Walsall Consortium Numbers

[Turtlegirl]

Does anyone know how many children took the consortium exam? Is 1300 the number that took the exam for QMGS or the total for all the schools, including the girls?

[esam99]

I remember seeing around 700-900 girls at Queen Mary's High School (QMHS), and I was told by someone there was around 1400 boys at the Queen Mary's Grammar School. We still need to account for the other schools within the consortium.

[Turtlegirl]

So is the standardisation done across everyone taking the exam (over 2000 candidates)? And are boys and girls standardised together, even though all the schools are single sex?

[esam99]

I feel that boys and girls are considered independently during the standardisation process. They may combine them for other statistical analysis. However, for scores for each school, then it is as separate score for girls and boys.

[Okanagan]

I don't have the reference to hand, but I have seen somewhere that it is illegal (Equal Opportunities legislation?) to standardise boys and girls separately when they take the same exam. Presumably that applies even when all the schools in a consortium are single gender. In any case for the results to be statistically reliable you want the biggest sample possible, it is actually better (and no doubt cheaper too) to standardise across all those who took it.

[mike1880]

My understanding, based on reading their website a few years ago, is that CEM attempt to design their tests to be neutral, at least to the extent that girls and boys would both achieve similar average raw scores. I imagine it would be difficult to legally justify any other approach.

Mike