11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi,

DS has just done a FPP English paper. I got his FPP report and it told me what percentile he was on. Can anyone tell me

(a) are the papers graded in terms of difficulty, with A being the easiest and D the hardest?
(b) what percentile is considered GS standard?

Thank you!

I thought that the papers were of the same level of difficulty. I was incredibly depressed with ds's percentiles (ranging from 26 to 70ish) but he got 417 in Kent Test and a place in the Sutton super selectives, so I think the centiles represent the fact that only a relatively small number of very well prepared children actually sit these papers!

Dug out his answer sheets - he got 36/50 for paper A, 35/50 for B and 40/50 for C. He had a mc English paper for 1st round Sutton, and passed that (which 800 out of 2200 passed).

Hope that helps...

Hi Ladymuck,

Your DS did brilliantly: 417 in the KT and the Sutton Selectives are amongst the hardest to get into in the country.

Thanks for the info on percentiles and scores. I suppose, like all these tests, it depends who else is in the cohort, which would affect the percentile scores.

Thanks again for replying.

Wasn't meant to be a boast - more that He didn't get particularly high centiles in FPP (which I found depressing this time last year), but actually he was at the right level for the exams he was then facing. I know everyone seems to say that you need to be scoring 90%+ for the super selectives, but I think the FPP papers are relatively hard, and that lowish centiles really doesn't translate into the real life result in our experience. It is very hard though because it is such a roller coaster at this stage, and I was looking for any indication that we were "on track". The 26th centile result definitely lives in my mind! Not what I wanted to see with only a few weeks to go!

The cohort is skewed for you as there will be students applying for QE boys (2 thousand sit for 180 places) DAO (1300 sit for 65 places) Latymer (2 thousand sit for 165 places) and HBS (2 thousand sit for 93 places) DG

Thank you, both. DD's confidence plummeted with the Bond CEM books. As you suggested, her scores were much better with Tutor Master. Don't know if anyone has the answer, but I was wondering which comprehension type was more in keeping with the real test. Having seen past papers from csse, I'd say that neither!

So pleased to read some of this ! I was going to post the same about fptp comprehension book . My dd now yr 5 , and she has just done the first comprehension paper- I was pleased at first , as she finished with time to spare and got 11 / 15 , which although not great I thought was a good first attempt for us to work on ( and when went through answers , she did actually know most of the others just silly mistakes ) However when put online she was in 20% percentile - so slight panic . Think I will carry on with comprehensions as is a nice range in book , but maybe not compare online !!

I just wouldn't touch those online comparisons. You don't know if children have done the paper exactly to time, or if it is their first attempt.

year4mum wrote:So pleased to read some of this ! I was going to post the same about fptp comprehension book . My dd now yr 5 , and she has just done the first comprehension paper- I was pleased at first , as she finished with time to spare and got 11 / 15 , which although not great I thought was a good first attempt for us to work on ( and when went through answers , she did actually know most of the others just silly mistakes ) However when put online she was in 20% percentile - so slight panic . Think I will carry on with comprehensions as is a nice range in book , but maybe not compare online !!

When you look at the percentiles you don't know what stage the children were at eg. At the end of year 5 just before the 11+ exam the students will be at their peak and will score better grades, if you are comparing your child(who has just started year 5) then the percentile score will get lower. I wouldn't read too much into the comparison as to be fair it should be age adjusted.