When will we know what pass mark is required to pass?

Eleven Plus (11+) in Kent

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PurpleDog
Posts: 223
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2012 1:21 pm

Re: When will we know what pass mark is required to pass?

Post by PurpleDog »

As I understand it, the pass mark is set once they see all the results so roughly the same proportion pass.

It should crudely mean that the same people should pass, however easy or difficult the paper is.

I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you, if your son or daughter is capable of passing then they should pass whatever the mark.

If the pass mark is higher then it probably means they will have got a higher score than if the pass work were lower.

It all comes out in the wash.
mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: When will we know what pass mark is required to pass?

Post by mystery »

I agree that for a "pass" cut-off it all just comes out in the wash, most likely, unless there's one paper like the English last year where a few careless slips cost a lot in terms of standardised score and could have led a good candidate to fail.

But it could skew the higher scores where there is supposedly some scientific discrimination for super-selective cut-offs. Judd was debating whether or not to leave the Kent test and this new GL test persuaded them to stay supposedly, so I thougth they would have been interested in this aspect of the test if the English continues along the same lines.

In general, the "accuracy" of the measure has to have dropped now that there's half the amount of material approximately being tested in maths, verbal and non-verbal than before. Taken to its extreme, you wouldn't expect your child's ability to be accurately tested in 2 minutes of maths, for example, so 25 mins has to be less accurate in some way than the previous 60 minutes. It's much easier in other ways though.

Children need to be ready for an element of surprise for techniques if it's a fast, furious and difficult seeming paper and for if it's an apparently easy paper wwith time to spare.
Worried!
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2015 10:04 pm

Re: When will we know what pass mark is required to pass?

Post by Worried! »

My understanding is that the top 21% of children are given a pass now, as in the end of September and then these results are given to the head teachers who can look at their results and if they have some children who have narrowly missed out but they think really are grammar school material they can then put in a head teachers appeal. The head teachers all then meet and look at examples of that childs work and then decide whether to change that child score to a pass. They can pass another 4% this way taking the total number of passes to 25% of all entrants. If the test is particularly easy then the pass mark would be quite high, on the other hand if it was very hard then the pass would be much lower. It will all depend on the cohort sitting the test each year.
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