Cognitive & Learning Assessments:
Lighting The Pathway To Success
The Learning Breakthrough That Empowers Your Child To Succeed
Backed by science, led by experts, and trusted by Kiwi families. This is the leading Cognitive & Learning Assessment that unlocks the learning pathway for young people.
Discover your child’s unique learning profile, uncover hidden challenges like dyslexia, and create a personalised path forward.
The Mind of Your Child is a Universe Waiting To be Unlocked.
You’re not imagining things.
You know your child is bright. But something isn’t clicking.
Maybe it’s the endless tears over homework, the reading that never seems to get easier, or the way your child zones out in class and gets labelled as “lazy” or “unmotivated.”
Perhaps it’s that nagging feeling that appears every time you ask, “How was school?”:
They just don’t seem to ever LEARN anything.
You’ve heard a dozen theories. Maybe it’s ADHD. Maybe it’s dyslexia. Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe... it’s something deeper that hasn’t been properly understood yet.
You’re doing everything you can. But your child is still struggling to keep up at school, connect with friends, or manage their emotions. If you’re tired of hearing “just wait it out” or “they’re just slow readers” while your child falls further behind…
….you’re not failing them. But it’s time to take a different approach.
It’s time to get real answers.
Light The Learning Pathway For Your Child
Introducing…PATHFINDER™
Pathfinder™ is a comprehensive Cognitive & Learning Assessment that gives you clarity on how your child thinks, learns, and processes information.
This is not a one-size-fits-all test. This is about finally understanding what’s going on beneath the surface — so you can stop guessing and start supporting your child with confidence.
Learning Doesn’t Have To Be Lonely.
For many parents, it feels like you’re constantly:
Arguing about homework that should take 20 minutes but takes 2 hours.
Wondering why your child is falling behind despite their obvious potential.
Feeling judged by teachers, family, or other parents who don’t understand.
Questioning whether they should be further ahead in learning, or you’re just imagining it.
Dreading school meetings where you hear more problems but no solutions.
Watching your child lose confidence and start to believe they’re “stupid”.
Hearing terms like “learning delay” or “behaviour issue” without anyone digging deeper.
And the worst part? You keep being told to wait.
Wait for a school assessment. Wait for a public system referral. Wait for support.
But your child is struggling now.
At night, when the house is quiet, the doubts creep in.
What if they have dyslexia and no one’s helping? What if they never make friends? What if things don’t get better on their own?
It’s infuriating. You know your child is brilliant, creative, and full of potential—but no one else seems to see it.
You dream of a day when your child walks into class confident, reads without tears, comes home smiling instead of screaming, and you feel like a “good parent” instead of a failure.
But that day feels so far away.
You can’t afford to wait. And you shouldn’t have to.
“For the first time, I felt like someone saw my son for who he is, not just his challenges. Pathfinder identified his dyslexia, and the school listened to the recommendations. He’s thriving now.”
Rachel, Mum of 7-Year-Old
You Don’t Have To Keep Waiting: Get The Clarity To Move Forward
Waiting only lets your child fall further behind—missing out on reading skills, confidence, or social connections. “Parenting harder” without the right plan just leaves you more exhausted.
What if the issue isn’t your child’s effort or your parenting?
What if the real roadblock is that no one has truly seen how your child’s brain works—their strengths, their challenges, their potential?
Without that clarity, you’re fighting blindfolded, swinging at problems like dyslexia or inattention you can’t fully understand.
Your child might be labelled “disruptive”, “slow”, “inattentive” or “difficult.”
But what if those labels are wrong—and the real issue is that no one has decoded the puzzle of how your child learns and thrives?
That’s where the Pathfinder™ Cognitive & Learning Assessment comes in.
Pathfinder is the breakthrough.
This isn’t a generic school screening. It’s a full, science-backed psychological and educational assessment that paints a complete picture of your child’s brain — their strengths, struggles, and how they process the world.
Through a combination of gold-standard tools like the WISC-V (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) and WIAT-III (Wechsler Individual Achievement Test), Pathfinder helps identify:
Cognitive processing issues (working memory, processing speed, attention)
Learning differences such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and language-based delays
Indicators of ADHD, Autism, and executive function difficulties
Gaps between your child’s potential and actual school performance
Every child learns differently. Pathfinder gives you a roadmap that makes sense for your child.
It’s the only assessment that combines cutting-edge cognitive testing, learning style analysis, and personalised recommendations to create a crystal-clear roadmap for your child’s success.
Unlike standard assessments that provide vague scores or focus only on deficits, Pathfinder digs deeper. It uncovers how your child’s brain processes information—whether they’re struggling with reading due to dyslexia, focus due to ADHD, or sensory overload due to Autism.
It pinpoints their strengths and exactly what’s holding them back. It’s like getting an X-ray of their mind—a detailed, actionable blueprint that shows you (and their school) how to unlock their potential.
Our proprietary framework, developed over years of working with neurodiverse kids, translates complex data into practical strategies tailored to your child’s unique profile. It’s not just a test—it’s a plan to help your child thrive in the classroom, build confidence, and navigate their world with less frustration.
The Pathfinder™ Assessment: Your Child’s Path to a Brighter Future.
The Pathfinder™ Cognitive & Learning Assessment is for parents who are done with guesswork and ready to take control of their child’s future.
This isn’t about “fixing” your child (they’re not broken).
It’s about understanding them deeply—whether they have dyslexia, ADHD, Autism, or a mix of learning challanges—and giving them the tools to shine.
Here’s what the Pathfinder Assessment delivers:
A Comprehensive Evaluation: We assess your child’s cognitive abilities (using tools like the WISC-V), academic skills (WIAT-III), and learning preferences, with a specific focus on identifying dyslexia and other neurodiverse traits.
A Personalised Roadmap: You’ll get a detailed report with clear, practical strategies for home, school, and therapy—tailored to address dyslexia, emotional regulation, or academic challenges.
Empowerment for You: We guide you through the results, so you can advocate confidently for dyslexia support or other accommodations with schools and professionals.
A Path to Progress: From better reading interventions to improved classroom accommodations, this is your child’s ticket to a life with less struggle and more success.
This is for parents who want their child to learn with enlightenment, read with curiosity, count with confidence, walk into school without fear, make friends, and feel understood—without you having to struggle and fight for them every step of the way.
You no longer have to keep waiting, watching your child struggle with reading or school while systems fail to diagnose dyslexia or support their neurodiversity.
The cost of inaction—more stand-downs, more meltdowns, more missed opportunities—keeps rising. So it’s time to take a different path.
What To Expect From The Pathfinder™ Cognitive & Learning Assessment
You no longer have to keep waiting, watching your child struggle with reading or school while systems fail to diagnose dyslexia or support their neurodiversity.
The cost of inaction—more stand-downs, more meltdowns, more missed opportunities—keeps rising. So it’s time to take a different path.
Here’s How It Works
When it comes to unlocking learning, we like to keep things simple.
First, you complete the simple form to apply for a Cognitive & Learning assessment. Then this is what happens next:
Step One: A Comprehensive Data Gathering & Analysis Process.
Once you request a Cognitive & Learning Assessment for your child, we guarantee to reply and launch the process within 48 hours.
The first step is to run a comprehensive data gathering exercise where we analyse and evaluate information about your child’s strengths and the learning challenges they are experiencing.
This information is gathered from teachers and parents using marketing-leading psychometrics (questionnaires) to understand exactly how your child is learning in the classroom, and obtaining secondary information such as school reports
Once the information has been gathered, our educational psychology team will review the data.
We will then advise you of our recommendations and next steps. This may include proceeding to offer a Pathfinder Cognitive & Learning Assessment or a consultation with our educational psychologist.
Nothing is more important to us than putting your child on the right pathway for success: We wouldn’t let any family invest time and money in a cognitive & learning assessment unless there was clear evidence that it would be beneficial to them.
Step Two: The Cognitive & Learning Assessment.
To provide a fully comprehensive assessment of your child’s cognitive abilities and learning needs, the Pathfinder™ Assessment is split into two parts:
Part 1: WISC Assessment
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children® Fifth Edition (WISC®-V) is a powerful tool that helps us understand your child’s intellectual functioning in five key areas:
Verbal Comprehension – How well your child understands and uses language
Visual-Spatial Skills – How they understand and process visual information
Fluid Reasoning – Problem-solving and logical thinking skills
Working Memory – How well they can hold and use information in real-time
Processing Speed – How quickly they can complete routine cognitive tasks
These areas give us clues to learning struggles that are often missed in standardised testing or classroom observations.
The WISC Assessment is a 1 hour 30 minute face-to-face appointment with a specialist educational psychologist.
Part 2: WIAT Learning Analysis.
The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test® (WIAT) is used to measure your child’s strengths and weaknesses so that the school may determine the need for special support or recognise stand-out skills. It measures your child’s academic achievement across areas like:
Reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension
Spelling and written expression
Mathematical reasoning and problem solving
There are 16 subtests that measure across eight areas of performance, including language, reading, written expression, and mathematics.
Together, these assessments reveal the gaps between what your child could do and what they are doing — and why those gaps exist.
This is especially valuable in identifying dyslexia. Pathfinder doesn’t just confirm whether dyslexia is present — it explains how it presents uniquely in your child, and what support will help.
The WIAT learning analysis is a 1 hour 45 minute face-to-face appointment with a specialist educational psychologist.
Step Three: Pathway To Succeed.
Once the assessments are completed, you will be invited to a 60-minute consultation with our expert educational psychologist.
They will walk you through the findings of the assessment, answer your questions, and give you the insights you need to be confident about giving your child the best possible support in their future learning.
Finally, you will receive the bespoke assessment report for your child, this is a deep-dive into the results of the assessment and is also packed with insights, strategies, and recommendations—like dyslexia interventions—you can use immediately at home and school.
You will also be invited to join our EPIC Families community of VIPs (Very Important Parents) who get expert guidance and support to solve their ongoing questions and challenges. It’s a room full of people like you, who have experienced everything you’ve been through, and know exactly how to get through it and keep you on track with dyslexia or other neurodiverse challenges
You can also join our free EPIC Families Community here.
Plus listen to our EPIC Families Podcast on Spotify and Apple.
What You’ll Gain: A Life-Changing Transformation
The Pathfinder ™ Cognitive & Learning Assessment isn’t just a report—it’s a turning point.
You’ll Discover How To:
Unlock Your Child’s Hidden Strengths: Identify the unique gifts (like creativity or problem-solving) that schools often overlook, so your child can shine in ways that feel natural to them—whether they’re battling dyslexia or sensory overload.
End the School Battles: Get clear recommendations for accommodations (e.g., dyslexia-friendly fonts, sensory breaks, modified assignments) that force schools to listen, so your child stays in class instead of being sent home.
Support Reading Success: If dyslexia is present, learn targeted strategies to improve reading and spelling, so your child can tackle schoolwork without tears or shame.
Reduce Meltdowns at Home: Master techniques to support emotional regulation, so you can enjoy calmer evenings—without walking on eggshells.
Build Your Child’s Confidence: Help them understand their brain—dyslexia included—in a positive way, so they stop feeling “stupid” and start believing in themselves.
Advocate Like a Pro: Arm yourself with data and language to demand the support your child deserves—whether it’s dyslexia interventions or ADHD accommodations—without feeling dismissed.
Save Time and Money: Stop wasting resources on trial-and-error solutions and focus on what actually works for your child’s unique needs.
Imagine this: A year from now, your child is reading with newfound confidence, thriving in class, and coming home with stories of friends instead of fights. You’re sleeping better, knowing you’ve got a plan that addresses their dyslexia or other challenges. You feel like the parent you always wanted to be—strong, capable, and proud. That’s the power of Pathfinder™.
“The report was a game-changer. We finally understood why our daughter struggled with reading and focus. The strategies helped her catch up in months. I wish we’d done this sooner”
Emma, Parent of an 9-Year-Old
Discover The Bay Paediatrics Difference
Smart parents choose Bay Paediatrics for three reasons:
Clarity, Certainty and Confidence.
We move faster, work harder, look deeper and go further than anyone else - that’s why we’re on a mission to be New Zealand’s leading child neurodiversity clinic.
This Is The Bay Paediatrics Difference:
We are neurodevelopmental and learning specialists: No generalists here. We focus only on ADHD, Autism, and related neurodevelopmental conditions in children and teens — so your child gets expert, tailored care.
Cutting-Edge Assessment Tools: Your child is more than just a questionnaire score. We use innovative tech to objectively assess, measure and track progress over time. That’s why Bay Paediatrics is the only paediatric clinic in New Zealand that was invited to present our methods at the 2025 World ADHD Congress in Prague.
Data-Driven & Evidence-Based: Our blend of medical, behavioural, and digital insights allows us to give families a clear diagnosis, practical plan, and measurable outcomes — not just another label.
We See the Superpowers: We believe neurodivergent conditions and learning struggles aren’t “disorders” — they’re different operating systems. We help your child understand and harness their unique strengths, not just manage their challenges.
The Courage to ‘Think Different, Do Different’: We challenge the status quo of cookie-cutter care and empower families to stand tall, speak up, and fight for the future their child deserves.
Whole Family Support: We understand that when a child struggles, the whole family struggles. We provide wraparound support for parents and siblings too, including resources, education, podcast, events and community.
Fees & What’s Included
Fees
The Pathfinder™ Cognitive & Learning Assessment is $1,800 + GST.
The Pathfinder™ Assessment delivers:
A Comprehensive Evaluation: We assess your child’s cognitive abilities (using tools like the WISC-V), academic skills (WIAT-III), and learning preferences, with a specific focus on identifying dyslexia and other neurodiverse traits.
A Personalised Roadmap: You’ll get a detailed report with clear, practical strategies for home, school, and therapy—tailored to address dyslexia, emotional regulation, or academic challenges.
Empowerment for You: We guide you through the results, so you can advocate confidently for dyslexia support or other accommodations with schools and professionals.
A Path to Progress: From better reading interventions to improved classroom accommodations, this is your child’s ticket to a life with less struggle and more success.
This is for parents who want their child to learn with enlightenment, read with curiosity, count with confidence, walk into school without fear, make friends, and feel understood—without you having to struggle and fight for them every step of the way.
The Pathfinder™ Cognitive & Learning assessment includes:
Comprehensive Developmental Evaluation: Qualitative data gathering & analysis from the child’s caregivers and teachers.
WISC Cognitive Assessment: An advanced and highly powerful tool that helps us understand your child’s intellectual functioning. This is a 90-minute consultation with our expert educational psychologist.
WIAT Learning Analysis: A world-class learning analysis method used to measure your child’s strengths and development areas in the classroom. This is a 1 hour 45 minute consultation with our expert educational psychologist.
Bespoke Cognitive & Leaning Report: In-depth report completed by our education psychologist and reviewed by our Paediatric Consultant that details your child’s diagnosis, outcomes & recommended next steps.
Pathway Consultation: You’re never left asking, “Now what do we do?!”. In your Pathway Consultation, our educational psychologist will walk you through the findings of the assessment, answer your questions, and give you the insights you need to be confident about giving your child the best possible support in their future learning. This is a 60-minute consultation with our expert educational psychologist.
Click below to book your Pathfinder Cognitive & Learning assessment and start your journey to discovery today.
Your Learning Pathfinder
Nadia du Plessis
BSocSci (Psychology); PGCE, BEd Hons; MEd Child & Educational Psychology
Nadia du Plessis is an Educational Psychologist with a distinguished career dedicated to supporting children with diverse needs.
With a compassionate approach and a deep understanding of learning and neurodiversity, Nadia has been a steadfast advocate for children, helping them unlock their potential and empowering families and communities to better support their needs. Her work emphasises the importance of inclusion, understanding, and celebrating the strengths of neurodivergent individuals.
Nadia has extensive experience working within the Ministry of Education, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), and her private practice. Now based in the Bay of Plenty, she is passionate about supporting the neurodiverse community, including both children and their families.
Nadia enjoys teaching, running parent training seminars, and helping parents connect with and understand their children. She believes that parents can better support their neurodivergent children by understanding how their minds work and how the neurodivergent brain processes the world.
Click Below to listen to Nadia’s expert insights on the Bay Paediatrics EPIC Families Podcast, where she delivers a masterclass in how to help your child overcome anxiety and emotional challenges.
EPIC Families Episode 8: “The Resilience Ladder” with Nadia du Plessis
“I was terrified my son had dyslexia, but no one would listen. Pathfinder confirmed it and gave us a plan. Now he’s reading better, and school feels possible. I’m not crying every day anymore ”
Tina, Parent of 10-Year Old
The Path From Potential To Performance
Private assessments are an investment. But here’s the truth: the cost of not knowing is far higher.
When a child’s needs are unidentified, they can spend years being misunderstood and mislabelled. The academic, emotional, and mental health consequences compound quickly:
Increased school refusal or suspension
Loss of confidence and self-worth
Chronic anxiety, depression, or oppositional behaviours
Missed opportunities for early intervention that works
In contrast, a timely and accurate assessment can unlock funding support, enable targeted interventions, and stop the cycle of failure and frustration.
New Zealand's public system is under immense pressure. The waitlist for a cognitive or educational psychology assessment can range from 12 months to 3 years, depending on your region.
That’s 1-3 years of watching your child struggle.
Pathfinder assessments are typically completed within 2-4 weeks, with a full report in your hands shortly after. You get answers now. Not when it’s too late.
FAQs
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No, you don’t need a referral from your doctor or child’s school you can book your Cognitive & Learning assessment directly with us.
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Complete the application here and we’ll send you some forms to complete. Our medical team will then review the data and recommend next steps to you.
We offer ADHD and Autism assessments at Bay Paediatrics.
However, when parents are unsure about what action to take, or don’t know whether an ADHD or Autism assessment is the right course of action, then a Neurodiversity Navigator session is the perfect first step.
Our expert psychologist, Nadia du Plessis, can give you immediate strategies to help at home and also advise and recommend the right pathway for your child. Click here to discover more.
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We are affiliated with Southern Cross.
If you have questions about health insurance, we always recommend you review your individual health insurance policy and speak to your insurance provider.
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We can deliver Cognitive & Learning assessments for any child between 4 years old and 17 years old
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Waiting might seem easier, but it risks your child falling further behind—especially with undiagnosed dyslexia, which can erode confidence and academic progress.
The Pathfinder Assessment gives you answers now, so you can act before small struggles become big barriers.
You’re a fierce advocate, but the complexity of neurodiversity, like dyslexia, requires expert tools and insights. Pathfinder combines science, experience, and personalisation to give you answers you can’t find through Google or trial-and-error. Save your energy for what matters most—supporting your child.
Early intervention can change their trajectory—don’t let time steal that chance.
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Absolutely. We’ll ask that you share any school reports or information you’ve received so far, but you can allow us to be in your corner and we’ll get you to the right outcome fast.
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We want to truly understand your child: Their strengths, challenges and what’s going on for them. Therefore, we need to conduct these assessments in person in our Tauranga clinic.
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Yes. Our ADHD assessments need to take in person, so you’ll need to be in Tauranga.
However, if you are travelling from further afield, we will work with you to coordinate clinic and assessment times so we keep your travel and disruption to a minimum.
Listen Up..
Get the support you need from the Bay Paediatrics team right NOW…with the EPIC Families Podcast & Community.
We’re giving families strength in neurodiversity by bringing you support and guidance from world-class experts.
Click below to listen, join and discover how to think differently about neurodiversity
