Hi

Few questions for anyone who's in the know on these things please
Does anyone know if those that sat the 2nd Oct test get their results on the same day as everyone else (Oct 16)
Also are children who sat for the 2nd Oct exam compared with each other or with those that did the earlier sitting in terms of the overall marking and standardisation (i.e are both sittings treated as one paper?)
Also as age is a consideration for standardisation how many marks are (approx) might be deducted from a child born in say November against one born in say February?

Thanks

1. Yes
2. Always have been combined for scores purposes
3. It isn't a question of deducting (or adding) marks. Age standardisation compares like with like, age-wise. So if the February borns have a higher mean raw score than the November borns, they will the same standardised score will relate to a higher raw score for them than for the November borne- although received wisdom is that the younger in the cohort, the lower the score, it doesn't always work out like that.

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

Totally irrelevant to your post, I know, but I was just wondering if your child (or anyone who sat the second CSSE sitting) said much about the difficulty of either of the papers?

Little indication of the difficulty level I'm afraid, just happy it's all over and haven't mentioned it to her since!

Fair enough. I would seriously love to know how they organise the papers, marking and standardisation between the two sittings!

Hi

So the results for the 2 sittings have come through. As suspected the marks for the first cohort are much higher than the marks for the second cohort.
There is a good sample size of the number of children in each test (4,573 and 884 respectively) to ensure a realistic comparison
The mean for the first paper is significantly higher both in Maths and English than those for the second paper which is a a clear indication that the second paper was more difficult.

Unfortunately the process is then to combine to the mean from both papers against which to evaluate all children. This of course massively disadvantages the children that sat the more difficult paper. The process should ensure that children are compared against other children who sat the same test. This is grossly unfair and the result is some deserving children who obtained above the mean in their paper from cohort 2 lose out on school places.

See 2018 results for the 2 papers below

1st sitting
ENGLISH MEAN = 37.99137387
MATHS MEAN = 25.7147065

2nd Sitting
ENGLISH MEAN = 35.78167421
MATHS MEAN = 19.80995475

COMBINED MEAN
ENGLISH = 37.64485
MATHS = 24.78872

I assumed the maths paper was the same for both sittings.

It would be interesting to know what the writing tasks were for for each sitting. That would give an indication if the second paper had a comparable difficulty in the task set.

@gugu
where did you source the mean/average for the different sittings?

Then figures are from the CSSE admin office. They supplied a more comprehensive breakdown all of which confirms the results for the second sitting were much lower than the first and the obvious difficulty levels between the 2 tests.

After CSSE standardisations the pass rates were as follows
Passes for 1st sitting approx. 55%
Pass for the 2nd sitting approx. 38%


I'm incredulous that CSSE then go on to combine the results for the 2 tests meaning those that sat the easier test gain a massive advantage. Surely the whole point is to compare a child with other children that same the same test
e.g.
Child A from the 1st sitting gets 30/60 and the mean for that paper is 35 (i.e they got less than the average)
Child B from sitting 2 gets 25/60 and the mean for that paper is 20 (i.e they get above the average)

One would expect child B to have been more successful as child B got more more marks than most in the test they sat whereas child A got less marks than most in the test they sat.This is not however the way CSSE look at it. They go on to erroneously combine the 2 results meaning Child A will be the preferred choice and Child B misses out.

Then figures are from the CSSE admin office. They supplied a more comprehensive breakdown all of which confirms the results for the second sitting were much lower than the first and the obvious difficulty levels between the 2 tests.

After CSSE standardisations the pass rates were as follows
Passes for 1st sitting approx. 55%
Pass for the 2nd sitting approx. 38%


I'm incredulous that CSSE then go on to combine the results for the 2 tests meaning those that sat the easier test gain a massive advantage. Surely the whole point is to compare a child with other children that same the same test
e.g.
Child A from the 1st sitting gets 30/60 and the mean for that paper is 35 (i.e they got less than the average)
Child B from sitting 2 gets 25/60 and the mean for that paper is 20 (i.e they get above the average)

One would expect child B to have been more successful as child B got more more marks than most in the test they sat whereas child A got less marks than most in the test they sat.This is not however the way CSSE look at it. They go on to erroneously combine the 2 results meaning Child A will be the preferred choice and Child B misses out.