If you are preparing for the North London consortium test..

[Jean.Brodie]

Hi again, berks_mum!

I have sent you a PM.

[berks_mum]

Hi JB, have replied to your pm. Hope you have received it.

[London-Dad]

I think the target range for marks is quite different from the Maths paper to the English Paper (especially when the English is difficult...as DG points out)

I would say that a target score for Maths...should be aiming to get close to 85-90%
and for English...maybe more like 75-80%.

With scores close to these...you will get an interview at any school in the Consortium...and if at higher end of those bands...you will be close to scholarship level.

NLCS probably had highest cut-off (when it was in consortium)...and I sort of felt 160 across the two papers...was around what was needed to be feeling optimistic about getting an offer (with maybe a bit of room to spare)
i.e. 85% in Maths 75% in English. (My DD was stronger at Maths than English)

The trick for the Maths is to be able to get through all the basic questions at the front of the paper with speed + accuracy to allow yourself more thinking time to unravel the trickier problems at the end.
Prep schools will typically start doing a series of mock-papers in Autumn term...and the Maths papers in particular are pretty predictable....the same types of problem come up year after year (e.g. playing around with properties of numbers displayed in 24 digital clock format...which came up again this year I think)

i.e. the value of doing past-papers is greater for Maths than for English.
Doing past English papers is useful to get familiar with format + likely style of questions....but equally important is to develop a crisp, imaginative writing style that can consistently churn out a good piece of creative writing under time constraints of exam.

p.s. I thought the "Arlington Park" paper was a rather strange choice of passage to use as a Consortium English paper. I thought it was a bit unreasonable to expect 10 / 11 year olds to unravel some of the complex adult themes contained in it...and it was more appropriate as a sort of 13+ scholarship paper, rather than an 11+ exam being sat by thousands of students.
I know they need to sort out girls capable of higher level thinking...but I thought it was going a bit too far.

[Daogroupie]

Indeed. I would have loved to have seen the pass mark for the English paper that year. How can ten year old girls understand how a wife and mother feels in a place like Arlington Rise? Even more interesting would have been the creative writing. How many of them kept to the issues and did not drift off into another completely different plot? The one about Rakesh and his secret girlfriend was also challenging as was the drought in Trinidad. And Connie and the Seagull has some hidden depths as does Grandparents. This is why I put the mark to get an interview lower as I am not sure ten year old girls can unpick the layers of meaning in them. I have marked plenty of scripts where the point is completely missed but the student goes on to get offers at all the consortium schools. Maybe NLCS is coming out because they want to work with a more realistic comprehension. I think some of them are harder than the 13 plus papers at other schools. The 13 plus Great Expectations and Oliver Twist papers at Habs boys are much more straightforward than some of the North London Consortium papers. So what is the pass mark? I dont think they would have had many students in the 80's in the English paper in the year of Arlington Rise. DG

[London-Dad]

Every girl is different...and some respond to practice work in different ways.
I don't know how it works at State Primary schools...are the girls completely on their own ?? Does it vary from school to school ??

Most decent Prep schools will do a certain amount of practice work...and I think it is quite important to try + complement this at home rather than duplicate it.
The teachers at my DD's school kept on having to send out e-mails to parents telling them (or their tutors) not to do past papers at home as it was a) making the girls exhausted and b) disrupting their own series of mock tests....as it was not giving them an accurate assessment of achievement / progress when half the class had already done the paper.
But I understand that the less that is being done to prepare the girls in their classroom at school...means that more has to be done at home (whether with parents or a tutor).

The feedback from Maths is obviously pretty straightforward...but I would look beyond overall mark.
I was very lucky with my DD as she is very strong at Maths...(consistently above 90% in past papers under test conditions) but even with her, there were certain blind spots that kept tripping her up: certain types of ratio question / volume + perimeter type questions etc...which I noted and spent some time focusing on with her.

She found doing past English papers such a chore that I didn't make her do any under "test conditions" as I felt she was getting enough practice at school in this regard.
But I did "walk through" a few past papers with her i.e. let her read passage carefully...then discuss answers to questions...making sure that she spoke first + answered question fully + accurately before discussing it together.
i.e. a sort of cheap + cheerful way of making sure that she appreciates the degree of detail + accuracy that is needed to pick up marks.
(This can obviously help with comprehension practice...but is of more limited use in creative writing exercise...since discussion of themes is a long way from getting a story out on paper.)
I adopted this approach with Arlington Park paper...and most of the subtle themes were definitely way over her head...and she ended up with scholarship offers from well regarded schools in both Group 1 and Group 2 !

[Daogroupie]

State primaries don't do anything at all to help prepare for state selectives , let alone private schools. I could not find a single teacher at our primary who had ever seen an 11 plus exam paper. Many state students will have sat the North London Consortium without ever having seen a past paper as somebody has told them they are naturally able and don't need to prepare. As the format is always broadly the same this puts them at even more of a disadvantage than they are already but I do know girls who got scholarships offers having never seen a past paper. I would expect that there are a small group with high marks and then a bunch in the middle with broadly the same marks who have mostly prepared in the same way. DG

[Middlesexmum]

DAO, you are absolutely right regarding no prep at state primaries.

When I asked if my dds school could do something by way of prep, I was told to 'go and buy practice papers from WH Smith'. So much for the home-school partnership. And this was in spite of the fact that the majority of the Year 6 class would have sat the SW Herts consortium tests!

The more I read on here about prep schools and the lengths they go to to get their dc in to indies, the more unfair it seems to be. Prep school children have a huge advantage.

[Humbug]

This is why I wonder if schools do allocate a certain number of places to state primary children. I can't understand otherwise how any except the very few naturally exceptional ones ever get offers.

[silverysea]

Some children prefer to do sums and write stories, and will do so after being held back all day at school. Trust me, I have one in the house!

And some parents will make their children do sums and write stories, after a day at school.

School is more of a social experience for a significant number, and doesn't do much academically. I think this applies to many independent schools as well as most states.

[Salcombe]

I am not that sure that prep schools have an advantage. There are several factors that come into play. At my DCs prep school, maths and english lessons were perhaps 2-3 hours a week maximum, with latin, french, science, music, sport, tournaments, concerts etc etc taking up most time.

Many of the prep schools have a preference to prepare children for the common entrance and it is amazing how little regard there can be for the 11+. There was absolutely no preparation for the grammar school entry just after the summer holidays.