRCS is the new UK and Irish normed standardised group test of Spelling, Processing speed and Reading Comprehension Speed. Perfect for teachers struggling to find suitable, time-saving and up-to-date tests for students to complete. Highly suitable for access arrangement applications (reader, scribe and extra time) and an excellent tool for year group screening in order to identify students that may need additional support and intervention.
Age: 13 – 18 year olds
Administration Time: approx. 40 minutes for the entire test (subtest can be given individually)
Mode: Pen and Paper
Authors: Dr Kate James; Rebecca Good and Trevor James
Restriction level: Low
Suitable for: Teachers, SENCo’s, Psychologists
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The SPaRCS was created to provide teachers with an up-to-date, accurate, valuable and time-saving assessment tool that can quickly identify students needing additional support and intervention and an ideal tool that will identify those that may qualify for access arrangements in their examinations. The SPaRCS can be used in a group setting (e.g. whole class screening) to assess those core academic and thinking skills that students need to perform effectively in school and exams - Spelling, Processing Speed, and Reading Comprehension Speed (SPaRCS). The test has been normed with the UK and Irish populations and demonstrates excellent reliability. The main benefits of the SPaRCS are:
Watch this short YouTube video on the SPaRCS test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gJqvxMl8uY&feature=youtu.be
Testing to establish norms was carried out in schools in the UK (Northern Ireland) and the Republic of Ireland in 2016. Participants were 2332 students aged 13:0 to 18:11 years. There were no exclusionary criteria, and even those who were not fluent in English took part in the testing. The sample did not include any special schools, but pupils in special classes were included. The ratio of boys to girls was approximately equal.
The SPaRCS has excellent validity as an assessment tool. This suggests that the SPaRCS correctly measures the constructs it was designed to measure. Validity measures utilised for the SPaRCS included content, construct, and criterion. Concerning the latter, very high correlations were reported between the SPaRCS spelling test and three other commonly used tests (WIAT-II UK = .92; WRAT4 = .90; Diagnostic Spelling Test = .88).
Test-retest and internal consistency reliabilities were utilised.
Spelling: = .89;
Reading Comprehension Speed: = .90;
Processing Speed: = 0.84
Spelling: 94 spelling tests were marked by two people independently. An agreement rate of over 99.5% was found. (Scoring of the Reading Comprehension Speed test and the Processing Speed test is entirely objective, and there should be little possibility of differences in interpretation between different examiners).
1-2 working days Shipping & Handling costs Ireland: €22.50 / £22.50
3-5 working days Shipping & Handling expenses mainland UK: £25
Sarah McAndrew (verified owner) –
Excellent! Super easy to administer and score. I could not be happier (my only wish is that it was standardised for younger students as I would go on a testing blitz across school!)