It is demeaning to tell a child or young person who is in need of a catch-up programme what is his or her 'reading age' or 'spelling age'. It should be explained that the tests are to see how much progress a student has already made and that it may be repeated, say, in about six months to see how much further progress has been achieved. With all tests it is important to ensure that the student is at ease, and that the test conditions are as favourable as possible, paying attention to light, comfort and freedom from distractions. Here are my suggestions for using standardised reading and spelling tests.
The Schonell Spelling Test with scoring and the Burt Reading Test with scoring are freely available as pdfs at If you do not have recent reading and spelling test results, you can download free tests. If you have raw scores from a recent reading or spelling test, you can establish a suitable series of structured workbooks that will help a particular student to 'catch up'.
