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The literacy test is made up of four sections; this page gives you information about the types of questions to expect.

Spelling

In this section you will be tested on words that you could reasonably be expected to use in your professional role as a teacher; words which colleagues, governors, parents and pupils would expect any teacher to know how to spell, whatever their specialism. The words are not especially obscure or technical, although some of them are particular to the vocabulary of education, or are used frequently in professional writing.

Punctuation

The correct and consistent use of punctuation is an essential aspect of a teacher’s literacy; clear writing demands the ability to understand and apply the rules of punctuation.

This section requires you to identify and correct 15 punctuation omissions within a short passage. The test does not require you to delete or change any of the text.

Grammar

This section will test your ability to identify text that does not conform to good grammatical practice. You will be expected to distinguish between text that makes sense and clearly conveys its intended meaning and text that does not. You will not be tested on your knowledge of grammatical terms, but on your knowledge of how to use the grammar correctly within contexts that relate to your professional role as a teacher.

Comprehension

This section will test your ability to identify the main points in a text, distinguish between facts and opinions, retrieve facts and key points, make inferences and deductions, and present information in a different way from the original text. The comprehension section is designed to ensure that you can extract information from texts, evaluate its meaning and status and on occasions, actively re-work, organise and structure that information at a level which is appropriate to your professional role.

The tests use the types of texts you may encounter in your professional role such as documents published by various local and national government bodies, schools and the educational press.

Test marking

The total number of marks available in the literacy skills tests ranges from 41 to 49 depending upon the test.

The table below indicates the number of marks available in each section.

Area of literacy testedNumber of marks available
Spelling 10
Punctuation 15
Grammar 8-12
Comprehension 8-12

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