Reading Boys appeal

[GS711]

Hi GS711,

I've only just seen the post about the remark. I'm appalled. Reading School have their own optical mark reader and to ask you for £600 is just punitive. You shouldn't have been pressurised by the CAF deadline although I remember that pressure. For the CAF you should put down your schools in order of choice. The LA cannot lower your priority for a school because it was not your first choice.

I haven't seen this year's letters but think the information provide by Reading School is woefully inadequate to the point of maybe being deliberately so. To understand what they do you first need to know the general process of calculating standardised scores. This is well documented (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). The basic formula is z = (x - μ) / σ. where z is the standardised score, μ is the average or mean and σ is the standard deviation. The standard deviation is the average amount by which the marks vary from the average so it gives an indication of how spread out the scores are. This site has a good explanation of standard deviation http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-deviation.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

That all sounds a bit complicated so an example might help. Let's say the average mark in one of the tests was 30 and the standard deviation was 4.5. Modelling these values in Excel gives a bell curve with the lowest mark at abut 15 and the highest at 44 which all seems very reasonable. Let's then say that your son correctly answered 33 questions in the test. We can plug this into the formula:
z = (x - μ ) / σ
= (33 - 30)/4.5
= 3/4.5
= 2/3.
So he scored 2/3σ in this test expressed in standard deviations. This is then scaled to the Wechsler scale by multiplying by 15 then adding 100. Viz: (2/3 × 15) + 100 = 110 which becomes your standardised score. The difference between expressing this score in standard deviations or as a Wechsler score is a bit like centigrade and Fahrenheit. They look totally different but say exactly the same thing.

Reading school add the individual test results together then add age weighting. NFER give a description of this here http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/research/ass ... sation.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. A quick scan of the NFER sample table linked to from that page shows it is far from being a linear function. Reading School just add one mark for each month younger the boy is. This instantly strikes me as a very crude method but I have only found out how they did this in the last few days so haven't had a chance to properly analyse it. Going back to our example we have 110 in all three tests (for example) and he's born in February (for example) so gets an extra 6 marks taking the total to 336.

So how did you end up with a score of 335.69?! I remember asking myself a very similar question. Reading School's age weighting isn't the only unique thing they do. They also record the scores to two decimal places. To understand why this is wrong download the Sutton Trust white paper from here http://www.suttontrust.com/our-work/res ... l-systems/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and look at the picture on page 36.

The admissions criteria says "With regard to the historic links with the Borough of Reading, eligible boys living nearer to the School will be accorded a higher priority in the allocation of day-boy places." This is technically true but deliberately made irrelevant by the inappropriate level of precision used. In the example above I used round numbers to explain the process but in practice the standard deviation and mean values will be fractions meaning you never get the same standardised score in two different tests which makes hurstmum's posting viewtopic.php?f=10&t=28906&start=90" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; all the more interesting. For example someone getting 33 questions in Maths, 32 in English and 31 in Reasoning will have a different total score to someone getting 31 questions in Maths, 32 in English and 33 in Reasoning even though they both answered 96 correct questions. The combination of possible standardised scores before age weighting increases a thousand fold from 50 + 50 + 50 = 150 to 50 × 50 × 50 = 125,000. The tie-breaker has not been used for at least 13 years which is as far back as the records go.

I've just generated some random normally distributed data with a mean 30 and standard deviation of 4.5. If the scores were recorded to integers there would be over 40 candidates scoring 33 marks ranging from 134th ranked to 176th. With integer scoring there would be multiple boys tied for the last places. (Not 40 but still quite a few.)

The admissions code says parents should be able to look at the admission arrangement and understand them. If you lived relatively near the school my understanding of the school's published admission criteria is that you would reasonably expect a higher priority in the allocation of day-boy places since that's what is says in black and white. With integer scoring the tie-breaker would have some relevance instead of just being a technicality.

Being 0.31 marks the wrong side of the cut off means you will not get an offer on March 1 but as someone else has already posted being above the cut-off doesn't guarantee a place either. It makes no difference which side of the cut off you're on. If you have good extenuating circumstances you should appeal even if you're above the cut off.

Finally, if you do appeal I would suggest you keep if from your son as the final result could be getting upset a second time and that's something you don't want to share.

Wow- Jamesberks - you know your stuff! Thanks for taking the time to post this and I will certainly do my best to go through this thoroughly. I am of the same opinion as you - how can they come up with standardise scores to 2 decimal places, but they use a very crude age standardisation of 1 extra mark per month? In addition, the letter says that the pass mark is 366 not 366.00, so we challenged this on the fact that with rounding my DS score would pass. Their response was that the pass mark is 366.00, it just doesn't say that on the letter.

It feel as if they can make up the rules as they go along and there appears they are no answerable to anyone.

[Amber]

You can't help wondering if they really did anything...fire up their optical reader and run it all in the space of a couple of hours on the last Friday afternoon before half term...? Even if someone marked it manually they couldn't have been expected to be paid even a tiny fraction of that to do it. Maybe I am being over cynical. I think you must definitely challenge the cost if nothing else. Write to the governors of the school maybe?

I think from what others have said though that even if they managed to spend your £600 finding that missing 0.31 of a mark, it may not give you a place at the school. So maybe unless you are intending to appeal in that scenario, you can take a tiny bit of comfort from that?

I agree with others that you should take this up at the highest level as it is outrageous behaviour by the school. Are you sure you want your son to go there if this is how they treat prospective parents?

[southbucks3]

On Monday, try ofqual, just for an opinion, as I am still fairly sure that administrational procedures for re marks of any state school/officially used state testing authority must be published. Your results were addressed to you, so not public, re the price of re mark and also the procedure was not outlined.

As for the compliment slip...for £600...no no no...but it is good proof that you were not informed exactly what you were buying.

Read the bucks appeal thread on remark v analysis to see what we get for our £25 (I am not gloating, but you need to know)

So sorry things are not going well....it is really rotten.

[Etienne]

Do I have any recourse?

There's no quick and easy solution, I'm afraid.

If you go to appeal, you can question the school's representative at the hearing, and present your case as to why you feel your son should be admitted.

It's not worth going to appeal unless you have strong alternative academic evidence:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... cation#b11" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and good reasons for wanting a place:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... -school#c2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

We can help you with the appeal (which is likely to take place in the summer term).

The school has its own appeal panel ( ), and as far as we're aware the success rate is low.

If necessary we can check whether the conduct of the appeal meets legal requirements, and, if it appears not to, we can help you complain to the EFA (which will probably take a couple of months).
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeals/ombudsman" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If still dissatisfied, you can then complain to the Secretary of State.

This is not for the faint hearted ........

Writing to your MP about the £600 is the easy bit!

[GS711]

Do I have any recourse?

There's no quick and easy solution, I'm afraid.

If you go to appeal, you can question the school's representative at the hearing, and present your case as to why you feel your son should be admitted.

It's not worth going to appeal unless you have strong alternative academic evidence:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... cation#b11" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and good reasons for wanting a place:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... -school#c2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

We can help you with the appeal (which is likely to take place in the summer term).

The school has its own appeal panel ( ), and as far as we're aware the success rate is low.

If necessary we can check whether the conduct of the appeal meets legal requirements, and, if it appears not to, we can help you complain to the EFA (which will probably take a couple of months).
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeals/ombudsman" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If still dissatisfied, you can then complain to the Secretary of State.

This is not for the faint hearted ........

Writing to your MP about the £600 is the easy bit!

Etienne,

Many thanks for your advice. I think no matter what happens I need to challenge the £600 at the highest level. I do not want anyone to have to go through what we have over the past few days - feeling under immense time pressure to have the remark done, not knowing what we were going to get for our money, and the fact that we have been presented with no further indication on how the score was calculated.

The second point is to whether we will appeal. You mentioned we must have strong academic evidence. I only have DS's school report and the results of a CAT profile undertaken in Year 4.

His CAT scores were:

Verbal SAS 141 ST 9
Quantative SAS 124 ST 8
Non Verbal SAS 130 ST 9

Also his most recent Year 5 Report saw him coming out as:

Reading Teacher Assessment 5b
SAT test level 5

Maths

Written and mental Teacher Assessment 5a
SAT test level 5b

Etienne - in your opinion would these results be considered favourable during an appeal? As I have previously mentioned there are some extraordinary circumstances that may explain underperformance on the day of the test.

What would you advise?

Many thanks!

[Amber]

Not something I would usually advocate and you do have to be very careful, but have you considered going to the press with this?
Even just a well put together letter to the Times or Telegraph, if you don't fancy going the whole hog and getting your son to pull a sad face on the front of the local rag, but I reckon there is something newsworthy in this as it is directly related to the school autonomy debate and the school admissions code.

No expert, but the CATs and SATs look good to me.

[DC17C]

Not something I would usually advocate and you do have to be very careful, but have you considered going to the press with this?
Even just a well put together letter to the Times or Telegraph, if you don't fancy going the whole hog and getting your son to pull a sad face on the front of the local rag, but I reckon there is something newsworthy in this as it is directly related to the school autonomy debate and the school admissions code.

No expert, but the CATs and SATs look good to me.

Where is that "like " button
Again I am no expert (other than experience of going through an appeal) I agree the CAT and SAT's look very good and solid for an appeal but I would still be concerned about chances of success with the previous poor history of appeal success and the fact the school is likely to be so oversubscribed. What I have noticed though is the PAN is 112 but there were 125 pupils in the KS4 GCSE year in 2011 and 124 in 2009- so where do the extra pupils come from?

[aliportico]

If you got that from gcse league tables, it might be the ones doing maths early?

[DC17C]

Yes it was from the league tables - so I guess that may make sense.

[Etienne]

Etienne - in your opinion would these results be considered favourable during an appeal? As I have previously mentioned there are some extraordinary circumstances that may explain underperformance on the day of the test.

The results look good to me, but it also depends on the wording in the school report, on how the headteacher of the current school expresses his/her letter of support, and - if the school is oversubscribed - on your reasons for wanting a place.

What would you advise?

If in any doubt, I'm a great believer in appealing! Your case can only be looked at if you ask for it to be considered.
But always go into the appeal process with realistic expectations - don't get your (and especially your child's) hopes up.

It's a system that can work very well, and can right a wrong - but one can never be entirely sure what the outcome will be.