11 Plus Exams Forum

I've just heard from the parent of a child sitting the test shortly that she was told that the test results were standardized by gender as well as by age, with the weighting in favour of boys. I told her that - from what I could remember - this indeed used to be the case years ago because of the higher proportion of girls passing, but is no longer done - the only standardization is based on age. Please can someone confirm this? It's quite possible that there are other people under the impression that their son will get "extra" marks purely because they were born a boy!

Hi Guest

I don't know if there ever was "standardisation by gender" but there certainly isn't now.

The S ex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975, so any such unfairnesses would have been ironed out fairly soon after that.

Sally-Anne

There did used to be extra points for boys but this stopped in 2000 or so

As many of the grammars are single sex, the question is not as relevant as may seem at first glance. If, for example, fewer boys pass, and that leads to spare spaces at boys' grammars, most of those spaces will still be filled. Of course it's rather different for the mixed grammars, but I wonder if they have equal numbers of applicants or if more of one gender tend to opt for co-ed?

Thanks for all the replies. Like Sally-Anne, I also wondered about the legality of awarding extra points to boys but am also sure that it did used to happen until fairly recently! Hugh's point about single-sex grammars is interesting and one that had not really occurred to me, as there is only one grammar school within a reasonable distance from us and it is mixed.

It would be interesting to know if there is a breakdown of male/female applicants and the corresponding success rates, just to see if the pass rate for girls really is higher!

At our appeal last year the standardisation was explained to us like this. Certain questions are found harder by children of a younger age, so, if a younger child gets that question wrong, they can earn a point from it.
It does not relate directly to the birthdate. So our son, born later in the year, would not get his extra point unless he got a 'harder' question wrong.
Knowing our son he'd have got those hard questions right and made a careless mistake on the easier questions.
The whole thing seemed a total rip off to us, especially as he scored 120.

Can anyone confirm if this is correct?

That sounds worryingly hard to police and apply in any objective manner. Was it actually someone on the appeal panel who told you that, or someone else?

Guest that doesn't sound correct -

if a younger child gets that question wrong, they can earn a point from it

Thinking about it some more, that just can't be right. Quite apart from the fact that notthing I've ever read about standardisation even hints at that, or the fact that it would be very hard to apply objectively, how can you earn a mark of a wrong answer? Furthermore, such a system would penalise the young child who got such a question right, in that they would get the same as an equally young child who got it wrong.

I reckon the person who told you this is the one who got it wrong.

I've just checked this again with my husband who was with me at the appeal and he confirms what we were told. We were told by a member of the appeal panel.

We thought it sounded a bit bizarre at the time but believed what we were told as she was an experienced panel member and nobody else in the room questioned it, including the LEA Rep.