Common QTS Skills Test Questions and Answers

Before you start your initial teacher training, you’ll find there’s one more hurdle to leap, and that’s the professional skills tests. Professional skills tests for teachers assess the core skills all teachers need in order to provide a professional role within any school.

Irrespective of your GCSE and A-level results, you will have to pass skills tests in literacy and numeracy prior to beginning a course of study to achieve qualified teacher status. Of course, to gain the qualified teacher status (QTS), you may be wondering what sort of questions and answers you’ll be up against.

Common QTS Numeracy Skills Test Questions

The pass mark in the numeracy skills test is 60 percent, meaning you need to answer 17 of the 28 questions correctly. Questions embrace mental arithmetic, general maths and statistics. Typical questions and answers are as follows:

Q. What is 75% of 80 pence?

A. 60 pence

Where complex percentage questions are asked, it is possible to use a calculator.

Q. A school has 360 Key Stage 3 pupils and 200 Key Stage 4 pupils, show this as a ratio.

A. 9:5 (nine KS3 pupils for every 5 KS4 pupils)

Q. A school has 180 pupils, 35 of these children go home for lunch. What proportion of pupils has lunch at school?

A. 29/36

You can check the worked through examples for these answers at the Department for Education and revise all areas covered by the numeracy testing.

Literacy Skills Tests

The literacy skills test is split into four sections: spelling, punctuation, grammar and comprehension. The spellings section has to be taken first, and cannot be revisited once complete. Some sample spellings questions and answers follow:

Q. Underline or circle the correct spelling

exaustive exaurstive exhorstive exhaustive

A. exhaustive

Q. Underline or circle the correct spelling

comemmorative commemmorative commemmoritive commemorative

A. Commemorative

An example of the type of punctuation test you could face in literary skills testing follows:

This is an extract from Brookdale School’s newsletter. Do you have some spare time? Are you willing to give the school a helping hand We are looking for volunteers from the community to join us in enhancing the opportunities and experiences of Brookdale Schools children. There are various ways in which you could help as a paired reader; as a sports coach or referee; as a chaperone on outings by sharing a specialist knowledge you have. The paired reading scheme has been running at brookdale for two years, during which time over one hundred children have benefited from the help given to them by volunteers. The scheme operates every morning from 9.00 to 9.30 a.m. helpers elect to come as many mornings as they feel able and full guidance and training are given. Pupils responses have been almost wholly positive one twelve yearold recently said “I thought I’d never be able to read, but thanks to Mrs Davis, whos been helping me for eight months Ive just read ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and The silver Chair’ all on my own.”

You are asked to find and amend 15 punctuation omissions within the text. The paper gives you a selection of common mistakes you may find, including omitting to place paragraphs in the text, capitalisation and more common punctuation omissions, such as commas, full stops and question marks.

With our support you can ace your tests first time around and move on to qualified teacher status in next to no time – get in touch to find our how we can help. We will also be launching an online testing system for you to assess your performance – so check back soon for more details.