Does anyone know score distribution across all students who

[thisisnuts]

Hmmm

MontyUd, you're initial question was:

We would like to check where a score of 269 would appear on the overall cohort of everyone who appeated for the exam for 2018 entry

The very first reply ended:

... I think that the top possible score in SW Herts is 282, so 269 would be in the top 1-2% of the cohort.

That seems like a fairly robust and plain answer to your specific question - with no need to submit an FOI!

If you'd asked from the beginning how to get hold of the full results data, you might have received the answer that you actually wanted.

[Droftaw]

My understanding is that the scores are normalised, to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, for each test. Using my school boy statistics, this means that the mean is 200 and, assuming a normal distribution, 2.5% of the population will score 260 or above.

However, the population used for the normalisation calculation is not the same population which sat the South West Herts test. The way that Bushey Meads uses the tests reveals the quartile boundaries. I think that the latest numbers suggest 25% got less than 161, the mean was 181 and 25% got 201 or more.

Again, assuming a normal distribution, the mean is 181 and the standard deviation is 29. This suggests that 2.5% of those sitting the South West Herts Consortium test got 239 or above.

As I say, this is my school boy stats. Better statistians than I might be able to calculate more accurate stats.

[thisisnuts]

Droftaw

I'm not a statistician, but having followed the discussions on this thread for the past couple of years, the suggestion that the SW Herts population would have a mean so far below the sample population doesn't feel right.

Is it possible that the quartiles you quote are derived only from the subset of the population that actually applied to Bushey Meads?

[Droftaw]

I agree that the cut off scores at Bushey Meads do not appear to be consistent with the tone of most messages on this forum. But the admission rules are clear: “Children with a score equivalent to the top 25% of the population taking the test are placed in Band A”, with similar text for the other three bands.

Perhaps the posters on this forum are not representative of the population sitting the tests.

[Daogroupie]

So 75% of the applicants got less than 201?

I wonder how that compares with DAO as it is the same CEM paper so 50% of the SW Herts exam is the same as DAO.

DAO gives the breakdown so you can see the CEM score. This year only the top 325 scores will have their English and Maths papers marked. It will be very interesting to see the CEM score of the applicant who comes 325th and how that compares to the SW Herts Scores in October. DG