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Academic Assessment:
What are the Benefits?
An academic assessment measures literacy and numeracy skills using the WIAT-III, the same standardised tool used in a full educational psychology assessment. It's a useful option on its own, particularly for tracking how a child has responded to intervention after a learning difficulty has already been diagnosed. This assessment doesn't lead to a diagnosis; it's purely about measuring where a child's academic skills actually stand.
What the Assessment Involves
Like the other assessments, this is typically a single one-to-one session with the psychologist. Your child works through a set of standardised reading, spelling, and maths tasks: reading words and passages aloud, spelling to dictation, and solving maths problems at increasing levels of difficulty. There's no preparation needed beforehand. Once testing is complete, scores are compared against age-based norms and written up in a report that sets out exactly where your child stands and what's changed since any previous assessment.
Evaluating Intervention Effectiveness
For a child already diagnosed with a learning difficulty, this assessment shows whether their current support is actually working. Comparing literacy and numeracy scores against a previous assessment gives a clear, evidence-based answer as to whether an intervention is making a real difference, rather than relying on impression alone, and flags early if something needs to change.
How Does An Academic Assessment Differ From An Educational Psychology Assessment?
It's worth being clear about the difference, since the two are easy to mix up. A full educational psychology assessment covers cognitive ability alongside literacy and numeracy, and can lead to a diagnosis, such as dyslexia or dyscalculia. An academic assessment on its own looks only at literacy and numeracy, doesn't include cognitive testing, and doesn't lead to a diagnosis.
That makes it the right choice in a narrower set of situations: when a learning difficulty has already been formally diagnosed and you want to track how a child is responding to intervention, or when you simply want a clear, standardised picture of where a child's reading, spelling, and maths currently stand, without needing to know why. If diagnostic clarity is what you're after, the full educational psychology assessment is the right starting point instead.
Who Carries Out the Assessment?
I'm Saoirse Mac Cárthaigh, a Chartered Educational and Child Psychologist (C.Psychol PsSI). I hold a doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology, and I run SMC Psychology, a private assessment practice in Dublin. Every assessment, from administration through to scoring and report writing, is carried out by me personally rather than passed to other staff.
Get in touch if you're wondering whether an academic assessment is the right next step for your child.
