How to prepare for CAT4: what actually helps (and what to skip)

I'm Anmol, and I teach Maths and Non-Verbal Reasoning one-to-one online. If a school letter has landed and you're now working out how to prepare for CAT4, this is the honest version I'd give you on a call.

Can you actually prepare for CAT4?

Here's the thing most prep companies won't lead with: the publisher tells you not to.

GL Assessment, who make the test, put it plainly. They strongly advise against any kind of practice ahead of a CAT4 test, because coaching alters the reliability of the scores. One UK school I read while checking my facts compares it to an eye test: if you memorise the letters on the chart beforehand, you get a lovely reading and the wrong glasses.

So no, you can't revise for CAT4 the way you'd revise for a spelling test. It's a reasoning assessment. There's no syllabus, no facts to cram, nothing to look up the night before. If someone's selling you a "CAT4 revision course" that promises a jump in score, be sceptical.

And yet. I've watched capable children score below their real level for one boring reason: the format ambushed them. A bright ten-year-old who has never seen a shape-rotation puzzle, never worked against a clock on a screen, spends the first few minutes panicking about how the test works instead of thinking. That's not a reasoning problem. It's a nerves-and-novelty problem, and it's the one thing worth addressing.

So my honest position is this: you can't cram CAT4, but you can stop a good thinker from tripping over the unfamiliar. Familiarity, not coaching. There's a real difference, and it matters.

What genuinely helps

None of what follows is drilling. It's the slow, ordinary stuff that builds a child who reasons well and walks in calm.

Read together, and talk about it. Verbal reasoning grows from a wide vocabulary and the habit of following an argument. Twenty minutes of reading a night, then asking "why do you think she did that?", does more for a CAT4 verbal score over a year than any workbook does in a fortnight.

Play, don't drill. Puzzles, tangrams, Rubik's cubes, jigsaws and building games, spot-the-difference, Sudoku for the older ones. These strengthen exactly the pattern-spotting and spatial thinking the test looks at, and children will actually do them because they don't feel like homework.

Let them meet the format once. This is the bit that stops a capable child underperforming. Show your child a few example questions of each type so the layout isn't a shock. You're not teaching answers — you're removing the "what am I even looking at?" moment. Reassuringly, the test itself gives untimed practice examples before each section, so no child is thrown in cold, but seeing it beforehand still settles nerves.

Practise pace, gently. CAT4 is timed, built from several short subtests. A child who's only ever worked with no clock can freeze when one appears. A couple of low-stakes goes against a timer, treated as a game rather than a trial, takes the fear out of it.

Protect sleep and breakfast. Unglamorous, and it moves the needle more than an extra practice paper. A rested, fed child thinks faster and panics less. That's the whole ballgame on the day.

Keep it calm. A relaxed child reasons better than an anxious one, every time. If your own stress leaks into the run-up, they'll catch it. Play it down — it's a chance to show how they think, not a verdict on their worth.

What to avoid

Over-coaching is the trap, and it's worth understanding why it backfires rather than just being told to stop.

CAT4 is what schools use to pitch support and challenge at the right level. If you drill your child to an inflated score, you haven't helped them — you've handed the school a wrong reading. They may get placed in a set that's too fast, or stretched in ways that quietly knock their confidence for a whole year. The cost of cramming isn't just wasted weekends. It's your child being misjudged by the very people meant to support them.

A few specific things I'd steer clear of:

• Grinding through hundreds of practice papers. It teaches test-taking stamina and not much reasoning, and it sours children on the whole thing.
• Drilling to a target number. Chasing a score treats CAT4 as an exam to beat. It isn't one.
• Coaching that mimics the real questions too closely. GL's whole point is that a practised score isn't a true score.
• Turning the run-up into a big deal. Anxiety costs more marks than unfamiliarity ever does.

Familiarity and calm: good. Cramming and pressure: counterproductive, and occasionally harmful.

The four batteries, briefly

CAT4 profiles four kinds of reasoning: verbal (words), non-verbal (shapes and patterns), quantitative (numbers), and spatial (picturing and rotating shapes). Together they give a rounded picture rather than a single mark, which is exactly why teachers value it.

I won't re-explain all of it here. If you want the full picture — the levels by year group, how the Standard Age Score works, why 100 is average — I've written a proper walkthrough in my full guide to what CAT4 is. The two batteries closest to my own teaching are non-verbal and spatial, and if you'd like to go deeper on those, my non-verbal reasoning guide is the place to start.

How I help

I teach the two areas nearest my subjects: Non-Verbal Reasoning and the numerical thinking behind Quantitative Reasoning, one-to-one and online.

We don't grind papers. In a typical session your child gets fluent with the question types, comfortable with a timer, and confident enough that the test measures their real thinking instead of their nerves. I'll also show you the everyday habits — the reading, the puzzles, the spatial play — that lift reasoning over the longer run, so you're not relying on last-minute anything.

The first lesson is free. Book one and see how your child takes to it before you commit to a thing.

Common questions

Can you prepare for CAT4?

Not by revising, because it tests reasoning rather than learned facts, and GL Assessment advises against practice. What you can do is build reasoning over time through reading and puzzles, and let your child meet the format and the timer once so nerves don't get in the way.

How long is the CAT4 test?

It's made up of several short subtests, usually delivered across two or three sittings, and it's timed. Total time is around two hours for the standard levels, with shorter versions for younger children. Each section starts with untimed practice examples.

Should my child do CAT4 practice papers?

A light look at a few example questions to remove surprise is sensible. Grinding through paper after paper isn't. GL are clear that a heavily practised score is less reliable, and an inflated result can get your child mis-set at school. Familiarity yes, drilling no.

What is a good CAT4 score?

Scores come as a Standard Age Score, where 100 is exactly average for your child's age. Roughly 90 to 110 is the average band. Try not to fixate on the headline number, though — the spread across the four batteries usually tells a richer story than any single figure.