11 Plus Exams Forum

Having been working through the GL assessment papers over the last few weeks, I had started to see really positive results with my daughter. OK not brilliant outstanding % averaging around the 80% 85% mark but imo good for her! THEN the panic sets in! Starting pack 2 of the GL papers, Maths and Verbal reasoning are fine still averaging those %'s but the Non Verbal reasoning WOW, shock, horror, the percentage drops to 56%. I then start to look at the paper myself and to be fair to my daughter I cant see the reasoning behind half of them either! We have come full stop. I cant help her any further because I cant do them myself, beginning to wonder if its worth putting her through the **** of the test to be honest advice please on what to do next! Are the pack 2 papers harder than the others, are they more in line with what's going to be in the test, or are they just trying to stretch the children............

Perfectly normal - they are generally regarded as harder. Try a google search for
site:elevenplusexams.co.uk forum "in non-verbal reasoning" GL pack 2 harder
and look at some of the threads you'll find there. You'll find you are not alone in seeing scores dip on these.

Bexamy so glad you started a thread on this, as I could have written the same thing myself! DD has definitely found these papers quite a lot harder than any others, and I've been at a loss to explain why some of the answers are as they are even with the answer sheet in front of me!

My only consolation is that we are in Bucks where the 11 + is supposed to take the top 30%. If CEM put these sort of questions in the actual 11 plus paper, the grammar schools are going to be half empty next year!

Having now done Okanagan's suggested Google search, I feel more relaxed that they are just extremely hard papers.