Standarised Age Score and Percentile Rank
Standardised Age Score:
The Standardised Age Score (SAS) takes the child’s age on the day of the test into account (so that an older child will need to get more questions correct than a younger child in order to end up with the same SAS as the younger child).
The range is from 70 to 141, although CEM now use a broader range, typically from 40 to 180+. The national average is 100. A score below 100 means your child’s SAS is below the
national average, whereas a score of more than 100 means your child’s SAS is above the national average.
Percentile Rank:
If we place a child who has a SAS of 100 in a typical sample of 100 children, that child will be ranked 50. This means that there are 50 children who scored better than him but that she/he scored better than 49 other children in the sample. This is referred to as the Percentile Rank.
Grammar schools are typically seeking to admit students with a Percentile Rank of between 88-90 and 100 (i.e the top 10-12% of students nationally).
