Second sitting

[gugu]

@Sarmum - The papers were 100% different for the 2 sittings. This has always been the case but if for whatever reason you wish to believe or maintain otherwise that's fine

@bittenfingernails:The reason there are now 2 tests is mainly due to capacity and very little to do with hesitant parents booking late tests. CSSE stopped taking bookings for the sept date well before the end of the application date due to capacity.

A simple analysis by any remotely objective party would reveal the solution to be to compare children sitting the same test with each other and select the highest scorers in each test. The only distortion then could be if the sample size in one of the sittings was too small (e.g. 20 or 30 kids, but here the smallest sitting had 884 children!) However I suppose the problem in these discussion boards is there isn't much objectivity because it's everyone's childrens future being discussed which is highly emotive.

[bittenfingernails]

A simple analysis by any remotely objective party Like you @gugu?

Regardless of which sitting was more difficult, I do think you have a point, though. It does seem unfair to compare the results of children who have sat completely different papers. That said, some might argue the English comprehension text used in the second exam (I'm not allowed to include it here) might have appealed to, say, the boys, more than the text in the first sitting. That was certainly the view of our Year 6 teacher.

[pinkrabbit38]

The only way to compare the difficulty of each sitting would be for the same children to do both sittings.
You can’t conclude that the second sitting was harder just because the mean is lower, all it shows is that the children in the second sitting scored lower....this could be for a multitude of reasons, some of which have already been mentioned.

[streathammum]

Gugu, could you tell us where you got your information about the tests being different? Was it from the exam board?

[gugu]

@streathammum - The csse office will confirm this for you

@pinkrabbit38 - Its is virtually impossible to put out 2 exams and prove the level of difficulty is exactly the same. I'm not sure that even the extreme hypothetical measure you suggest would work as the same children can perform differently on different days. Hence the case for separating the 2 exams in their marking and evaluation.

[pinkrabbit38]

@streathammum - The csse office will confirm this for you

@pinkrabbit38 - Its is virtually impossible to put out 2 exams and prove the level of difficulty is exactly the same. I'm not sure that even the extreme hypothetical measure you suggest would work as the same children can perform differently on different days. Hence the case for separating the 2 exams in their marking and evaluation.

You don’t really seem to be making sense....back near the start of this thread you state that the second paper was more difficult and therefore unfair and yet now you seem to be saying it’s impossible to prove the level of difficulty. I suppose what I’d really like to know is why this is so important to you? Did your DC sit the second sitting and miss out? Do you want to use this information in an appeal?

[gugu]

@pinkrabbit38 - Why it matters to me is really quite irrelevant to the principle under discussion, I would like to this issue addressed if not now sometime in the future as it's is an unfair system that penalises a large number of children

Incidentally I have designed and performed a large number of evaluations in a professional capacity resulting in awards of multi million pound contract and I can't see this particular criteria standing up to a challenge of any rigour

I note you're last post didn't actually address the issue, I have tried to explain to the best of my ability that it's very difficult if not impossible to create and prove that two tests are of identical parity and that is why they should be marked and evaluated separately, however you appear more than happy with the current status quo regardless and that's fine but I can only wonder why. Have a good day

[Moderators]

This topic will be of interest to many so please play nicely everyone and let's not let it get personal.

[streathammum]

I suppose if we accept that it's impossible to make papers of comparable difficulty (is this true? I remember once suggesting a similar thing on a different thread some time ago and was told I was wrong, and that exam setters are in fact very good at ensuring consistent levels of difficulty in the same subject across different papers) then the only was forward is to standardise them separately. But the problem then is that we have to assume that the cohorts are of identical ability, and I'm not sure how many people you need to be sitting each exam to be certain of that. I'm not a statistician but perhaps someone who is could help out? Would you need to be well into four figures before you could say you had a statistically meaningful sample?

Incidentally I have no horse in this race. My two DC have finished their entrance exams (not in Essex) and I won't have to worry about this again until the older one starts GCSEs.

[Blitz]

I have now heard both writing tasks from each sitting. TBH they are very comparable. The second sitting children would certainly not be disadvantaged.

Hopefully the maths paper was the same, or had very similar questions, with different numbers to calculate.

I am sure with the years of experience the CSSE have in exam setting, they would always endeavour to set two comparable exams to make it a level playing field for all children.