Pupil Attitudes to Self and School (PASS)

Pupil Attitudes to Self and School® (PASS) assesses how students feel about school and themselves as a learner, including connectedness, self-efficacy, and motivation. The PASS can be used as a universal screener to help teachers identify at-risk students and to develop or deploy suitable interventions.

Intrapersonal competencies

K–12

2018

2000

Student

Paper/Pencil, Digital

27 or 50

Likert-type scale

15–20 minutes

English (online)
26 languages (print)

None

No overall scores are reported.

There are nine subscores:

Connectedness

• Feelings about school
• Perceived learning capability
• Self-regard as a learner

Self-efficacy

• Preparedness for learning
• Attitudes to teachers
• General work ethic
• Confidence in learning

Motivation

• Attitudes to attendance
• Response to curriculum needs

Scoring manual and online scoring is provided by the assessment developer.

Score reports contain individual student, school-level and district-level scores as well as analyses by grade, gender, race/ethnicity, special education status, English Learner status, socioeconomic status, and custom groups. Scores are reported as standardized percentile scores and then categorized as high, moderate, low-moderate, and low satisfaction.

Evidence based on a sample that is representative of the general United Kingdom population between the ages of 7 and 16 (N=510,339).

Internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) was estimated for each scale based on a study of 638,000 English students in 2015–16 and 2016–17. Reliability coefficients are reported for only two subscales: Feelings about school (0.90) and preparedness for learning (0.82) (GL Assessment, 2011).

Evidence based on content

Initial items developed and reviewed by experts from UK-based universities and local authorities (GL Assessment, 2011).

Evidence based on response processes

Survey was pilot-tested with over 14,000 school age young people between the ages of 8 and 16. (GL Assessment, 2011; Williams et al., 2005).

Evidence based on internal structure

Exploratory Factor Analysis demonstrated that the items clustered into nine factors (GL Assessment, 2011).

Evidence based on relations with other variables

PASS scores correlated positively with student attendance and also generally correlated positively with New Group Reading Test scores, with correlations ranging from 0.38 (response to curriculum demands for students aged 7–11) to -0.03 (students aged 12–14 attitudes toward teachers).