11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello all
I am new to this forum, but very glad to find it. My son is taking the 11+ in september for bishops wordsworth in salisbury. in march we found out the board were changing to CEM from the GL style, which is what we have been practicing since november. i have bought some papers from whsmith from CGP make which i think are the closest to the CEM ones. From what i can gather each county has slightly different ones, as in what is in the exam and how the marks are given etc. And, that in the verbal reasoning, there are no codes etc just a lot of vocab.
Just wondering how to find more concrete info so as not to waste precious time practicing things that won't be used or needed.
Any info would be HUGELY appreciated
thankyou xx

Does the school / LEA website have a familiarisation paper up on it? You could look at the websites for Bexley, the King Edward Foundation (Birmingham), Chelmsford Into High School etc, but as CEM quite reasonably don't give much away the familiarisation papers tend to be very similar if not actually the same one it's not really necessary to look at very many.

Have you thought of doing puzzles such as Codeword to help with the concept of the 'missing word' type questions?

thankyou! will have a look x

You need to buy CEM papers , not ones that are closest to CEM but ones that are CEM, there are plenty in the forum shop next day delivery. You will be doing the three standard CEM papers, NVR, Numerical Reasoning and Verbal Ability. You will be doing missing words (cloze) same meaning and opposite meaning and comprehension.

Oddly the website says no preparation necessary but the school is offering 11 plus preparation classes to Y5s!

CEM Durham do not publish practice papers other than the familiarisation papers made available through the schools / LEAs using their 11+ entrance assessments.

From the CEM website:

"Entrance Assessments

SELECTION ASSESSMENT SERVICES

Since 1999 CEM has developed assessments with the aim of creating a fair selection process and have achieved this by drawing from research identifying the best predictors of later achievement.

The tests measure verbal, numerical and non-verbal skills and are available as paper and computer-based services to schools, trusts and authorities, for children predominantly of ages 10 to 11 years.

CEM strives to make the selection process fair for all candidates with assessments designed to enable all children to demonstrate their academic potential without excessive preparation. In order to maintain the fairness of the tests, CEM does not provide any commercially available practice materials, nor recommend any other commercially available materials."

It is really important to do timed tests. CEM are known for cramming tons of questions into small time slots.

When my DD sat the Chelmsford exam last September she said one section was 25 questions in 7 minutes.

We practiced exam technique and used the strategy that when she heard the 1 minute warning she needed to guess the rest of the questions and not leave any blank. The test was all multiple choice so that gave her a 25% chance of picking up extra marks.

We did not really concentrate on CEM as she was sitting another 11+ exam that was maths, English and creative writing, which we felt was more realistic and would enable her to go to our first choice school.

In the end she did not score high enough on the CEM exam but was successful on the test we prepared for.

Best of luck to you.

I would suggest sitting CEM mock test if you can find any. Also use the sample tests that Toadmum has suggested. You need to make sure your child can read and understand the instructions.

There have been a few children that got caught out by filling in the wrong section of the answer sheet. You do not have time to go back and rectify that kind of mistake.

Is it just me or do other forum members get the distinct feeling that Daogroupie is just all about promoting the products this website has to offer?

There are no past papers for CEM and nobody can possibly know future papers or material

I think she's just trying to help!

thank you very very much to all of you for being so helpful. up until now he has been doing a lot of code and numerical verbal reasoning which I'm assuming will not be relevant..!! so I've ordered a very good vocab book online and still confused about which papers would be closest to the actual CEM. on this website they sell the cgp ones and the others,elevenplusexams? should i get both? such a mindfield.
because its new to wiltshire, I'm not sure anyone round here willl have any info on it!! but yes, i will try and get the timing to be better and do cloze etc.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH XX

I checked your booklet. Your CEM will be Numerical Reasoning, English VR and NVR. I would recommend First Past the Post and CGP and also the Bond CEM papers, not the normal VR ones.

Beware the Bond ones are hard so don't do them first. First marks will be low but will get better quite quickly. DG