11 Plus Exams Forum

Please can anyone help me with this ? Has anyone any idea how WCGS, SGS and Wilson's decide year on year how many boys reach their required pass mark ?

Do the schools try in advance of the test to look at the difficulty of the papers and then fix a pass mark relative to that ?

Or do they look at the results and work out how many offers they need to make to secure enough to fill their places, bearing in mind that many who pass may have higher preferences elsewhere in the state system or decide to go private etc ?

An interesting thought ? Maybe someone out there has some insight on this - admissionslady maybe !?

Hello Bond!

Sorry not to reply straight away - I've been rather busy.

Can only answer for SGS of course - but we do set a pass mark - and it has been the same (standardised) pass mark for years. We have many years of experience of setting 11+ papers so we are good at gauging the difficulty of the papers. And indeed we review candidates' performance in the different elements in of the test over several years to ensure we are getting it right. Our Headmaster is a red hot statistician and spends a lot of time on this.

We will be setting a pass mark for the eligibility test for 2013 entry, and will use our knowledge of how candidates have performed in the multiple choice elements of our whole test over the years to enable us to do this.

@mynameisbond: the following two threads would give you some idea about standardized scores.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... 08&start=4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/advice ... xplanation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Generally, though may not be true for all schools, children scoring around 110 or more standarised score are considered to be of selective ability. 100 is set at average scores, while 69 or 70 is lowest and 140 or 141 as the highest. Some schools have 111 or even 121 (Bucks) consistently as the cutoff point. This year, for example, Wilson had 108, whereas Nonsuch had 90 as the cutoff for NVR paper and 96 for English.

(Note that Nonsuch cutoff scores for both these papers are below average and For record, I do not comprehend below average cut-off scores, as children of selective ability should atleast be able to get Above average scores.)

Some schools have maintained a consistent score year after year as cutoff. Some schools vary it every year. This depends on schools' head's/governors' thinking, ability of children in that year, difficulty level of test papers etc. Few years ago, Sutton schools used to have cut-off of 326 (3 papers) - average of 109 per paper.

One thing certain is that schools do not always want to tell the cutoff scores and how they arrived at that score. In a way, it is not always possible as well as lot of people may not agree with the criterea and this will result in fruitless arguments and appeals.

Thanks for all your replies. I suppose what I was trying to ask without being too blunt was simply this: do the slightly less popular grammar schools ensure that more children reach their pass mark so they are sure their places will be filled, once all the CAF preferences have been taken into consideration ?

Wilsons passed just 367 boys this year - does that indicate a tough paper, or a more popular school ?

Just a thought......

Slightly less popular grammar school? And which school would that be? Can't think of any.

tiffinboys - when I use the words "less popular" I am assuming that out of the four boys grammars (Tiffin, Sutton, Wilson's and Wallington) they will not all have the same amount of first preferences, so this year Wilson's had 367 boys passing their exam and Wallington had 454. Can we deduce anything from that ?

From this you could deduce whatever you like. Such as Wallington exam is easy (is it?) or that Wilson's is less popular (joke!) etc. etc. But what's the use?

Roughly 1300 to 1700 take the exam for all these schools. Some take it as mock for some other schools (Sutton or QE or Tiffin, for example) as you could see that many children from North or West of London takes these exams.

How many seriously sit for these exams as first preference? Won't make any guess. Perhaps one could ask the school under FOI.

tiffinboys wrote:How many seriously sit for these exams as first preference? Won't make any guess. Perhaps one could ask the school under FOI.

Another way of arriving at that same statistic is to ask people how many schools they sat their children for. Since you can only have one first choice the remainder of the sittings are punts or mocks.

DS1 sat 2.
DD sat 3. 1 of which I had to promise faithfully would not go on the CAF, and another neither of us liked.
DS2 will probably sit 2. Possibly 3.

quote="tiffinboys"]How many seriously sit for these exams as first preference? Won't make any guess. Perhaps one could ask the school under FOI.[/quote]

The schools do not know .They are not told by the LA where parents rank the school be it first or third only that a preference has been made. The only people who have this info is each Local Authority . For the likes of Tiffin you could be talking about a number of authorities .

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Yeah, that was the message. But do think that School's LA would know as they would be coordinating with the pupil's LA if pupil is from outside.