daughter never finished verbal reasoning for watford grammar

[hjhj]

hi kumarie, lot of pupil dont finish VR and get a place at WBGS .IT depends on your age they got a very strange marking system for MATHS.If maths is good you can still easily get in.Good Luck

[kumarie]

Thanks alot everyone. She's a summer baby. So fingers crossed...

[Daogroupie]

That is excellent news for you. She will profit from the mistakes made by the older students as that will free up places! DG

[Radlettmother]

Is younger age really such an enormous advantage? (I know there is an explanation of standardisation on here- truthfully though, I'm not sure I really understand it properly despite rereading it)

The way that it is written about, it makes it seem that younger children have an actual advantage- surely that is not the case, their marks are just adjusted to make sure they aren't disadvantaged by their age. Is it really by so many marks?

My DD is summer, so we benefit, but I didn't think it would make that much difference- maybe a mark or two. Am I wrong?

Also, I'd be interested to know, is the result of the standardisation that the top schools actually do end up with children evenly distributed over the school year? In other words, does standardisation really work?

Sorry for all the questions!

[K1w1mum]

I have two DDs at WGGS, one in Y8 and one in Y7, and the birthdays of the girls in their classes do seem to be well spread out going by birthday invites.
Remember that the age standardisation only applies to the girls who get in through the academic route- so only 25%.
My eldest is December born and DD2 is a July baby. I don't think being younger is an advantage as such, it just evens things out a bit.

[Hera]

The way that it is written about, it makes it seem that younger children have an actual advantage- surely that is not the case, their marks are just adjusted to make sure they aren't disadvantaged by their age.

What is should mean is that you are compared with children in the months you were born which in theory could mean that if you have a very bright cohort of August born children and a less so one of September children the standardisation would go in favour of the September born kids. However there has been some suggestion/speculation that the results are not standardised every year which kind of makes a bit of a farce of the whole thing if that is true.

In my son's form there seem to be more birthdays September to January, but given that only 25% are selected for the whole school on ability this doesn't really tell you a great deal. I think that the general consensus for fully selective grammar schools is that there is a high weighting of older kids.