11 Plus Exams Forum

Can anyone tell me how they choose the children if they are found to be in the borderline zone.Do the borderline marks change from year to year?

varies from school to school so check their admission criteria - usually "looked after children" first (i.e. those "in care") followed by those with siblings, followed by straight line distance from school.

I,ve also been told that they look at certain questions on the papers e.g on the verbal paper the most difficult questions and analysis which candidate got most of these right? But please don't quote me on this

tammy wrote:I,ve also been told that they look at certain questions on the papers e.g on the verbal paper the most difficult questions and analysis which candidate got most of these right? But please don't quote me on this

I think that's true because I also heard that if two candidates do have same scores, they will look at the difficulty of the questions answered by each candidate. The one who answered the more difficult questions for the points, will be given priority.

if this true when would that cancel out distance from school etc....

That probably comes into play after all other criteria have been used. It's important to make sure the ranking is done according to test performance, otherwise, what would be the point of the test?

Distance from school and siblings and other rules for school entry only exist in the comps. I know that Southend has 'in area' places, but the non-Southend grammars only have the 11+ and your child's place in the order for that as conditions of entry.

Tie-breaker rules have been described previously.

Its kind of funny isn't it about the two tier approach? So how come the Essex Grammars do not have similar policies for priority of local children? Although it does our daughter no favours as we are resident in Essex - I have some sympathy with the approach Southend takes for its local children. Presumably when Essex and Southend were one LA - they had the same selection criteria?

marie wrote:Its kind of funny isn't it about the two tier approach? So how come the Essex Grammars do not have similar policies for priority of local children? Although it does our daughter no favours as we are resident in Essex - I have some sympathy with the approach Southend takes for its local children. Presumably when Essex and Southend were one LA - they had the same selection criteria?

I read somewhere (could have even been on here) that Southend did a deal with the LA when there was a big drive to get rid of grammars, in that they would give priority to local children in exchange for continued existence (Teddy Taylor was the MP at the time).

Actually there was discussion about discriminating in favour of 'Chelmsford' people (for KEGS) last year, but Governors decided against. I can tell you that most (about 70%, as I recall) live within a 5 mile radius, and 95% live within 15 miles.

We had one student from Germany - they didn't commute, obviously!