Tests and scores

Updated 29 October 2026

NGRT scores and reading age explained

The New Group Reading Test (NGRT) is GL Assessment's reading test. Here is what the scores on your child's report mean, and why the reading age can mislead.

What NGRT tests

GL describes NGRT as a test of reading skills for children aged 6 to 16, covering phonics, decoding, vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, inference and the writer's intent, depending on age. The digital version is adaptive: the questions get harder or easier depending on how your child is doing.

• Sentence completion. Everyone starts here: choose the word, from five options, that best completes a sentence. It depends heavily on vocabulary and grammar.
• Passage comprehension. Most children then read one, two or three passages and answer questions on them: finding information, inference, how the text is organised, the writer's language and purpose.
• Phonics. Children who find sentence completion very hard are given phonics tasks instead of passages.

The digital test takes about 30 minutes and is not timed, so some children finish sooner than others. The paper version takes about 40 to 50 minutes. GL recommends the digital version from Year 2, not Year 1, because 6-year-olds scored much lower on screen than on paper.

The numbers on the report

Standard Age Score (SAS)

GL calls this "the most important piece of information" from NGRT. It is your child's score adjusted for their age and compared with a national sample of UK children of the same age. 100 is average and the standard deviation is 15, so about 68% of children score between 85 and 115.

Stanine bands are GL's. Percentiles are worked out from the SAS scale (average 100, standard deviation 15); the National Percentile Rank on the report comes from GL's tables and can differ slightly.

For an average child, GL says there is a 90% chance that the true score is within 8 points either side of the reported score. A change of a few points between two tests is normal.

Stanines: overall and for each part

The overall stanine (1 to 9) is a broad band for the whole test. Children who reach the passages also get a stanine for sentence completion and one for passage comprehension. GL's rough guide: the same or one apart means similar performance; two or more apart may mean a real difference, which the teacher's report highlights.

• Sentence completion higher than passage comprehension: GL notes this can happen when a child decodes well but finds inference and longer texts harder.
• Passage comprehension higher: GL notes children with a wider vocabulary tend to do better on sentence completion, and children who rely on context to work out meaning may do less well there.

Reading age

GL defines reading age as the age at which a score is most likely to be achieved, based on the national sample. It is easy to understand, but GL is cautious about it:

• Reading ages are not the same as reading attainment.
• Reading improves fast in the early years and slowly later, so a reading age of 17 is unlikely to be very different from a reading age of 14.
• For above-average readers it stops being meaningful. GL's example: a 12-year-old in the top 10% can only be said to have a reading age above 15.

GL recommends the SAS, not the reading age, for measuring progress and trends.

Reading Ability Scale (0 to 600)

Because the digital test is adaptive, two children can answer the same number of questions correctly and still have different reading levels. The scale score allows for how hard the questions were. Unlike the SAS, it is not adjusted for age, so it should rise as your child grows. GL's averages:

A scale score equal to the average for an age gives that reading age: 272 is a reading age of 8. The top 10% of 7-year-olds score 308 or more; the top 10% of 12-year-olds score 400 or more.

NGRT at schools in the UAE

In Dubai, KHDA expects a reading test alongside CAT4 and the curriculum tests. GL's guide for UAE schools says KHDA expects all children from Year 2 (Grade 1) to Year 10 (Grade 9) to sit NGRT three times a year. The 2026-27 windows:

The three forms have different questions of similar difficulty, so your child does not see the same test twice in a year. Other emirates set their own rules; ask your school which reading test it uses.

GL says the digital NGRT's reading norms will be updated with up-to-date data in spring 2027. Scores will update automatically, so bear this in mind when comparing results from before and after.

Children learning English

NGRT is a test of reading in English, compared with a UK sample. In GL's data, pupils with English as an additional language scored 3.6 points lower on average than other pupils, though GL notes that EAL status alone says little about a child's actual English. Comparing your child's score with their own previous results is the most useful view.

How to help

GL advises against practising for NGRT itself: the test has practice questions built in, and the aim is an honest picture of reading at that moment. What makes a difference over months is daily reading, talking about what was read and meeting new words in context. If the school flags a gap between the two stanines, ask what they suggest; GL points schools to further diagnostic tests when the gap is large.

For the same scores on GL's other tests, see GL Assessment scores explained; for the English attainment test, see Progress Test in English (PTE).