Review of the exam
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Review of the exam
Last night we went to HSFG for their open evening and the Head talked about the exam. She said that all of the GSs were currently in the process of reviewing the exam from this year and that the dates she gave may change for registering etc, but currently the exam date is the 12th September 2015. She also said to keep an eye out for an announcement in regards to the exam and further details.
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Re: Review of the exam
That's interesting, DD is year 7 at HSFG and a week or so after the new test she came home and said they had done an online test at school. My first thought was that it was obviously cats, but the way she described it sounded as if it was like new 11+ test. They did it on the computer and it lasted 45 minutes. She had different questions to the people sitting next to her. When she talked about it with her friends, they had also had different types of questions and it doesn't sound anything like the cats tests she did in year 5 or the cats test done by DS in year 7. I did wonder if it was a tweaked version of the new 11+ as I guess they will need to adjust things and will need to trial any changes. We also haven't had any cats results from school, which I would have expected if they had taken these. I am also guessing that DD's cohort would be ideal to test a tweaked version on as they are the last batch from the old test.
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Re: Review of the exam
I know Year 7's in 2012 were trialling a grammar test. Perhaps it's something they do every year.
Re: Review of the exam
scaredycat, could it have been MidYIS? Lots of schools use that for baseline comparisons
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Re: Review of the exam
It could have been midyis, she did say that it was the CEM website. Just seems odd as she said that they all had very different types of questions. DD had a lot of algebra, but her friends didn't. I'm not sure how accurate results will be if the questions are not equivalent, as it were. I know that other grammars use cats, as we have had DS's results on a print out for years 7, 8 and 9 it we haven't received anything from DD's school.
Re: Review of the exam
Midyis is produced by CEM, and it's an adaptive test - so everybody gets the same first question, and after that you get asked harder or easier questions depending on whether you've got the questions you've already done right or wrong. If your DD got some easier algebra questions right, she'll have got more and harder ones. If her friends flunked a few basic algebra questions, the computer won't have given them any more of them.scaredycat wrote:It could have been midyis, she did say that it was the CEM website. Just seems odd as she said that they all had very different types of questions. DD had a lot of algebra, but her friends didn't. I'm not sure how accurate results will be if the questions are not equivalent, as it were. I know that other grammars use cats, as we have had DS's results on a print out for years 7, 8 and 9 it we haven't received anything from DD's school.
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Re: Review of the exam
Aha, that's probably it then. She's a bit of a maths whizz so she rather liked the algebra!
Re: Review of the exam
It does sound like MidYIS, my DD in Year 7 is taking hers today and her GS wrote and told us about them a couple of weeks ago. The GS said that the test is designed to measure aptitude and will help staff track whether students are making expected progress as they move up the school towards their GCSEs. Parents are not told the results - I asked! It is purely for internal school purposes. I don't know whether the kids will be told, but I guess not if the parents aren't....
Re: Review of the exam
Kids aren't usually told, if it's anything like the schools I've been involved with.CKMum wrote:It does sound like MidYIS, my DD in Year 7 is taking hers today and her GS wrote and told us about them a couple of weeks ago. The GS said that the test is designed to measure aptitude and will help staff track whether students are making expected progress as they move up the school towards their GCSEs. Parents are not told the results - I asked! It is purely for internal school purposes. I don't know whether the kids will be told, but I guess not if the parents aren't....
It's fine for them to have a general policy that MidYIS results are just for internal use and they don't routinely report them to parents, but any parent who wants to know their child's result can ask for it and should be given it. It's a data protection issue - you have a right to see any data that they hold on your child.