11 Plus Exams Forum

Birmingham's proposed arrangements for 2011 admissions are available on line:

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satelli ... %2FWrapper

The most significant feature from a grammar school point of view is that it's proposed that the KE grammars, Bishop Vesey and Sutton Girls will form a partnership known as the "Consortium of Grammar Schools in Birmingham"; there will be a single common application form and a single common selection test for all 7 schools; the test will be on the first or second Saturday in November (depending on half term dates).

Admission arrangements for Handsworth Grammar will remain separate.

Deadline for comments on the arrangements is 1st Feb.

Mike

Thanks Mike - that's very interesting, and probably better for the kids (and Parents too) who will be preparing for exams now (one less exam to worry about). I presume Queen Mary's Walsall is still a separate exam since it's comes under a different Council ?

Anyway, better all round, as most kids will be tested at the same level now, giving a true representation of the child's ability, I think, as the KE exam format is tougher and more time constrained.....presuming the format of the exam is to be based on the KE / Durham University setup.

Elbart

I imagine it will be CEM given the rumour that BV and SCG were going over to CEM from next November.

It's better for those who are confident of qualifying, but it means there's only one bite at the cherry from now on, and no safety net for anyone who has an "off day" - I know most other areas are already in that situation but they usually have more forgiving review and appeals procedures to go with it.

Mike

....yes Mike, there is that of course - on a bad day you would have certainly have wished for a backup

It's probably good news for the "mock 11+" industry - I'm already mulling it over for Miss 1880...

Mike

I like the two bites of the cherry approach, so less is riding on any one day. Thanks, Mike, for drawing this to our attention. Will mull over a response to BCC...

Oh no really panicing now.

My dd is in year 5 and due to sit the test this year - does this mean these changes will apply from this Nov 2010??

Therefore she will only sit two exams....one for the KE schools and sutton, and one for QM.....is this right?

Hi floozey,

Yes, this is intended to apply to the exam in November this year - just one exam for the KEs, BV and Sutton. The QMs will still be a separate CEM exam and Handsworth Grammar will still have their own.

QM isn't an option for us; I was planning to put SC down as a not very sensible or practical fallback, but if it's all the one test there's really no point - if she doesn't score highly enough for a KE then I doubt she'd qualify for SC either (it will be interesting to see what the qualifying scores turn out to be in comparison to the KEs).

Mike

How certain are we that this is definately going to happen......like 90 -100%?

Is the one test going to be therefore just like the KE one - which I believe is hard to practise for??

Well, it's for consultation at the moment so in theory it could change. However, I can see a lot of advantages for everyone involved in administering the process and I imagine it would take some pretty substantial arguments to change their minds.

Since the recent rumour was that SC and BV would be adopting a CEM exam this year I think we can probably guess that the test will be the current KE one, or something very like it.

Mike