11 Plus Exams Forum

Just confused

I saw that last year the passmark for Tiffin, intially, was 229. I assume that the maximum was 280/281.

The difference between the highest achieveable mark and the passmark is therefore 51/52.

I was told that to pass the Tiffin exam you need to achieve a score comparable to 95% ie getting 5 or so questions wrong.

How do they make a difference of say 5 marks in each paper ( or a total of 10 over both papers) into 25 marks (50 marks overall).

Having read some of the posts I understand that there is some age standardisation but can they stretch it to that extent ?

I'm not sure where you found the 95 % pass mark figure, but I think that to obtain a standardised score of about 118 in a Tiffin paper, 80 % is nearer the mark for a child born around the middle of the school year, though of course, this will vary each year, according to the ability of all the children taking the test. 95 % (4 questions wrong in a 80 question paper) may well get you 140 if you are born in the Summer.

I know of someone who appealed and was told that their child had gained 65/80 in one test with a standardised score of 121 and gained 57/80 in the other with a standardised score of 108.

Hope this helps.

hi there and welcome

you can't make that calculation

there is no linear relation between the number of wrong answers and the pass mark, you cannot equate 5 questions to 25 marks

why?

consider that the majority of children are close to the average, so they all make a very similar number of right answers
one or two additional right answers can make a child jump 50 places, if you have 1500 applications

instead if the child is very very bad, all questions wrong, or very very good, all questions right, one or two questions more or less does not make a difference in the ranking

if you look in this forum you can also find the more mathematical explanation,

Runningmum, the 95% was merely from the rumourmill.

The figures you mention were revealing however I suppose you have to take into account Giulio's comments about one or two marks suddenly moving a candidate 50 places.

Giulio, thanks for the information, I don't really understand the mathematics of it, but will search for those articles.

Runningmum, with reference to the person who appealed because their child scored 121 and 108 would this not have given an aggregated score of 229 ?

I was under the impression that the initial cut off mark, last year, was 229 and then moved down to about 224 when the lists were finally closed. Did they appeal to Tiffin Girls or Boys ?

Hi TMTY
Unfortunately it was an appeal for Tiffin Girls and the final cut off that year was at 230. She is now enjoying life at Nonsuch.

Thanks Runningmum.

What a great score as well, just shows how much more competitive the girls school is, the boys is hard enough !