Standardising?

Eleven Plus (11+) in Devon

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twinmum2001
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2012 9:26 am

Standardising?

Post by twinmum2001 »

Can anyone shed light on whether standardisation of 11+ still happens?

My daughter has just taken the Plymouth 11+ and a few years ago when my sons took their version of the 11+ there was a weighting based on age.

Does anyone know?

After the mock you could see how close the girls scores were and how many girls all had same scores- 1 or 2 marks could make the difference between one ranked place and another 20 +/-.

Just in that limbo stage! :)
erisindevon
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2012 9:16 pm

Re: Standardising?

Post by erisindevon »

As far as I am aware, the standardisation still happens, and does take age into account - although as you will see explained elsewhere on this forum, all it means is that children are compared with others born in the same month. Depending on the cohort, it may or may not make a difference to the rankings.

Indeed, the standardisation process causes the majority of the girls' scores to fall in the 190-210 band. When dd1 did the test 3 years ago, it was the first time that parents received the scores before submitting the CAF. We weren't initially given rankings, which caused a lot of upset because a score of 190 made it really difficult to predict your child's chance of getting a place. Fortunately - after a lot of protest from parents - the local authority changed their policy and handed out the rankings for us that year - and have continued to do so.

Basically, you can summarise the Plymouth girls' situation as:
Ranked above 120 - first choice school
Above 150 - very likely first choice school
Above 240 - definitely get into one of the two girls' grammars
Above 260 - probably still get a place at one of them
Below 260 - worth a punt putting one down, but you'd best have a back up plan

The balance of first choices seems to vary a lot from year to year. Before DD1's year, when you didn't know how you'd done until the allocations came out in March. there was a definite bias for only the most confident-of-passing girls to put DHSG as first choice. Those who feared they may be borderline were more likely to put PHSG first, and two non-grammars as their other choices. This is now much less of an issue, so the majority of people I've spoken to seem to be choosing the school they really want rather than the one they think they can get.

Tick tock.... The waiting continues....
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