Sutton Mocks today

[Daogroupie]

How did the dc's get on? Please do not mention any question details as there are another two weekends to come. Did your dc finish in time? Which paper did they find the hardest? DG

[Reading Mum]

My DD didn't finish the English one but had time to check through in Maths. We only need to do NVR and VR in the real thing but Maths is her strength so it seems about right. Definitely worth doing for experience of the strange environment and exam conditions.

[2outof3]

Well it was certainly useful for my DS because hopefully he has now got all the daft mistakes out of the way - he didn't realise that he'd missed two pages of the maths until he was told there were 10 minutes to go and on the VR he managed to get out of sync with the numbering and didn't realise until he was on number 56 That in itself has to be worth the £25!

Apart from that he found the VR/English ok and managed to finish but thought the maths was hard. He also said that there was very little NVR but what there was was fine.

It is so useful even if just to experience the queues of children waiting to go in. It was so like the real thing that I actually felt nervous for him

[toucan]

The fact that the children had to enter an unfamiliar exam hall alone was helpful in itself.

The parents/staff who welcomed the children were really kind and considerate, but DD said the exam supervisor was a little more strict.

DD said the children were given plenty of notice about how much time was left. I wonder if this will be the case in the real exams.

Although there may have been a few slip-ups in both reading and answering the questions, I hope the mock experience can give children the confidence to relax enough to read the questions carefully and apply some of what they have learnt when answering.

Do you think SGSPTA use the same paper for every test? Surely this would be risky in terms of later candidates getting advance notice of the questions via tutors, parents etc.

Toucan

[Reading Mum]

I would expect it to be the same test or wouldn't standardisation be affected.

what would be the point in cheating in a mock?

[2outof3]

toucan, I think the same paper is used for each sitting.

I suppose that this is only a mock and if later sitters choose to find out what was on the paper then they are only cheating themselves really. I know it will mess up the standardisation to a limited extent, but as you get to find out your DC's raw scores as well, you can still assess what they need to focus on before the real thing

[toucan]

Yes, what would be the point of cheating? What with all the excitement, maybe I forgot that it was a mock.

Toucan

[Reading Mum]

It did seem very realistic.

[Daogroupie]

How did your dd think the papers compared to eleven plus mocks? DG

[3HMum]

Great to have these feedback. My DD is having hers next week end. She seems very keen and excited. So do I......and that shall test our home tutoring abilities too.....