exam scores

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bavsfrends
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Sep 07, 2010 5:46 pm

exam scores

Post by bavsfrends »

please can anyone advice me how much score is needed to get into RGS or JH. I have started getting panicky now with my son taking the exam this year.
Many thanks for your help.
Sally-Anne
Posts: 9235
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:10 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: exam scores

Post by Sally-Anne »

The qualifying mark for Bucks is a standardised score of 121. The school you are applying to is not relevant, because places are allocated on distance, not score.

Provided your son achieves 121 (or appeals successfully on a lower score than that) he will be offered a GS place.

The figure of 121 equates to approximately 69 or 70/80 correct answers, but 72/80 would be a safe bet.
bucksdaddy
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 6:57 pm

Re: exam scores

Post by bucksdaddy »

Sally-Anne

Are you absolutely certain of that? My daughter sat a mock test in June and scored 59/80 which they said was SS 116 (without any age adjustment). That means if she needs to get 69 for a SS 121 each correct answer above 59 is worth 0.5 SS points.

They also say that the age adjustment seems to be around 1-5 points.

So for my daughter's test, if she were an August birthday, she would score SS 121 with 59/80 which suggests that the age adjustment is worth 10 incorrect entries.

Either the mock test was way harder than the real thing or something does not look quite right.
Sally-Anne
Posts: 9235
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:10 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: exam scores

Post by Sally-Anne »

Hi bucksdaddy

Unfortunately I am absolutely certain of that. Forum members have, over the years, made various Freedom of Information requests on this subject and there are threads that make it absolutely clear that 69/70/71 out of 80 equates to a qualifying score of 121.

Our Forum member "Tree" is a bit of a specialist in this area, and you may find it useful to search his/her posts.

It is also not possible to calculate a standardised score for the Bucks tests from mock tests because the standardisation is specific to the County each year. However, the variation cannot possibly be as much as 10 raw marks, even for an August birthday.

Mock tests are a very grey area of 11+ preparation. I fear that something is not right in the calculations being used here.

Sally-Anne
Tree
Posts: 536
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 7:19 pm
Location: bucks

Re: exam scores

Post by Tree »

Hi bucksdaddy

The post sally-anne refers too is this :

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... c&start=10

basically i used a number of FOI requests and appeal requests where people had been able to get raw scores and used this and a bit of stats to produce a formula modelling raw to ss scores whith age corrections

From your mock scores it would be interesting to know what they mean by no age adjustment i assume they throw all the scores into the pot and produce a distribution and then calculate the ss score from this, if the age distribution of the children taking the test is spread evenly across the whole year then this would mean that the ss score to pass should be equivalent to a mid year born child ie jan/feb. The spread of raw scores across the age gap getting 121 is around 5 and is usually 71/2 for sept born and 66/67 for aug born and so 121 for a mid year born would be 69 ish. With the real test my data showed that a score of 116 would normally reflect a raw score of 61-2 for an aug child and 66-67 for a sept child. So something is (as sally-anne says) not equivalent with the mock results you have given
Last edited by Tree on Sat Sep 11, 2010 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sally-Anne
Posts: 9235
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:10 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: exam scores

Post by Sally-Anne »

Nice teamwork, Tree!
Tree
Posts: 536
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 7:19 pm
Location: bucks

Re: exam scores

Post by Tree »

Ok i have been thinking about the maths here and there is a big problem with trying to compare a mock test where a distribution of scores is produced across all ages with the real test where 12 different distributions are produced one for each age month this is because the standard deviation of the whole year is going to be much wider than it will be for each age month.

If you remember each ss mark represents 1/15 of the standard deviation of the raw scores and for the real test this reflects 0.8 raw score marks in other words the sd of the raw scores for each months cohort is around 12 (0.8*15).

It is obvious to see that the sd of a whole years score is going to be much wider than this and this would explain how bucksdaddys ds's score of 59 would get a 116 on the mock test if it has a pass mark of 69 (it wasn't clear form bucksdaddy's post if this was the past mark or not ?) giving 121 then 1 ss is 2 raw score marks and so the sd of the mock test is 30 (2*15) ie over twice as wide.

So how does this help bucksdaddy to know how his daughter is getting on? well I think the short answer is that it doesn't help much at all the reason for this is :

1/because the sd of the mock test scores is much wider than the real test the mark is fairly meaningless as it is very difficult to make a sensible age correction. The passmark maybe applicable to mid year born children but points 2 and 3 cast doubt on this :

2/it is very unlikely that the abilities of the children taking the mock test are going to be the same as the kids taking the real test

3/we dont have any idea how difficult the test is in comparison the the real test which ties in with point 2

I think a better prediction is how your ds is doing in their papers at home and particularly (so long as they haven't seen the questions before) their marks in the last 2 familiarisation papers. I would say if they are getting over 67 for august born and over 72/3 for sept born then thay are in the right ballpark to pass.

Hope this helps.
bucksdaddy
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 6:57 pm

Re: exam scores

Post by bucksdaddy »

Sally-Anne / Tree

Thank you both for your posts. I think it is clear that her score for the mock test she took may not be comparable to the real thing for any number of reasons.

To be honest, partly through my ignorance it has mislead me, as I interpreted the score of 59, SS 116 as a good benchmark of her progress. She didn't score as highly as I had hoped from her home study but SS 116 appeared reasonable and certainly gave cause for optimism given my daughter is a June born and the SS had not age adjusted.

She has recently scored 68 to 69 in her last 3 home study and first school mock. I had assumed that as these were circa 85% (a great score in any exam!) and 10 raw points higher than the previous mock which gave an SS 116, that a similar score would lead to success which whilst not overwhelming would be quite comfortable with the age adjustment.

Thankfully by reading your forum I now understand that 68 to 69 is marginal and we still have plenty of work to do. In fact I only read the forum because whilst I was happy with her school mock result she did not place as highly in her class as she usually does for normal assignments.

But is is very difficult to keep my daughter focused when she is scoring 85%, is performing "well above" the national average for numeracy and literacy, is on the G&T register and confident! But still is marginal for the 11+.

Any advice for last minute preparation, she generally scores evenly on all question types although needs some practice on codes.
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Re: exam scores

Post by patricia »

Dear Bucksdaddy

Can you tell us which papers you have been using for your preparation?

Vocabulary tends to be the biggest problem, however if its the codes, they can be learnt with an expectation of 100% marks. Which code does she have a problem with?

Patricia
stressedparent
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 1:30 pm

Re: exam scores

Post by stressedparent »

Hi,
Mock tests do not produce correct standardised scores as the correlated data is derived from a very small sample. This usually leads to a standard deviation of less than 7. The Buck's tests usually produce a standard deviation of a range between 10-13 depending on the year. Bucksdaddy, I wonder if you have any information reference average mean score of the cohort that sat the mock test with your daughter?

stressedparent
stressedparent
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