My eldest son made a last minute (15th July!!!) decision to sit the 11+ which has brought me to this wonderful forum.

He is also sitting the King John entrance test as we are 1 road out of catchment. He completed his second King John practise paper today and got 68%. Just wondering how King John scores are worked out or a rough idea of percentage/raw mark he will need!

Sorry, I’m so new to all this and so out of my depth!

I am not very familiar with the Essex GS entrance process.
But, assuming it is like all the others, then being out of catchment will automatically put you at disadvantage.

Find out the type of exam papers that use, either GL or CEM or maybe a combination of both.
Get some of the papers are practice on those.

For GS entry normally there is no fixed mark that will guarantee you admission, the actual mark that will ensure you get a place very much depends on the quality of the cohort taking the exam that year.

The King John School in Thundersley is a partially selective comprehensive school completely separate from the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex (CSSE) grammar and partially selective schools.

The exam provider is GL Assessment and the exam consists of one Verbal Reasoning paper.

The last one of our DC to take the King John test was DS2, who sat it for 2014 entry. His standardised score was 121, which I think more or less equated to his CSSE VR paper score (also GL - his was the last year to sit a separate VR paper) of 67/80 in terms of standard deviations from the mean, but I may be wrong.

http://www.thekjs.essex.sch.uk/admissions/applications/

If you would like to obtain examples of the kind of test which is being set, GL Assessment practice papers are available from www.gl-assessment.co.uk, Amazon and other major booksellers.  The pack you require is the ‘Multi-Choice Verbal Reasoning Pack’ – – ISBN 978-0-7087-1987-9 or ISBN 978-0-7087-2049-3.  Your child will need to practise answering multiple choice questions.

Re OOC applications, admission via the test comes quite a long way down the oversubscription criteria, so if fewer than 52/53 places remain after everyone in the preceding categories has been admitted, fewer than 15% of the total places will be allocated.


ADMISSION TO THE KING JOHN SCHOOL
POLICY AND NUMBERS
Students will normally be admitted at the age of eleven. Priority for admission will be given to sisters and brothers of children in the postcode area prefixed SS already enrolled in the School and children living in the priority admissionarea for the school. Up to 15 per cent may be selected by general ability, measured by tests to be determined by the Governing Body. The remainder of students will be admitted on a distance criterion. The published admission number for the year commencing 1st September 2019 is to be 350.
OVERSUBSCRIPTION
Where the number of applications for admission exceeds the published admissions limit (i.e. the number of places available), places will be allocated by the Governing Body in accordance with the co-ordinated admission arrangements and following criteria in the following numbered order of priority:
(1) Looked after children and previously looked after children
A ‘looked after child’ or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after,
became subject to an adoption, residence or special guardianship order. A looked after child is a child who is
(a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the
exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989).
(2) Children living in the priority admission area for the school or in the postcode area prefixed SS with a sibling on
roll the School at the time of application
Siblings are defined as children with a brother or sister (or a step brother/sister) living at the same address at
the time the application is submitted. (see note (a) below).
(3) Children living in the priority admission area for the school (see note (a) below).
(4) Children of staff employed by the school
Any member of school staff who has been employed for a minimum of 2 years, or to fulfil a vacancy in an area inwhich it is difficult to recruit.
Should the School reach its admission limit within any of the preceding criteria, then the places within that criterion will be allocated according to the distance from the child's home address to the school (see note (b) below).
Where, after applying the above criteria, there remain unfilled places, those places will be allocated by the Governing Body in accordance with the following criteria:
(5) Up to 15 per cent of the published admissions limit may be allocated according to the results of a test of general ability, those scoring higher being awarded priority of entry. In the event of there being two or more children with tied scores being considered for the final selected place or places, then the child or children living nearest to the school will be offered the place(s) (see note (b) below). Children taking the entry test may later be offered a place according to the distance criterion. If so, they will enter under this category because it is the main and over-riding criterion. In the case of twins where only one twin is awarded a place under the test criteria the sibling does not fall under the sibling criteria as the child is not currently on roll until September.
(6) Any remaining places will be allocated according to the distance from the child's home address to the School
using safe recognised walking routes calculated via Ordnance Survey software

Eta I don't know whether DS2 would have been allocated a place with 121, but since the last place allocated via the test in 2012 was on a score of 104 IIRC, he almost certainly would have got in. However, his CSSE score was more than enough to obtain a place at SHSB and King John was only on his CAF in fifth place as a 'something very weird having happened re CSSE scores, plus equally weird things happening vis a vis preferences 3 and 4' fall-back, so we shall never actually know.

_________________
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

Thank you so much - that is very helpful! I know that 104 has been the entry requirement of a few years now but couldn’t work out what raw score that would be! We have those practise sets and he has so far completed 2 within the allocated time and achieved 70% on both but will obviously need to work with him to get a higher raw score.