Assessment is essential to evaluate the student’s competence during teaching and learning process. It aims to measure the ability of students to master of a subject. A assessment involves test items as tool to measure the students’ ability which the reading test items are the common test items used. In constructing a test items, it cannot be separated from basic competence, since it deals with what student’s must learn and master. Thus, creating good test items based on basic competences are crucial, since it relates to the validity of the test. In addition, to compete in 21st century, it is important for students to have critical thinking which involve three cognitive dimensions; analyzing (C4), evaluating (C5) and creating (C6). These there cognitive dimensions could be called as High order thinking skills (HOTS). Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the use of basic competences on test items based on content validity and the use of HOTS. The research design used in this study was qualitative approach since it dealt with analysis of the assessments. There were 50 question items of semester assessment and 50 question items of final year assessment on seven grade of Islamic junior high school’s assessments. The data was collected by asking the permission to English teacher of MTs Noor Rachmat Kec. Lawang Kab. Malang East Java since this school is part of MGMP in Malang then analyzed by using thematic method. Meanwhile to find out the content validity of the test, the researcher used the formula developed by Grogery (2015). The findings showed that the content validity of semester assessment reached 0.94 and 0.96 on final year assessment. It could be concluded that these assessments had good content validity. In addition, the use of HOTS was found on final year assessment which 15 question items were categorized as HOTS items, where creating (C6) was the highest cognitive level. However, it was none of HOTS items on semester assessment. Thus the use of HOTS in all these assessments are important, since the students of Islamic Junior High School should train in critical thinking.