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Mock Exam Results

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 1:45 pm
by Turtlegirl
Those of you who've put kids in for mock exams: what do you do with the results? My daughter came about 1/2 way in rankings (95th out of 200) in the one she sat the other week. We're off to a feedback session on Friday, but I can already see the areas in which she needs to get her head in gear. She varied from 100% in some sections to less than 50% in others. *anxious face*

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:54 am
by mike1880
Which exams are you putting her in for?

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:19 pm
by dani*
Mocks are probably a good thing to indentify topics that need brushing up. However I don't think they should be used as an indication if the child will pass and please do not assume that the topics in which your DC achieved 100% don't need to be revised. Regardless of the mock result nobody is home and dry. I'm not sure what to make out of 95th place out of 200 without any additional information about the other candidates. It may well be that 99% of these 200 have the potential to pass.

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:04 pm
by Turtlegirl
She's going in for 11+ for the King Edward Foundation in Birmingham, and the mocks were aimed at them I think. I think the usefulness is mainly in the 'areas to be worked on' part. I'd be very heartened if 99% of the candidates sitting it were likely to pass! But I think that a little unlikely, alas, as only 1 in 8 or possibly even fewer of candidates get through in the real thing. Might be representative of a slightly more-likely-to-pass group though (having helped in school with children barely able to read whose rather unrealistic parents had still put them in for the 11+).

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 12:52 am
by mike1880
Don't believe the hype. About 1 in 5 candidates pass for Camp Hill Girls, about 2 in 7 for for Five Ways and Handsworth and about 1 in 3 for Sutton Coldfield.

I don't think you can draw many conclusions from a mock exam; obviously you'd feel a lot better if she'd got 100% across the board, but it doesn't mean all that much. And organisers of mock exams don't make any money if they tell parents "she's fine - there's nothing you need to do now."

Where is she in the class/school in English and Maths? Have you got any information on her reading age?

Mike

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 9:19 am
by dani*
In our area and although the overall percentage of all children who sit the exam is low, the percentage of children who pass out of those who have been coached for the 11+ is not at all low.

Also the potential to pass does not mean they will actually pass on the day. Some children find it difficult to cope with the actual pressure on the day because it is the one that really matters and make silly mistakes, rush reading the questions etc... This is something a mock can not predict. Because even if you tell the child that she should act like it is the real test, in the back of their mind they know not much depends on it.

Good Luck.

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 12:42 pm
by mike1880
I don't know about that, probably depends on the child. As far as I can tell from a slightly different standardisation structure, our daughter scored just about identically in the Warks test (which she knew she was only doing for familiarisation with the format, instructions, etc.) and the B'ham test.

Mike

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 1:05 pm
by mystery
Unless it was a past paper of the real thing that your daughter had not seen before I don't think you can judge anything from the raw score. Was it? Also, I don't think you can say that being in the middle of the bunch that took it has any meaning either; you would need to know where this would place you in the population as a whole. It's not a random sample of the population who turn up to do a mock 11+ by any stretch of the imagination is it?

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 6:11 pm
by Turtlegirl
Have been to a feedback session today and was told that last year, the last child to actually get into a grammar school was 1% below my daughter's score at this stage. So it seems that she is currently a little borderline! Which is what I had been thinking anyway.

It was interesting to find out that a good few of her wrong answers may be associated with her complete unwillingness to put anything other than the answer down on paper! That was very useful to see - she is quick and likes to get the answer very quickly. Going through the process of getting information from words into numbers seems too slow for her. We are going to concentrate on that.

She also struggled with rotating cubes, which I don't think she'd come across before. Has anyone seen any resources for that? Or am I going to have to track down a pal who has AutoCad and can draw some for me?

I found the feedback session very useful. It was also funny to find that, even in the short half hour we had, my daughter demonstrated very clearly both her bright ability and her ridiculous wriggliness!

mike1880 - you have encouraged me no end! I had been trying to work out the numbers. Are the ones you quoted to do with first choice applicants?

Re: Mock Exam Results

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 7:17 pm
by mike1880
Yes, first prefs for West Mids grammars Sep 2010, published in one of the B'ham papers. What's interesting is that there were "only" 2700 first prefs for the KEs - about a thousand less than took the exam. You can see that the competition is actually only about a quarter of what people would like you to believe ("11,000 applications for B'ham grammars" etc.).

I bet almost all their candidates are "borderline" and about 1% over the pass mark :lol: . And how do they know? Do they go round everyone after the test and get feedback? I suppose they might, but I'd be surprised. Let us know if they contact you next March!

Anyway; NVR is one area where I think you absolutely can't translate "conventional" test results to the KE test. Our daughter was brilliant at NVR - often got 95-100% in practice tests and in fact somewhat better than me, and I'm very good at that sort of thing! Before the Warks tests I was expecting her to get about 135 for English, 125 for Maths and probably about 125 NVR. I was pretty much spot on for English and Maths but her NVR was awful, and her combined Maths/NVR score for the KE test suggests she got something very similar there. So I wouldn't fret unduly about it - the NVR in the KE test is obviously quite different from "normal" NVR, and practice/mock results won't tell you anything useful about it.

Mike