According to HT at TWGGS

[franticmum]

I believe TGS, like many of the grammars, had a greater intake for that year and are doing so again this year? Not entirely sure as DD is older so unaffected. There is a thread on page 3 of the 'kent' thread list which may provide more info.

[Cellino68]

Hi - not sure if this helps or confuses matters but I posed the following question to Kent Admissions back in June.....

"I understand the Kent Test format has slightly changed this year, but I was interested to know how the overall score is proportioned based on the 4 subjects taken?
Is it simply 25% for each of Non Verbal, Verbal, Maths and Comprehension? Or does one subject get a higher proportion of the overall score?"

And I got this response back ......

"The marking software for the new tests gives us a number of options, including weighting different aspects of the papers, but we have been asked by the grammar schools not to weight any component more highly than another, so that is what we will do. We have not reached a decision as to how many elements will be scored separately to determine a threshold score for grammar school, but the same threshold score will apply to everyone taking part in order to identify children in approximately the top 25% of the ability range."

[fatbananas]

That sounds new? It was my understanding that maths was weighted more heavily than the 2 reasoning papers in the old test.

[mystery]

No - equal weighting to NVR, maths and VR in the past. The maths was a 60 minute papers, the other two were 50 minutes.

You had to get the same standardised score in each paper to pass - it floated around 118 - 120 ish - you were generally allowed a dip in one paper - maybe 118 in one paper and 120 in the other two for example. Then the the total standardised score was used for determining the pecking order for superselectives. This was simply done by adding the three scores from each of the three papers - there was no additional weighting for maths.

I am not sure if it was standardised against national sample or Kent. If it was standardised nationally this could explain why we have the rumour on here that it seems to be the maths that determines it. Maybe maths teaching in Kent is, on average, weaker than elsewhere in the country? Or maybe that is just my bad experience. I have had to try and rectify poor teaching and gaps at home too many times for my liking. However, Kent primaries as a whole hardly shine nationally.

[CoffeeCup]

Hi - not sure if this helps or confuses matters but I posed the following question to Kent Admissions back in June.....

"I understand the Kent Test format has slightly changed this year, but I was interested to know how the overall score is proportioned based on the 4 subjects taken?
Is it simply 25% for each of Non Verbal, Verbal, Maths and Comprehension? Or does one subject get a higher proportion of the overall score?"

And I got this response back ......

"The marking software for the new tests gives us a number of options, including weighting different aspects of the papers, but we have been asked by the grammar schools not to weight any component more highly than another, so that is what we will do. We have not reached a decision as to how many elements will be scored separately to determine a threshold score for grammar school, but the same threshold score will apply to everyone taking part in order to identify children in approximately the top 25% of the ability range."

Very useful to read that, thanks. But I am not sure how the sentence I have highlighted in bold relates to the TGS HT who has said there will be three marks....

Confused mother here!

[mystery]

I guess the trick is in how you define components. If the HT TWGGs version we have on here is accurate, then the components this year are:

maths
English
reasoning (VR,NVR,spatial)

and they all have equal weighting - so they will all have the same max high mark ( 140 say) the same "pass mark" (120 say) and it still just be a case of straight addition of the three marks to work out what the grand score is for "superselection" purposes.

That is how I would reconcile the KCC e-mail with the TWGGs recount of the new scoring system.

[pilot1]

I am new to this forum however not new to the 11+ with two children gone before! I am a little confused to the pass mark being 120? Does this mean that the results this year will be lower then?

[CoffeeCup]

Thanks Mystery. So, basically the marks could be just the same as last year...?

[mystery]

Could be - might not be though! But my bet would be yes. However, what you don't know is whether the raw scores behind the standardised scores are very different from last year or not and if the same child would have achieved a similar score in this year's and last year's test.

[mystery]

I am new to this forum however not new to the 11+ with two children gone before! I am a little confused to the pass mark being 120? Does this mean that the results this year will be lower then?

I am afraid we don't know if the pass mark is 120 on each paper. It varies each year. I just gave that as an example as it usually was there or thereabouts in each paper when the papers were maths, VR and NVR. If it did turn out to be 120 this year, why would that mean that this year's results are lower?