Pls don't send me PMs about exam content

[MSD]

Absolutely Optimist!

Wasn't the sick exam on the 17th? So don't really see what the problem is in sharing information with other parents.

MSD

[Daogroupie]

Then the question should be posted publically. Why would you send pms about exam content unless you were requesting information that you felt would put your dc at an advantage? DG

[MSD]

KenR,

As the sick exam has now been taken could you please make the content public?

MSD

[peter doe]

I think It's something to do with a thread on the Warwickshire section where someone confessed to using some sort of trick to gain places .He confessed to using a rule that allowed people from out of town to take the exam at anytime .He would then know the content of the exam by then .He even claim he told the Warwickshire Exam board and they did nothing to stop it .I don't know if the same rule applies in Birmingham or Walsall and Wolverhampton tests .
People on the Warwickshire section say they were even allowed in the exam room and some say they even see people viewing papers and was asked over the announcement to "stop viewing now " .So maybe they do things different there .
I am willing to participate in any thread that will help children who will be sitting the exams next year .I think we can talk about the exams without mentioning essentials such as name of passage used in cloze and comprehension as it does not matter for students sitting next year as they will have to be able to do whatever passage they are given then .
I learn a lot from this site and want to give back.

[MSD]

Agreed Peter.

A child taking the test after the sick exam has zero impact on children who have already taken the test. They will merely be placed at the back of the waiting list, if they scored well enough. And as far as I know this is not allowed in Birmingham.

My son sat the test for KE and QM and I have already PM'd the content to KenR. And to be honest the content hasn't really changed much over the years. All the information the parents need is already on the sticky.

MSD

[Sally-Anne]

The Durham CEM test is not used in just Birmingham and Warwickshire.

Information about the test content is embargoed on here until such time as all main and secondary test dates have passed where the same test may be used.

Sally-Anne

[Optimist]

The Durham CEM test is not used in just Birmingham and Warwickshire.

Information about the test content is embargoed on here until such time as all main and secondary test dates have passed where the same test may be used.

Sally-Anne

Sally-Anne, how certain are you that the same CEM content will be used by other areas. What are these other areas? How do you know. Having said that I think you are erring on the side of caution a tad too much.

I get useful CEM information in this section. The Warwickshire section is dull and uninformative, where only one or two individuals have shared information on exam content.

PS. I like the Birmingham section as the posters and KenR have done a highly laudible job of providing robust content.

[Okanagan]

I'm pretty sure that the CEM content will be different for each exam. Until this year the only 3 areas it was used for were Birmingham, Warwickshire and Walsall/Wolverhampton - and as these are all geographically adjacent and there is definite overlap in the candidates I think it would have been reported if the same content appeared in the same year in more than one. This is the first year they've set the exam for HBS in Hertfordshire though, which is the one the person sending the PM's was asking about (and they had previously posted in that area, I checked), so I suppose it's possible that they could reuse content there.

Judging from what was being asked in those PMs though it just sounded like the person asking hadn't a clue what was going to be in the HBS exam (remember it's the first year it's been used there), as the specific questions asked were about areas which are not even in the CEM exams here, so nobody would have been able to provide answers anyway! Reading the Birmingham and Warwickshire sections, or posting in them to ask for general format information would certainly have been a better way for them to go about it than PMing the individual posters. However I can see some logic in thinking that if you've only got about a week until your exam and have only just discovered that there are other areas of the country which use the same exam style, but the people you'd need to ask have already had their exam so might well not be reading the forum regularly any more, then you're more likely to get a timely response by asking directly. So in this case I suspect it was probably more clumsily phrased and badly judged than intending to cheat - a simple response with "this is the format" (or a link to the sticky) would probably have sufficed and not given away anything which isn't already in the public domain.

[Sally-Anne]

Sally-Anne, how certain are you that the same CEM content will be used by other areas. What are these other areas? How do you know. Having said that I think you are erring on the side of caution a tad too much.

I have no idea at all if the same content is recycled in other areas, but as the test dates around the country are now so close together, with a couple of non-CEM exceptions, a few more days can do no harm.

S-A

[DIY Mum]

Most likely other regions, new to CEM, will use older or previous CEM exam material.

We've always heard through the gravepine that the Wolverhampton paper is a recycled version of previous CEM exams used in B'ham. Never believed it though, until my dd2 sat the exam herself last week...you only need to take a look at the sticky to realise that it was exactly the same exam used by B'ham some years ago.

I'm sure dps realise this- as well as the tutors.