11 Plus Exams Forum

My daughter took it this morning.
Said VR very hard rest not bad.
Any more opinions?

My Daughter also took the 11+ on Saturday.

I can't say what the results will be like but she came out with a smile as she knows that her evenings and weekends will now be free!
She said that the VR was OK and managed all but 6-7 questions, Maths was OK left about 3 questions and English was not too bad with about 5 questions left. So probably borderline if she gets a good hit rate. Fingers crossed.

Does anyone know how many Girls took the Colchester selection?

One thing I noticed was the pressure that some parents were putting their girls under whilst walking up to the school... even with only a few minutes left you could hear advice about question types, strategy and the like. This can not be good to settle nerves that are already quite frayed.

Thanks for your response.

Don't know how many took it at Colchester but I think its usually not less than 500.

Good luck.
Awful having to wait till March though!!

Phoned up CSSE and they say that 450 girls took the test on last Saturday....

However, Suffolk LEA have yet to send their forms in so the second date is mostly for Sufflok and they expect between 50 and 100 girls.

How do they balance the two dates for parity? as they do not use the same test papers?

Anyway, there's one thing I know and that is the result is now totally out of my hands... heres waiting until March!

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that there are 50 to 100 girls in Suffolk who have not yet taken their "Essex" 11+ with a view to obtaining places at Colchester and possibly Chelmsford High Schools.

If this is the case, let me tell you what I have been told in past years.

The candidates sit the same verbal reasoning and maths papers but a different English paper (obviously, if they knew what they were going to be having to answer questions on, they could go and read the book).

The raw scores, ie, marks out of 40, 50 etc are then noted and the total score is weighted. For example, if two candidates score 30 out of 40 in a maths paper, the markers will look at each question answered and "weight" the questions so that a candidate who has answered a question on algebra, for example, will score more highly than the candidate who answered the simple addition question.

In English, for example, the question "What has happened to Jane Eyre's parents" when the text states clearly that they "are dead" will have a lower weighting than the question replace the word "garulous" in the text with another suitable word.

Obviously, these are examples.

A couple of years ago, one of my children missed the main test date through illness and the English paper she sat was said to be far more difficult than the "on the day" version. (I have since seen the papers and would agree strongly with this).

I was advised of the above procedure but, of course, things might be different now.

Thanks for your reply (bad luck with your child). So Suffolk will probably get the same verbal reasoning and maths papers but a different English paper; should be fair.... I hope. Makes you think all sorts of uncharitable thoughts such as 'why is Suffolk allowed into our grammar schools' or 'given the short notice we had this year, how come Suffolk get extra revision time due to the LEA's not getting their acts together' But this brings another more valid question about how fair any of this is.... only two more daughters to go.

I have to agree with you, Ducky, about the extra preparation time. It is really not on for some children to have known about the earlier than usual test and not others.

It doesn't really affect me because my children go to Southend grammar schools (we live a long way out of their catchment area though) and I should be very surprised if anyone in Suffolk wanted to travel that far.

Sorry, the last reply was in response to the last Guest's posting.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine had a daughter who got into Chelmsford County High School. To be honest, she was a bright girl but better at English than maths.

I don't want to give too much info away but suffice it to say that the cut off point for the school that year was around the 500 mark and a class teacher congratulated the daughter of a good friend of mine as she had achieved the highest mark in her class (she was a very bright girl indeed) and had come around the 700 mark.

However, bearing this in mind, and the fact that the cut off for Chelmsford was at around the 500 level, my acquaintances daughter managed to get in. (She was in the same year 6 class as the girl who came first in class at around 700).

According to the County High's web site, etc, there were no successful appeals for that year so how did she manage it? Did she know someone on the governing body?

The acquaintance has never really said, always changed the subject when it came up, etc but it put me of the County High, I can tell you, even though it is our nearest selective.

It would be totaly wrong of me to suggest that any foul play had occurred because I simply don't know what happened but I do know of at least four girls in the year group who got a higher 11+ score and had applied for places there, so who knows.

Doesn't surprise me but what can you do?