The York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC) – Australian Edition, enables teachers to assess the reading and comprehension skills of children ages 5 to 18 years.  It is ideal for following up at an individual level after group testing and provides a wide range of invaluable information.

To assist assessors with the conversion of scores, free online scoring and reporting is available via buttons below. Instructions on how to use the Tool are also provided. Once student information and raw scores have been added, score conversion is immediate and a short summary report is produced.

Scoring conversion tool for yarc

YARC is an individually administered reading assessment that allows you to closely observe a student’s reading behaviours, strengths and areas for development. When using YARC, the component skills of reading are broken down to allow you to find precise areas to target to bring about rapid progress. Parallel forms of the assessment allow you to measure the impact of interventions.

An ideal follow-up assessment for the New Group Reading Test (NGRT), YARC can be used to assess and monitor student progress across a wide range of reading skills in as little as 20 minutes.

By providing an in-depth analysis of a student’s reading ability, including Standard Age Scores, age equivalent scores and percentile ranks for comprehension, rate and fluency, YARC helps you identify specific problems to inform appropriate interventions.

YARC Components

YARC Early Reading (4 – 7 years) 

For less skilled readers, YARC Early Reading assesses the alphabetical knowledge that underlies reading, namely:

• Letter sound knowledge
• Early Word Recognition
• Phoneme awareness (Sound Isolation and Sound Deletion).

These tests also measure a student’s progress in reading. The tests take about 20 minutes to administer and provide standardised scores, percentile ranks and age-equivalent scores. The YARC Early Years tests may be given as a complete set of all four tests or as individual tests only.

YARC Passage Reading – Primary (5 – 11 years)

The YARC Passage Reading – Primary is designed to be used with students ages 5 to 12 years. However some States and Territories complete primary school at Year 6, with Year 7 being the first year of secondary school. In others, Year 7 is the final year of primary school and Year 8 the first year of secondary. The YARC Passage Reading is therefore for use in primary schools in Australia, so norms are provided for older students who are attending primary schools in Year 7.

It is recommended that the primary test is used in primary schools and the secondary test is used in secondary schools.

Administered individually by specialist teachers, school psychologists and speech pathologists, the assessment takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete and is used to:

• Assess and monitor student progress
• Identify reading problems
• Assess eligibility for access arrangements
• Provide diagnostic information

It comprises two parallel tests of graded passages (A and B) for reading aloud, each of which is accompanied by a set of 8 comprehension questions to test literal and inferential comprehension skills.  Cover the age range 5 to 12 years, it provides:

• Standard Scores
• Percentile Ranks
• Reading Ages (accuracy, rate and comprehension)

It has been developed to assess the accuracy, rate and comprehension of oral reading skills in primary school children. It also provides a test of prose reading and comprehension, and assesses specifically three of the many sub-skills used in reading:

• Decoding (reading accuracy)
• Fluency (reading rate)
• Text Comprehension (literal and inferential meaning)

YARC Passage Reading – Secondary (12 – 16 years)

Comprises two sets of prose passages, both fiction and non-fiction, for students aged 12 – 18 years that enables the assessment of a student’s reading comprehension and fluency in a systematic way across the secondary school years. The norms cover an age range from 7 to 18 years.

Administered individually by teachers, school psychologists and speech pathologists, the assessment takes about 20-30 minutes to complete and is used to:

• Assess and monitor student’s progress
• Identify reading problems
• Assess eligibility of access arrangements
• Provide diagnostic information

Sample Reports