cognitive tests and 11 plus

Discussion of the 11 Plus

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chad
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cognitive tests and 11 plus

Post by chad »

I have followed some of the appeals threads and noted that cognitive tests do not hold a great deal of weight when trying to show that your child 'for some reason' did not perform on the day.
I have recently had the results of BAS ll cognitive tests (routine assessment) back for my son who just managed to pass his 11 plus in Berkshire.
There is a great similarity between the results.
Both show that he has generally higher cognitive abilities when working on non-verbal tasks
Although reaching the 99th percentile in matrices, quantitive reasoning and number skills he was only in the 76th for verbal similarities.

His 11 plus results echoed this as he scored highly for both Maths and non-verbal but low for verbal.

1.) There is a good chance that if we had been in Bucks my son would not of passed his 11 plus as (I think....tell me if I am wrong) there is more verbal reasoning included.

2) That surely a child who has a high BAS ll result and then fails their 11 plus must have underperformed on the day and the appeals panel could take this into account.

3) Does this mean that our schools are not selecting highly able children because their ability is not 'across the board'. :?

Chad
Guest

Post by Guest »

Your point number 3 is probably correct. Children need to score highly in all the areas that are tested. My child was brilliant at non verbal reasoning, but not so good at verbal. However, she was good enough at verbal reasoning (able to get 85%). Her score at non verbal reasoning probably pushed her mark up to the point where she could be accepted into grammar school.

Verbal and Non verbal reasoning tests are supposed to be "scientific" - so you would expect the scores to be similar on your BAS tests.

I wonder how do prep schools get their children into grammars? Vr and NVR are supposedly non teachable. May be preps getting lots of children into grammars is a myth?
Sally-Anne
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Post by Sally-Anne »

Chad - you are quite right to say that your son might not have passed the Bucks 11+ - the test is almost exclusively VR, with only a couple of number based questions.

That is what has happened to our son. I don't know if the school uses the BAS tests that you mention to test VR/NVR, but we had strong evidence that we used at appeal to show that our son very able at NVR and maths, but despite all the evidence we gave on his high ability in every other area our appeal was refused. VR is King in Bucks, regardless of everything else the child has to offer. Presumably there aren't enough such "lopsided" children for it to matter to anyone that the tests are lopsided.

You are lucky to be in Berkshire where they at least conduct a range of tests that can balance out the children's strengths and weaknesses. I'm glad your son has got through.

Guest - I think the "prep school myth" is just that. Our prep school seems to achieve roughly the same 11+ success rate as the local state school which has middle class parents, so I think the difference is in whether parents are more willing to spend their time and/or money on the coaching that the LEA frowns upon so heavily.

The LEA may be right in saying that VR cannot be taught, and our son could be a good example of that. But I think most parents believe that the LEA's paltry "familiarisation process" is hopelessly inadequate, and that coaching will increase their child's chances of knowing what to do when faced with the question papers and how to manage their time. It certainly lifted our son's achievement dramatically from his first test mark before coaching to the final result.

Sally-Anne
Catherine
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Post by Catherine »

anonymous wrote: Verbal and Non verbal reasoning tests are supposed to be "scientific" - so you would expect the scores to be similar on your BAS tests.
Here’s an extract from the NFER website that confirm this.
>>Reasoning tests are used for secondary selection because of their high reliability and their high predictive validity. Examples of the former are typical internal consistency reliabilities (KR-20 and KR-21) of between 0.94 and 0.97 for verbal reasoning tests and between 0.90 and 0.93 for non-verbal reasoning tests.<<
anonymous wrote: so you would expect the scores to be similar on your BAS tests.

yes, you would, but in practice, it is not always the case as shown on this thread. If the results are different these two tests can’t both be accurate in measuring a child general ability.
chad wrote: Does this mean that our schools are not selecting highly able children because their ability is not 'across the board'.

Probably, particularly in areas with only one type of test like Bucks. In addition, I think that the amount of coaching is a factor because I know that my child improved dramatically through coaching and I don’t think that he reached saturation after just a few sessions.

Unfortunately, bright children who are taking tests that don’t suit their ability or who haven’t been tutored enough might not pass, whereas others not so bright, might.
chad wrote: That surely a child who has a high BAS ll result and then fails their 11 plus must have underperformed on the day and the appeals could take this into account.

After having read Etienne posts on the Bucks appeal section, I understand that he panel takes this into account, but if the score is lower than one or two points below the pass mark, parents also have to demonstrate both the child academic ability and what precisely affected the performance on the day.
chad
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Location: berkshire

Post by chad »

The Ed Psych that conducted my sons tests said that 'usually' childrens BAS ll results were 'generally' consistent across all tasks. He did qualify this by saying that there were some exceptions.
I believe it is these 'exceptions' that can be let down by selection tests that are only targetting one area of cognitive/academic skills or not recognising exceptional ability in just one area.
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