Sutton Grammar Mocks vs 'Real' tests.

[grgygirl]

I am curious to find out how your children fared in the 'real' grammar school tests compared to their ranking in the Sutton Mocks please? Trying to gauge what a reasonable ranking would be in these tests for the superselectives.

[gowest]

DD attended the second Sutton mock test and was in the top 2%. Next 3 months she did the Bucks test and was in top 0.5%. We cannot compare like for like - the Bucks test is not designed for super-selective schools, but it is known for many of those from London to attend it like a mock test before Super Saturday, so one can still make a useful correlation between the two.

[PurpleDuck]

I don't know which particular schools you are considering, but I can only comment based on my experience of boys' grammars in Sutton.

One of mine missed SGS by a couple of points. His ranking from Sutton mock was at about 30% from the top and his score in the real exam was a few points higher than in the mock. According to his results letter I received, 28% of boys that year achieved the required pass mark, so with just the two marks below that, DS's ranking in the real exam was pretty consistent with the mock.

What you need to bear in mind is that the number of boys who achieve the pass mark and are therefore eligible for a place in one of Sutton grammars, is always greater than the number of places available. When DS1 did it, 28% of the cohort equalled to 417 boys and SGS had only 120 places available at the time, and there were, I think, 330 places available for all three boys' grammars in Sutton (I remember thinking 90 boys would have gone straight to waiting lists).

After the last round of exams (children currently in Y6), ca. 550 boys passed SGS and Wilson's (Wallington passed 781 after SET) and they were qualified as eligible for the total of 450 places. This is roughly half of the boys who passed SET (Stage 1). I'm not sure how many sat the SET in September, but I've heard of over 2500 boys, so if there are 450 places available for boys in Sutton, a boy would need to be in the top 18% to be offered a place.

As far as mock ranking is concerned, for us it proved to be consistent wiht the real exam scores. If this is the case, you would need to aim for a minimum of top 15% from the mock to have a glimmer of hope and no lower than top 10% to feel a bit more comfortable about your DC's chances.

In case it may be of use, information below comes from emails sent out after the last round of exams:

Sutton Grammar:
913 candidates sat the second stage test and 551 have met the required standard. For candidates who have met the required standard, no information regarding their marks will be given to parents. Please note that, due to over-subscription, meeting the required standard does not guarantee the offer of a place at the school.

Wilsons's:
851 boys sat, and 543 boys have passed, the entrance examinations for Wilson’s School.
******
Good luck, I hope it all goes well for you.

[Daogroupie]

I know the top rankers from Sutton mocks A and B at Sutton Mocks who are now in Y7 in QE and DAO. The one at QE got 100% in the QE Maths paper and the DAO one was in the top twenty.

This year a student who came 5th at Sutton was Top Five at DAO and two who came in top twenty were both top ten at DAO. Another top twenty got 100% in QE Maths this year.

I have lots more examples but also a cautionary tale of a ds who was top five at Sutton mocks and then thought he did not need to bother to do any more work. His parents celebrated and bought him presents and he lost the plot and failed to get into any selective school. So please treat the results as a work in progress and not an end in itself. DG

[Moon unit]

I think it's pretty consistent although there are always those who have good and bad days giving a bit more variation.
My dd was about 10th in English in mocks A and B and top 10% in maths. She was a high scorer at Nonsuch and is now at Wallington.
My DS was in about the top 20% in the mocks and got his first choice grammar but we didn't get any marks back for him.
We didn't tell them their mock marks.

[grgygirl]

Thanks to all for the input - it has been helpful. It certainly seems as if there is some anecdotal correlation between the mock scores and the 'real' tests. The competition seems fierce. I'm worried that, if ds doesn't score in the top 300 say, it will really dent his confidence. He will want to know the scores so no chance of hiding those. I've entered him for the A and B papers.

[PurpleDuck]

I wouldn't tell him his pass mark if it was too low. Last year's mock's pass mark was 218 (if I remember correctly) and in mock A there were nine boys with that score, ranking 205th to 213th. In mock B, there were 17 boys with the score of 218 and they ranked from 239th to 255th.

[Guest55]

DD attended the second Sutton mock test and was in the top 2%. Next 3 months she did the Bucks test and was in top 0.5%. We cannot compare like for like - the Bucks test is not designed for super-selective schools, but it is known for many of those from London to attend it like a mock test before Super Saturday, so one can still make a useful correlation between the two.

Scores aren't relevant for Bucks once you score 121 - it's where you live!

[gowest]

DD attended the second Sutton mock test and was in the top 2%. Next 3 months she did the Bucks test and was in top 0.5%. We cannot compare like for like - the Bucks test is not designed for super-selective schools, but it is known for many of those from London to attend it like a mock test before Super Saturday, so one can still make a useful correlation between the two.

Scores aren't relevant for Bucks once you score 121 - it's where you live!

The point of this topic is to establish if there is a significant correlation between results in the Sutton mock test and performance in other selective tests. Your remark, apart from being a fact of which I myself and other contributors to this forum are fully aware, doesn't really contribute to the subject at hand, does it?
Please stop hassling people in this way, thanks.

[PurpleDuck]

For boys, there is some difficulty in establishing a precise correlation between Sutton mock results and scores achieved by those who passed the real exam, simply because those who pass Sutton Grammar, Wilson's and Wallington County Grammar are not told what scores they have achieved. Therefore, when considering how reliable a prediction one can make based on a mock result, the only thing one can say is that, e.g., someone was in the top 10% or top 20% in the mock, and was (or wasn't) offered a grammar school place. This is why it's important to aim for as high a score as possible to have a degree of confidence about the real exam's outcome. This said, as DG has pointed out, a high mock score doesn't necessarily guarantee anything, it just shows where a given child is compared to the cohort at the time of the mock.

Sutton grammars disclose the scores only to those boys who didn't achieve a pass mark, so if it were possible to find out about mock rankings of a number of boys who marginally missed the pass in the real exam, it would give a fairly good indication of how a marginal fail correlates to a mock ranking.

I believe Nonsuch girls' exam scores are available to all candidates, in which case they are very useful for comparison with mock ranking (please correct me if I am wrong); I'm not certain about Wallington girls'.

Given that availability of real exam results from Sutton schools is limited, comparisons with exam results from other schools, where such data is available and where children did take the Sutton mock, may be very helpful, even if the exam formats are a bit different.