CSSE 2021 entry

[Krishna186]

Do not think the standardization was taking into account the different days of the exam .

[cybekpmc]

Do not think the standardization was taking into account the different days of the exam .

I agree , the std score formula does not consider any variation of the difficulty level between various days.

[pure76]

don't think the paper could be compared to an independent school paper. They are normally vocabulary heavy. My son sat Monday paper vocabulary was not anywhere as difficult as the independent papers, or the previous CSSE styles papers. The ones where you had to use your own words to describe certain words, if you didn't know them, could be guessed in context, and no old difficult language. i would say if it did take longer to answer the questions, then the plus point, was that they didn't have to spend time on high level vocab that has come up in previous papers.
But saying all that, we are gathering all this info from what we have been told by our children/second hand from other parents who have been told by their children. So accuracy is questionable.

[Mci]

My son, December born, got a raw score of 79, standardised score 338.085. His cousin, October born, got a raw score of 77 and got 337. Both sat the exam on Saturday 7th November, morning session. How does it work? It seems not ok to me.

[ToadMum]

My son, December born, got a raw score of 79, standardised score 338.085. His cousin, October born, got a raw score of 77 and got 337. Both sat the exam on Saturday 7th November, morning session. How does it work? It seems not ok to me.

What do you mean by a raw score of 79 (or 77)?

Each paper has a maximum raw score of 60 marks; the two papers are standardised individually, as each has its own mean and standard deviation, and required adjustment for age. There is no calculation involved in the progress from raw score to standardised score which involves adding the raw marks achieved in the maths paper to the raw marks achieved in the English, if that is what you have done to get the 79 / 77?

[Mci]

I mean raw scores for Maths and English together.
43 for Maths and 36 for English.

[Faithmomma]

Do not think the standardization was taking into account the different days of the exam .

I agree , the std score formula does not consider any variation of the difficulty level between various days.

I agree with both posts. There is one single mean for both days. There should be two mean values especially where two different papers were given for both days for a sizeable, comparable cohort number( it could be argued that previous years there were two papers however the number of candidates taking the paper on the reserve date would be significantly lesser compared to the population size on the given exam date, and therefore perhaps it was wise that the board stuck to one mean value and one standardisation formula ) . However this year we were advised of two dates from the outset, had two different papers, atleast this seems true for the English paper as discussed several times and the population size was significant and comparable in terms of numbers. Therefore this should have prompted two mean values and two standardisation formulae to allow for differing difficulty of the paper. By not doing so, there is an assumed homogeneity of differing papers and consecutively, the scores would have a negative skew for the candidates taking the paper of the 9th November (this is perceived as the harder paper). I suggest people post their raw scores for 9th of November to see the difference between the scores of children taking the English exam and those taking the 7th November English exam and they will see an apparent difference. From what I hear, of a small sample subset only,there have been a lot of raw scores in the range of 20s for the English exam of the 9th of November whereas the 7th November exam has a lot of 40s. Even from feedback after the exam days, the children who took the paper on the 7th November claimed the english paper was much easier/fun and those on the 9th November claimed it was very hard and a different format. The published mean of 32 on csse website for english tells us that it was a much easier paper than 2019 English paper, however this is not the case as evidenced by very low English scores for those on the 9th of November and much higher scores for the 7th of November. In my opinion. the English scores for both days have been averaged out to produce a standardisation formulae to the detriment of candidates on the 9th of November. If the board are saying they have accounted for difficulty in marking the papers, I would like to see proof- the mean values published for both days would be able to tell the complete story as well as raw scores on the median centile for both days.
Anyone else agree with me?

[Famkris]

I completely agree with you and well described.

[cybekpmc]

Do not think the standardization was taking into account the different days of the exam .

I agree , the std score formula does not consider any variation of the difficulty level between various days.

I agree with both posts. There is one single mean for both days. There should be two mean values especially where two different papers were given for both days for a sizeable, comparable cohort number( it could be argued that previous years there were two papers however the number of candidates taking the paper on the reserve date would be significantly lesser compared to the population size on the given exam date, and therefore perhaps it was wise that the board stuck to one mean value and one standardisation formula ) . However this year we were advised of two dates from the outset, had two different papers, atleast this seems true for the English paper as discussed several times and the population size was significant and comparable in terms of numbers. Therefore this should have prompted two mean values and two standardisation formulae to allow for differing difficulty of the paper. By not doing so, there is an assumed homogeneity of differing papers and consecutively, the scores would have a negative skew for the candidates taking the paper of the 9th November (this is perceived as the harder paper). I suggest people post their raw scores for 9th of November to see the difference between the scores of children taking the English exam and those taking the 7th November English exam and they will see an apparent difference. From what I hear, of a small sample subset only,there have been a lot of raw scores in the range of 20s for the English exam of the 9th of November whereas the 7th November exam has a lot of 40s. Even from feedback after the exam days, the children who took the paper on the 7th November claimed the english paper was much easier/fun and those on the 9th November claimed it was very hard and a different format. The published mean of 32 on csse website for english tells us that it was a much easier paper than 2019 English paper, however this is not the case as evidenced by very low English scores for those on the 9th of November and much higher scores for the 7th of November. In my opinion. the English scores for both days have been averaged out to produce a standardisation formulae to the detriment of candidates on the 9th of November. If the board are saying they have accounted for difficulty in marking the papers, I would like to see proof- the mean values published for both days would be able to tell the complete story as well as raw scores on the median centile for both days.
Anyone else agree with me?

Fully Agree..

[dad_1818]

I too agree with this and is there a way to take it further to find out if this can be resolved.