Selective Eligibility Test

[Ladymuck]

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[MSC]

Ok, SET on Wed.

So from LM's post ;

"Last year the maths was 50 questions in 45 minutes, very similar in content and difficulty to the GL assessment papers (according to ds).
English was 72 questions in 45 minutes including 2 comprehensions"

Can anyone else confirm this?

Not 50 questions each ?

Also, I'm sure someone asked before, but can find the post ; is it likely to be Maths first then English paper?

Thanks.

[ellamum]

I am pretty sure that last year the English test was shorter than the Maths test. I think they were 35-40min and 45min.

[Ladymuck]

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[MSC]

Thanks LM. Didn't realise there is a big crowd in mumsnet on 11+

I think it was 72 questions for English then. My DS could just about finish 50 GL questions in 50 mins. Now wondering the practice with GL papers etc have mostly been 50 questions in 50 mins, the extra 22 will really be a challenge to complete. Did your DS practice of 72 questions in 50 mins?!

[Ladymuck]

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[tiffinboys]

By far, the most comprehensive information about SET. Thank you, Ladymuck.

We had no idea as to what we were expecting as last year was the first year of the 2 part process, but practised with GL, Bond and FPTP as well as some of the SPAG level 6 workbooks available in Smiths. So most of the papers we used were of the 50 qs in 50 minutes variety.

The format of the Sutton papers change frequently, so I wouldn't read too much into the number of questions to be honest.

I think I've posted it before but I can't find it - but this was the feedback I gleaned from ds within a day of taking the exam and passed onto his teacher - but I would have to say he isn't the most forthcoming:

"72 questions in 45 minutes. The questions were in 5/8/10 question sections on different subjects.

Cloze test 10 marks
2 x Comprehension 10 marks. Each text was over a side of A4 long. One comprehension was a non-fiction passage on bicycles.
Vocabulary - working out the meaning of words given information about the stem eg given a selection of Latin and Greek words Could they then work out what eg arachnophobia meant? 10 marks
Spellings - these seemed to be aimed at the level used in the L6 SPaG paper. Desperately and preferably both appeared (they were on the sample l6 paper last year) 5 marks
Punctuation 5 marks
Homophones 5 marks (putting the correct ones into sentences)
There were also questions on parts of speech etc."

In terms of difficulty DS found the paper easier than the GL ones. As a guide DS was scoring between 74% and 86% on the GL/FPTP papers and passed the SET. In terms of order, I don't seem to have any notes on that. Certainly all the discussion leaving the school at the end of both sessions seemed to focus on the English so my guess is that was 2nd, but of course with a cohort of boys it could just have been the paper that most were worried about.....

Sorry - I really wish they would publish sample questions because I think that this would relieve a lot of anxiety. Simply telling parents it will be the same as what they cover at school really is unhelpful when realistically most of us have no idea as to what they cover in school, and they definitely don't seemed to do timed writing exercise of 50 minutes on a regular basis!

Good luck for Wednesday.

[Ladymuck]

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[dingding]

Thank you Ladymuck for a very helpful breakdown of the paper.
Not sure how you managed to get such detailed feedback after the test, my Ds response is OK, anything more would is a bonus but highly improbable.

I too wish there was a sample paper published, as there isn't I'm sincerely grateful for any scrap of information I can get hold of.

Kind regards DD

[MSC]

Oh thank you so much LM!

Been stressing all week because DS was making mistakes (consistently in 8 mocks papers each subject that I set using GL! ) in English and almost identical number of mistakes in Math! Its incredible that in 16 papers, all same number of mistakes in each one!! Hopefully his % will be good enough, but then again there are likely to be 72 questions instead of 49 or 50.

I have been wondering if the extra 22 means the questions would be slightly easier or shorter than GL , or are the "extra" 22 designed to cater for the super fast and clever?!!!