PPAD-E FAQs

It is important to administer both the Blue and Yellow forms of the PPAD-E. Using a mixture of booklets helps to ensure that students do not copy from their neighbours and that one set of questions does not become too familiar. Together, these factors help to maintain the security of the test and the validity of the test results.

The PPAD-E was normed for administration to First Year students in the autumn term (September-November). Any standardised results obtained from administration of the assessment outside the autumn term would need to be interpreted with considerable caution. • If the assessment is administered outside of the autumn term, it would not be appropriate to use such test results to draw any general conclusions about literacy standards of First Years. • However, it would be appropriate to use PPAD-E test results to help to identify and provide support for struggling readers, provided that the PPAD-E test results are used alongside other sources of information to enable consistent and informed decision-making for supports and interventions.

The PPAD-E is not appropriate to administer to pupils prior to commencing First Year. The assessment can only be administered from the beginning of the autumn term of year on entry to post-primary school.

The PPAD-E is currently standardised for use with First Year students and work is underway to standardise the test for Third Year students to create norms for this age and year group. Currently, the assessment has norms for the First Year cohort, meaning results from the PPAD-E can be used to contribute to decision making for exemption from the study of Irish along with eligibility criteria for assistive technology. The PPAD-E is not yet standardised to be used within year-groups where applications for RACE and DARE are made. Guidance on this is set out in Appendix 4 of Manual 3: Scoring, Reporting, Interpretation and Intervention. It is important to note that these specific schemes are open to change and schools must ensure that they carefully check current criteria and procedures in any given school year. It is also helpful to be aware that tests results, in and of themselves, do not confer eligibility for any particular scheme: All schemes include the collection of information from a number of sources over a period of time and the standardised test results generated by the PPAD-E are only one part of multi-element criteria.

Students complete the assessment on paper booklets (two forms are available – blue and yellow). These booklets are in turn marked by teachers. The raw scores are then entered into a secure online scoring and reporting tool. This tool then converts the raw scores to standardised scores and generates downloadable reports that present the students’ performance at an individual level and also aggregates test performance across the class/year level. Detailed reports are generated separately for the Special Education Teacher (SET) and Subject Teacher which contain suggested support and intervention guidance for low-achieving students.

The PPAD-E is designed to be administered in its entirety, to provide schools with fully comprehensive literacy information about students. However, in some circumstances, subtests can be administered separately. Since each subtest is a stand-alone test, scores on each subtest can be generated separately. This may be useful, for example, when a student initially underperformed on only one PPAD-E subtest and subsequently after a period of targeted intervention their progress is being reassessed in that particular skill area. Regardless of whether all or some sections of the PPAD-E are administered, the procedures used in administration and scoring must be consistent with the guidance and instructions in the Teacher Administration and Marking Guidance manuals, including the sequencing of administration of the subtests. For example, students may do better on a spelling test if they have just completed a reading task. Care must be taken in interpreting results from administering just some sections of the PPAD-E, since the norms for PPAD-E are based on students attempting all five sections of the test. For example, it is possible that student motivation and achievement may be slightly higher when testing is considerably shorter.

One question that sometimes arises in relation to the use of the PPAD-E for eligibility criteria (and indeed for screening in schools) is whether the test can be individually administered. The Word Reading subtest is already an individually administered test. While standardisation of the other four subtests is based on group administration, it can also be used appropriately for individual testing, as long as the procedures used in administration and scoring are consistent with the administration and scoring manuals.Examples of situations where individual testing may be appropriate include facilitating a student who may feel anxious in a group situation or who was absent on the day of group testing; completing an assessment with a student for a specific purpose (to monitor progress etc.) or assessing a student who transitioned from another post primary school after the assessment had been group-administered.

The PPAD-E was standardised in autumn 2019, pre-Covid-19, on a representative sample of 1738 first year post-primary school students and is being standardised in autumn 2025 in a representative sample of approximately 2500 Third Year students. In theory, any other population of interest such as students in special schools can be assessed using the PPAD-E, once it is understood that results are being compared to norms developed to be representative of the “typical” first year student.

Results cannot be downloaded directly in CSV format. However, groups reports can be copied into a spreadsheet and saved as a CSV: 1. Log in to the scoring tool at https://ppadetest.ie.(https://ppadetest.ie) Select “Class and School Report(s)”. You can either download each class individually, or just the entire school report. 2. Open the report in Word and click into the table of results. Right-click on the cross at the top-left of the table and click “Copy”: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4647a6_1b4f97f9bc9344b2808c5c35e2cbbb7f~mv2.png 3. Now open up a blank Excel spreadsheet. Right-click in the top-left cell and select Paste. You should get something like the below: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4647a6_9162d996e8014a0cb12cdd1ff4ae1a4b~mv2.png 4. In order to correct the formatting for saving as a CSV, you will need to delete the top row of the spreadsheet. However, this top row has some information relevant to the standardised scores – it may be difficult to identify which scores are for which category without adding it in manually. We would suggest using the following headings for the second row before deleting the top row: 5. After deleting the top row, you can now save your spreadsheet as a CSV. Click “File” and “Save As”. When saving your file, you can select the file type “CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv)”: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4647a6_de2ab8df8d284563a5a2b3478f51f262~mv2.png 6. Now if you close and reopen the file, you will see that it has been saved as a CSV, without any formatting: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4647a6_441ac4cb36ac4b4ebd9420aa23154d44~mv2.png

If your reports are downloading blank, try the following steps: -Try using a different browser, such as Microsoft Edge or Firefox -Try opening the file with Microsoft Word If the issue persists, please contact us for further assistance.