Audit report or Wat Boys

[WP]

The Audit Report would suggest that the sibling place was not claimed in our instance which must mean we were offered a place on proximity.

I have ordered the printed report which apparently has more information.

That's the county report; it won't tell you how a VA school like WB applied their rules, so you probably can't infer anything from it saying sibling place not claimed. But it does give the distance, which the county supplied to the school to use in applying their rules.

[WP]

Could I ask which category a child who qualifies under the local, sibling and test criterion would be offered a place?

Assuming the criteria appear on the admissions arrangements in the order:
1 Local
2. Siblings
3. Test

For Watford Boys and Girls, the arrangements say that if you qualify under multiple criteria you'll be considered as having qualified under the one that occurs first in their list, in this case locality. Other schools may do it differently, and DAO is particularly complicated.

(oops, I see watford87 has already answered this)

[gum]

WP

Thanks for that. Out of curosity, how would continued interest lists for children in year (ie Years 7 to 11) work ? Now that the local children criterion comes above the sibling and test criteria - would all in year vacancies be taken up by local children because these children are higher in the overubscription criteria? Currently, I understand Parmiters look at where a vacancy arises and replaces with a child from the same category(which would not be a problem) whereas at DAO simply goes by the overubscription criteria (here I do see a problem!).

[adwin1]

Letter informed that minimum entry criteria for outside Watford area was 257. My son achieved 282 and was offered a place by the school but was rejected by the local authority as WGSB was not my first choice. He has got a place at QE boys and really keen to start there in Sept 2008.

I was surpised nearly 100 places for WGS places were allocated to siblings (boys and girls) - which meant you had little chance of getting a place on the community criteria as there were only 40 places left and rest were for outside the area. So dont despair if your son did not get a place. 688 boys had applied to WGSB.

[watford87]

I had heard from another mum source uncertain that 30 got into proximity to WGSB which means following the 18 who get in on the 10% proximity rule that all the corss-siblings would have got and there would have been a further 12 who got in on proximity. Hence, approx 17% of total intake got in on proximity.

[WP]

Letter informed that minimum entry criteria for outside Watford area was 257. My son achieved 282 and was offered a place by the school but was rejected by the local authority as WGSB was not my first choice.

If I understand the score correctly, it is the sum of normalized scores for the two tests, with 141 being the highest score, achieved by about 5 of the 1300 children who took each test, with no distinction among these high-scorers. And he did this on both tests: very well done indeed! Is he by any chance summer-born?

[watford87]

Further to watdad's earlier response that VA schools have to provide an audit report if requested we have been informed by the Admissions Secretary at WGSB that they will only do this for boys not offered a place. Therefore if you have been offered a place it may not be obvious on what basis. Grateful for views of others on this. Are these schools legally bound to provide this information?

[adwin1]

no my son was born in Jan. But he did lot of practice papers and did find the Watford test quite straight forward - it was my personal tuition that really made the difference. I had to be patient and pick the right moments for my son to do the papers and he would come up with the solutions for questions he was not sure - this encouraged him as he felt that he couldtackle most of the questions without my help.
Good luck to those parents encouraging their children to practice for next year - start early and dont wait till Sept 08 for the next intake.

[AlisonR]

Can anyone explain these normalised scores to me? How do these scores relate to %ages in "mock" test papers, eg Bond VR and Maths papers?

I thought that the VR papers contained 100 questions so how is the top score for the paper 141?

I was hoping to use the scores my child obtains in "mock" test papers to determine whether it was worthwhile putting the certain schools (ie grammars/parmiters) as any of our 3 choices.

Sorry for my ignorance.
Alison

[WP]

Can anyone explain these normalised scores to me? How do these scores relate to %ages in "mock" test papers, eg Bond VR and Maths papers?

I thought that the VR papers contained 100 questions so how is the top score for the paper 141?

I was hoping to use the scores my child obtains in "mock" test papers to determine whether it was worthwhile putting the certain schools (ie grammars/parmiters) as any of our 3 choices.

There's a partial explanation here. Basically they're moved around to get an average of 100, a consistent spread, and to compensate for the tendency of older children to score more highly that younger ones. Unfortunately what you quite naturally want isn't possible, though some people may be able to give estimates based on their experience.