11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello
I have a friend whose son wrote this as an autobiography - is this a drastic error?- how many marks are you likely to lose?

HI


that writing task - 31 points

Thanks for the quick info - but maybe I'll not tell her just yet - sounds quite a lot!!

how many marks are you likely to lose?

that writing task - 31 points

Surely this can't be true? I know of many who did this!

I don't feel examiners will be that hard on 11 year olds. I think they will more likely be considering punctuation, openings, sentence structure, vocabulary, paragraphing, etc. with maybe just a few points lost for not strictly sticking to the brief.

On the longer writing task, the marks last year (and I believe every year) were allocated as follows:

Sentence Structure and Punc. : max of 8
Text Structure and Organisations: max of 8
Composition and Effect: max of 12
Handwriting: Max of 3

Writing the wrong thing I believe would come under Compostion and Effect which has a max of 12. You would imagine they'd have to deduct some points for answering the question wrongly but I wouldn't imagine it would be all of them. The markers will probably have something in their marking scheme to advise what to do in this eventuality.
A wild guess would be up to 4.

[quote="fm"]On the longer writing task, the marks last year (and I believe every year) were allocated as follows:

Sentence Structure and Punc. : max of 8
Text Structure and Organisations: max of 8
Composition and Effect: max of 12
Handwriting: Max of 3

Writing the wrong thing I believe would come under Compostion and Effect which has a max of 12. You would imagine they'd have to deduct some points for answering the question wrongly but I wouldn't imagine it would be all of them. The markers will probably have something in their marking scheme to advise what to do in this eventuality.
A wild guess would be up to 4.[/quote]

your's is right. I said total that writing task- 31 points

My son (borderline level 5) also wrote an autobiography for the long writing task. Apparently there were several children in his year (total of around 32 children) who did this - including the cleverest girl by far! So this made him feel a bit better...

Fortunately the Grammar School to which he is transferring in September does not take account of SATS results, but I feel very sorry for any children where this this single piece of writing may determine the set they are put in at comprehensives. Our local comp only uses the SATS results to set children and, what's more, its notoriously difficult (although theoretically possible) to change sets once you are placed in Year 7.

The trouble is how else would you set them.

In my opinion, teacher assessment would be no fairer. Every year I tutor at least a couple of children who, for a variety of reasons, are not particularly well regarded at school but whom I rate highly and who go on to gain a place at our local grammar schools (which have a success rate of 1/10). My own daughter had a teacher who hardly rated her at all because she rarely volunteered an answer in class.

Our local comp. uses VR tests in the first term, I believe, but then that puts at an advantage the children who prepared for the GS over the ones who didn't.

You wouldn't have the school unstreamed, either. I have taught unstreamed maths in the 70's and it was a nightmare.

So you return to streaming based on the Sats tests which is as fair as any other method. The problem arises when there is no mobility and this may have a lot to do with keeping parents 'sweet'. It is less hassle to leave a child in a lower set than promote a child and subsequently demote another.

I do see your point, however, a neighbouring comp puts children in mixed ability groups for the first term and then makes decisions in December and then sets after that. This seems fairer to me as it doesn't just rely on one single exam. They also have 9 groups all working at slightly different paces (or that's the theory) whereas in our local comp they just seperate into 4 different levels so a child who just fails to get into the top set (through a bad SATS result) and goes into set 2 will be working with children only just fractionly better than average.

In our local comp the SATS results in English determine your set for not just English but for everything except maths and science - just seems harsh that's all. I do accept that no system is without fault, and indeed, if changing set was easier I would be less critical of using SATS for initial setting.