Differing results between home and school

[didcot2002]

Thanks for your mostly helpful replies - I'm ignoring the really patronising one!

We did another maths practice paper today and dd scored 84%!! It did seem rather easy in comparison to the other GL papers in the pack though. Has anyone else found the GL papers to be inconsistent?

We wouldn't be so worried if we had a decent choice of comps locally. We have a really good grammar and a pretty rotten comp so if dd doesn't pass she'll be on a bus or train every day. If she passes the grammar is a 5 min walk!

A couple of things to bear in mind. Kent CATs and and also Kent 11plus tests are assessed against a national sample. This is a sample that is not representative of the Kent cohort, because a large proportion of the Kent cohort has been coached and tutored for the 11plus. That is, in general, Kent children will probably score on average much higher in CAT tests than most UK children.

The anecdotal evidence is that a 11plus test score of 50% will just about get you a pass. But do remember that children generally score quite higher in practice tests than they do in the real tests.

Thank you, I hadn't realised that the tests are assessed against a national sample, I had assumed that it would just be Kent. If 50% is a pass then we should be ok.

[faitaccompli]

Completely none of my business, but which reply was patronising? I thought all the replies were helpful.

[mystery]

Sorry I think it was probably mine! I think Didcot probably detected my hint of irritation that there was no clear answer to my questions which would have helped the reader to work out what the difference between school and home actually was in the case of the child in question.

In answer to the original question, yes, I have experienced loads of differences in my own children and other people's children between home and school, quite staggering differences e.g. children who EPs measure as being in the top 1 or 2% of the population being considered as no better than average at school, children who are the top of their class not being of 11plus potential (because they are in a class where no-one has 11plus potential or because the teacher overrates them relative to others for some reason or other), children with good CAT results not passing (because CATs are not a great predictor or because the person reading the results did not know a good CAT result from a bad one), children whose parents think they are fantastic or their teachers think they are fantastic but that's not the reality, or children whose parents think they are lacking ability or whose teacher they are lacking ability but that's not the reality etc etc. There are lots of cases like this, and it's very difficult to measure potential, so my personal view is that if you think your child has any possibility of passing the Kent test and your local non-selective is not to your liking for some good reason, then give it your best shot.

In the Kent test you need round about 50% raw score in each paper to pass. The GL assessment papers are closest to the real thing in terms of "question types" but each paper varies in difficulty as they do not contain the same proportion of easy, difficult and hard questions. You will never know for certain whether your child will pass or not. If however by a few measures you think that your child is likely to be in around the top 30% of the population nationally then they stand a good chance of passing the Kent test, particularly if you practise the GL assessment question types and have covered enough of the NC maths curriculum to be able to tackle a good proportion of the maths questions.

I don't know why your child got on so badly with the tutor. Maybe he / she was a bad tutor. I don't know what papers you were talking about that they did not do well on which made you give up. I personally wouldn't give up so easily if I thought my child had some potential but when it is so close to the event you need to do stuff that will build confidence rather than stuff which makes it obvious to the child that there are some yawning gaps. It's good that you got hat 84% recently, but I'd hesitate to base all your preparation on achieving such and such a score as it will result in knockbacks. The point of the practice is to learn to do some question types you couldn't do before rather than constantly measure the final score to see if you got a "pass mark" or not. That is a suicidal approach in my personal view for both parent and child.

So good luck. It sounds as though you have both picked yourself up and decided to continue which I thought from the original post you maybe were not going to do. Sorry again if that sounds patronising!

[U400JB9]

I`ve just read through this and we seem to be in an similar situation......the teachers have been telling us she`s achieving highly in the NVR and VR type work, and that her maths is well above average....and she`ll " breeze" the Kent test

She`s having a major meltdown today, ans we decided to do a few more papers to keep her familiar after the break......she`s sobbing, fraught and says she can`t do any of it...and seems to be suffering from a total absence of times tables!!!!

We`re in East Kent too

[mystery]

How do they know she's achieving highly in VR and NVR work on 11plus type questions? It isn't on the state school curriculum. Some private schools practice it, but not all by any means. Or does your school prepare children for the Kent VR and NVR papers? In which case why don't they teach them their timestables for the maths paper too? Sorry East Kent sounds bewildering to me!!

Wishing you all luck on the day.

[U400JB9]

I don`t know TBH...but at the last parents evening that`s what they said. I do know when she moved to that school in the beginning of year 4 she did tests, at lunchtime, that she`d never seen before. And they were of the multi-guess variety. At parents evening they produced a chart, and for NVR and VR she was well over the `average`.....I don`t think they said NVR/VR but thats what they were referred to as. It is a state school, a tiny one, and they tend to do well in the KT generally.

I am an appalling parent, I am totally in denial about the Kent Test and keep trying to pretend its not there....but it snook up on me again...anyway DD2 is much more chilled today.

[bondgirl]

Could they have been CAT tests UB400JB9? Glad DD is more chilled today. It'll soon be over!

[U400JB9]

Could they have been CAT tests UB400JB9? Glad DD is more chilled today. It'll soon be over!

would they have described them like that? I rarely to parents evening as I work evenings and DH usually goes....he`s very much the academic in this house.

[bondgirl]

This was posted on another thread earlier today (not that I'm addicted ) which gives a very useful explanation of CATs
http://www.testingforschools.com/help/CAT3-guidance.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[didcot2002]

I`ve just read through this and we seem to be in an similar situation......the teachers have been telling us she`s achieving highly in the NVR and VR type work, and that her maths is well above average....and she`ll " breeze" the Kent test

She`s having a major meltdown today, ans we decided to do a few more papers to keep her familiar after the break......she`s sobbing, fraught and says she can`t do any of it...and seems to be suffering from a total absence of times tables!!!!

We`re in East Kent too

Are you sure we haven't got the same child? Good luck for this week..although I'm sure, like me, you're not looking forward to the 4 week wait for results!!

Maybe our daughters' can pull it out of the bag when they really need to!! Fingers crossed