11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi all,


I have a daughter who is preparing for kent test next year.

Please can any one answer these questions (those who have written kent test this
year ) will help me to understand how to get her ready for the exam 2015.


How many questions n how much time given for each of these subjects?

1. English
2. Maths
3. VR
4. NVR
5. Spatial
6. Written task

I would also like to know if any break after each section /combined paper is done ??


What is the pass mark in each subject/section or combined paper ( combined literacy and english) ?

They have combined english and maths this year n VR ,NVR n spatial ? What's the point of combining two subjects if they don't give a combined pass mark for literacy or numeracy paper?

How many total marks approximately are needed to get a seat in Invicta , Maidstone ,TWGS,TOGS etc.,top grammar schools?


Are they going to change the format/ subjects next year too?? If so, when will we get to know about this info??

Thanks for your time.
Deepti

I'm not sure there is an answer to many of those questions yet and there is no guarantee at the moment that next year's test will be the same.

I have one DD who sat it this year and another sitting it next year.

I'm not planning on doing anything different for DD2.

We will stick to the GL familiarisation papers and see how it goes.

Test content removed by Moderator in case of late testing.

Next year could well be very different though.

I thought my DS was just irritated with my questioning and mis-remembering when he said there was no punctuation element to the English test, but what you say corroborates that, Purpledog. I find that incredible - it's got to be a key element of English, even if it is not properly taught in primary schools (at least the ones my DCs have been at).

I presume that in the time given for the English - 25 minutes - there isn't time to do all the different elements of the GL familiarisation English papers (comprehension, completing a sentence with the right word, spelling, punctuation). Comprehension is a given every year I would have thought, so I'm guessing that if they go for a similar length of exam next time round it will be two out of three again of the remaining three GL English question types.

All the question types in maths, English, VR and NVR were included in the 8 GL familiarisation papers in each of these four subjects. Spatial reasoning is the only thing that could not be practised from these papers.

As you will have gathered from other threads on there the maths was faster ( 30 questions in 25 minutes) than in the GL familiarisation papers ( 50 questions in 50 minutes).

I don't think you can go too far wrong if you do some work on GL and maybe some others if you have time e.g. CGP, FPTP.

It has to stand you in good stead for if they switch to CEM too I would have thought.

The first paper was English and Maths ( in two separation sections - they were not mixed up questions) and the second paper was verbal reasoning followed by NVR and spatial. Verbal was not mixed with non-verbal. The non-verbal / spatial was done in timed sections of 10 questions in five minutes. I'm not sure how many verbal there were in the time but my daughter seemed to think it was a similar time per question as in the familiarations papers. Only a few verbal types were tested as the time is short. I don't know that we can guess which ones would be picked on each year. However, as CEM focuses heavily on vocab, I presume GL will do the same as they are direct competitors in the 11plus market and vocabulary seems to the fashion of the moment in 11plus testing.

It could be a different test or test provider next year. We don't know yet. This year we found out that it was GL around November time (is that right?) and found out a bit more about the format of the test the following May (is that right?) and then a little bit more again in July.

Have you read the relevant sections of the KCC website? You will find a link to a pdf document about this year's test useful I would think.

Then there was a writing task which is not marked or read unless the child is a marginal fail.

The schools had to give a minimum of 15 mins between paper 1 and paper 2, and between paper 2 and the writing test. Other than that, it was up to them.

fatbananas wrote:I thought my DS was just irritated with my questioning and mis-remembering when he said there was no punctuation element to the English test, but what you say corroborates that, Purpledog. I find that incredible - it's got to be a key element of English, even if it is not properly taught in primary schools (at least the ones my DCs have been at).

Maybe they did not put it in this year for that very reason. This new test could maybe highlight significant discrepancies between the attainment paper (maths and english) and the ability paper (reasoning in VR and NVR) at some schools if anyone had the job of looking carefully at the data.

mystery wrote:

fatbananas wrote:I thought my DS was just irritated with my questioning and mis-remembering when he said there was no punctuation element to the English test, but what you say corroborates that, Purpledog. I find that incredible - it's got to be a key element of English, even if it is not properly taught in primary schools (at least the ones my DCs have been at).

Maybe they did not put it in this year for that very reason. This new test could maybe highlight significant discrepancies between the attainment paper (maths and english) and the ability paper (reasoning in VR and NVR) at some schools if anyone had the job of looking carefully at the data.

Absolutely ... particularly if they were trying to get people not to tutor. Even so, you'd think they'd manage a couple of questions involving a capital letter and an apostrophe, or something.

Maybe they tested the questions on our teachers and they couldn't do it. Mind you, they didn't apply that system to the maths!

Joking apart, I would think that GL are pretty scientific about it. Maybe just chucking in one or two questions requiring checking for punctuation doesn't give reliable data for a standardised test. One hopes they've done at least the minimum number of questions of each type for the confidence interval on the standardised score not to be too huge.

Yes: one hopes ...

Honestly, I am starting to doubt whether the changes made this year were anything to do with tutoring/coachability at all, but simply about cutting administration time/costs.

Shorter papers with greater difficulty(?) and less predictable format = nightmare for parents/children, but huge savings for KCC

I am definitely finding this a more stressful experience than when DS took the exam 5 years ago. Roll on Oct 15th so we can act least all know what we are dealing with.
Good luck everyone.

Minty

Certainly saved primary school time. I think that was the main driver - one day messed up rather than four previously.

I don't know about costs - one would have to look at the old and new contracts with GL to see if the price went down.

I wouldn't think it costs GL much less to design a half length test in each of their four subjects. Maybe no saving at all, because there's a certain skill in trying to maintain reliability etc in the test results as the test time gets shortened.

All puff. That's politics for you.

Anyhow, just how many eleven plus tests can you design with the cost of an empty grammar school building in Sevenoaks?