Raw score request

[instantsunshine]

Just to add to the scores for a September birthday:
Paper 1 - 118 - 72
Paper 2- 120 - 74
Gutted that looking at earlier posts if she'd got the raw scores the other way round DD would have presumably got the magical 121.
Such is life! Happy New Year & Good luck to everyone else who has put in for a Selection Review.

[pippi]

Not sure these are of much interest any more given the test changes under "consultation", but the raw marks out of 80 required to give a standardised score of 121 in the two tests (held on 04/10/12 and 10/10/12, ie for in-county pupils) were as follows. First column is DoB.

01/09/2001 74 75
01/10/2001 74 74
01/11/2001 73 74
01/12/2001 73 74
01/01/2002 73 74
01/02/2002 73 74
01/03/2002 72 74
01/04/2002 72 73
01/05/2002 72 73
01/06/2002 71 73
01/07/2002 71 73
01/08/2002 71 72

These are all around 3 marks higher than the equivalent qualification marks in the previous year.

[Jpk]

Pippi. Thanks for our work on this. Not sure many will agree with me but it seems insane that you could have a child 9 months older than your own who is only expected to get one more question right to qualify.....

[WD43]

I agree with JPK. My July born daughter scored 120 in the second test with a raw score of 72. I remember it being a massive bug bear at the time that she was not allowed by her Bucks state primary to start the reception year until January and then only during mornings until the summer term when she was finally deemed old enough to attend full days. She was put on what was effectively the bottom table as she was naturally behind most of her classmates who had stated school in the preceding September. She therefore missed half of the reception year relative to the September starters.

I was told at the time not to worry as this would all be picked up by the standardisation process and yet it seems that all that this process has amounted to this year is one mark's difference between an October born child and a July born child, notwithstanding the 9 month difference in age and, in the case of my daughter's school, the catching up that the younger children had to do through missing half of the reception year.

Would anybody please be able to point me to statistics for previous years showing the effect of standardisation on raw scores so that I can compare them against this year's figures?

Thank you very much for your help. I hope this doesn't sound too much like sour grapes!

[11nuts]

I think the point you made is fair. I would have expected standardization to have been a little fairer through the extreme nature of a child's birthday through the year.

Not sure how the appeals process works, but I would take a look. Clearly starting schooling late would have not helped.

With kind regards, 11nuts.

[scary mum]

I agree with JPK. My July born daughter scored 120 in the second test with a raw score of 72. I remember it being a massive bug bear at the time that she was not allowed by her Bucks state primary to start the reception year until January and then only during mornings until the summer term when she was finally deemed old enough to attend full days. She was put on what was effectively the bottom table as she was naturally behind most of her classmates who had stated school in the preceding September. She therefore missed half of the reception year relative to the September starters.

I was told at the time not to worry as this would all be picked up by the standardisation process and yet it seems that all that this process has amounted to this year is one mark's difference between an October born child and a July born child, notwithstanding the 9 month difference in age and, in the case of my daughter's school, the catching up that the younger children had to do through missing half of the reception year.

Would anybody please be able to point me to statistics for previous years showing the effect of standardisation on raw scores so that I can compare them against this year's figures?

Thank you very much for your help. I hope this doesn't sound too much like sour grapes!

Standardisation is only ever done within the month of your child's birth, so it's not a case of marks being added. All it means is that all children of all ages scored highly this year and so there was not much difference in score. In fact, in a way, it confirms what you were told - the younger children have caught up. It's not a case of standardisation not working, it's not possible for it not to!

Here is an explanation which is better than my mangled attempts!

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/advice ... xplanation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are also some raw scores at the top of the Bucks page from a couple of years ago, but your child can only compete against the children in their year, not other years which have a different cohort of children and a different test.

[Lillie]

Standardisation is only ever done within the month of your child's birth, so it's not a case of marks being added. All it means is that all children of all ages scored highly this year and so there was not much difference in score. In fact, in a way, it confirms what you were told - the younger children have caught up. It's not a case of standardisation not working, it's not possible for it not to!

Scary mum is right - the children are compared to other children of their own birth month only, so really it shouldn't in theory be an issue if a child is September born or August born. But of course it is. A child who is that much younger has less maturity, less time to absorb vocabulary, (naturally, not by force feeding 11 plus style!), read or have stories read to them etc etc., not to mention those who have less time in Reception class.

There are numerous studies (and I'm sure there's a thread on this forum) which show that the academic performance of summer born children is still affected right up to GCSE level. From memory, there's something like a 10% difference in the number of summer born children achieving the benchmark 5 GCSEs compared to September born. I think the FT also did a study a couple of years ago, showing the strong bias towards Autumn born children in the grammar schools / selective schools around the country which do not standardise by age. Again, I'm sure this is quoted elsewhere on this forum and maybe someone else can help pin point it? Of course, there is also a huge spectrum of ability within any birth month, with those weaker and stronger etc.

Why the cohort of children of all ages this year scored so highly and with so little room for the tiniest of errors is another issue but that is perhaps conclusive proof that the system has to change.

[Sally-Anne]

I can't immeditely find the thread on here, but there was an article about this in ?The Times? in the last few days which quoted research studies conducted by the Institue for Fiscal Studies: http://www.ifs.org.uk/projects/5/169" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rob Clark]

Sally-Anne, I think this is the most recent:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... 30&t=29255" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It was in Surrey

Apologies to all not remotely interested in my sporting analogies, but the research continues to show that summer-born children are at a bigger and longer-lasting disadvantage than has hitherto been assumed.

[WD43]

The fact that summer born children are at a disadvantage is one of the main reasons that we have standardisation in the first place and, as mentioned above, those children are potentially still under performing when they come to take their GCSEs. I do not, therefore, agree with scary mum's comments that the fact that all children scored highly demonstrates that the younger children have caught up! In fact those children still have another 5/6 years to go until they do fully catch up (which is an equivalent period to the length of primary school education that they have had at the time that they sit the tests!)


Going back to pippi's post where he/she set out the raw scores per month required to achieve a standardised score of 121, a one mark difference (74 against 73) on the second test between an October born child and a July born child just doesn't seem to take age into account enough.

The problem seems to be that the tests were too easy and so many children scored so highly that not enough headroom was left for a fairer standardisation process to be applied this year. Are figures ever published setting out the percentages of children that passed according to the month that they were born in? That would be interesting (to me anyway!)