Blackbuck wrote:Hi, i m very curious. Most children said Berks exam was easier than bucks, they came out more relieved as well. What went wrong in the scoring? How come Kendrick n reading scores have been comparatively higher than the Slough scores? Everywhere I hv heard its kids failing Berks test specially those who took tests in Slough. Has there been a marking error or is it there genuinely typo mistake on some results? Loads of students have missed out on Slough from 1-5 marks. How come top results came crumbling down from 165-167 last year to 136 this year? What n where exactly did both the parents n kids go wrong?
BTW CEM said their test was tutor proof but I think not tutored kids didn't stand a chance to pass unless they were extra ordinary bright Mensa types. Sorry no offence intended to anyone, apologies in advance.
Hiya Blackbuck,
Maybe I can help explain things, though I'm still fairly new to some of this (my DD sat the Berks test last month. She didn't sit the Bucks one).
1) for the sake of argument, let's say that 3600 kids sat the test in Berks.
2) CEM take the raw score (ie the actual number of correct answers) for each child.
3) this then get's "standardised" - all the raw scores are added up and then divided by 3600 to give a number. This number is then called "100" with all the raw scores being compared to it.
4) to add to the confusion, the dc are also compared to kids born in the same month - this way you're comparing kids of a similar age and, in theory, school learning/knowledge.
(ie approx 200 kids in each month).
5) ultimately this then get's you a range of results, ranging from very poor to very good with "100" in the middle.
Because children are bring compared with each other, the range will be different for each area, as different kids will have sat the tests.
Due to the statistical nature of the results, most of the kids will be between 2 "cut off" points, with a small number either side. Hence the 69-136 range.
I know that a lot of people in West London view the Slough Grammars part of "their" catchment, which tbh I think is wrong (but then I live here
). But it will skew the results.
As to coaching /tutoring - i went down the DIY route as our dd is very bright. We've helped her, by talking to her about what's going on/ practising maths with her, etc since she was little. Her score reflected all the work we put in over the last year (some how we didn't kill each other
).
However, I did ask if she could have sat the test with no tutoring at all and she said no.
CEM might be trying to make this harder to tutor, but some prep still needs to be done
I hope this has answered why there's a difference in score/ ranges for the results.
I know that somewhere on here are the pretty graphs showing all the stats and how it works.
Also something to think about - this is the first cohort to have sat the 11+ test who are studying the new National Curriculum.
H