Standardised scoring - mark up or down ?

wiltsman · Post by **wiltsman** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:20 pm

Does anyone know how standardised scoring works ? I'm not interested in the details, but merely if

a) marks are deducted for children who are older
b) marks are added for children who are younger
c) both
d) varies by local authority

My daughter insists that it's b) only but I'd like to know for sure.

First-timer · Post by **First-timer** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:35 pm

It does vary by local authority. Here in Essex, scores aren't standardised by age. Standardisation here takes the form of giving extra credit for the more difficult questions. Whether the difficult questions are decided in advance or if it is a statistical function, I'm not sure. The former seems silly as it could be addressed by simply awarding more marks for trickier questions. I suspect it is more likely that the worst answered questions are given extra weighting after the event.

I do wonder at the fairness of age standardisation. Children in the same year group are learning the same material in school, so why should the younger ones be given a leg-up? They won't be given any allowance for being the youngest once they are at GS.

Post by **mitasol** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:50 pm

I'm not interested in the details

Technically A, B & C are incorrect.

Age standardisation is worked out either on the cohort sitting the exam or a national sample. Not all LEA's use age standardisation.

The devil's in the details.

dadofkent · Post by **dadofkent** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 5:44 pm

First-timer wrote:It does vary by local authority. Here in Essex, scores aren't standardised by age. Standardisation here takes the form of giving extra credit for the more difficult questions. Whether the difficult questions are decided in advance or if it is a statistical function, I'm not sure. The former seems silly as it could be addressed by simply awarding more marks for trickier questions. I suspect it is more likely that the worst answered questions are given extra weighting after the event.

I do wonder at the fairness of age standardisation. Children in the same year group are learning the same material in school, so why should the younger ones be given a leg-up? They won't be given any allowance for being the youngest once they are at GS.

Because the gap in ability progressively closes as they get older. At 10/11 the younger children have not fully caught up.

mattsurf · Post by **mattsurf** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 12:07 am

Standardisation is the process whereby children are given a percentile for the group who are born in the same month - so a child scoring 100 is in the 50th percentile for their group - they may have achieved 55% on an exam, whereas another child may score 100, and is therefore in the same percentile group, but only achieved 48% in the exam

Younger or older children are not penalised as they are only compared with other kids of the same age

First-timer · Post by **First-timer** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 7:38 pm

Hi mattsurf,

What you say sounds fair but it's not what the section on standardisation on this site suggests.
See http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/standa ... scores.php
This indicates that older children require a higher raw score than their younger classmates. I'm happy to be wrong, it's not something I have looked into as it doesn't apply to my region.

I have no axe to grind on this issue. I just never found age to be a useful indicator of ability within a class of children - even in reception where some (unfairly, in my view) had only one term to their older classmates' three. If I had a child who was at the younger/older end of the intake and lived in an area where this was deemed relevant, then I may take a view tainted by my own situation. As it is, I don't.

What happens to children born two months prematurely? Are they judged against those with the same birthday but who were at full term or against those of the same developmental age? Some children born early will find that they are in a different year group than they would have otherwise been. I just think a line has to be drawn somewhere and that a year group should be treated as a whole.

Sorry for digressing.

mattsurf · Post by **mattsurf** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 9:45 pm

The effect of standardisation is that older children do need to get a higher raw score than younger children - the reason for this is that the 75th percentile tends to represent a higher raw score for older kids than the younger ones

The premature baby debate is very pertitent: Our neighbour was born on the 29 August, his due date was the 10th November (The same as our son!) - DS was born on 14th November, whilst neighbour is in a year above at school. I don't think that any allowance is made, which can be really unfair

Matt