Changing the pass score in kent?

[yoyo123]

I asked KCC a few years back, pass mark is set once all results are in, usually somewhere around the 117 - 120 mark, but varies each year

[mystery]

MMum your headteacher is wrong on several points. First of all the pass mark is not known until afterwards, and secondly there is no kent practice 11 plus paper from which you could produce a standardised 11plus score in that way. So either they have done something very weird when marking a practice paper, or they have given you a cat standardised score and then treated it as though it was an 11 plus standardised score. Again rubbish! Ignore the head's 11 plus advice in all shapes and forms, practice those gl assessment practice papers to your heart's content, and your son will in all likelihood pass.

I think you should find out what test was administered and what the results were and get her informed a bit as well as it could be her that turns up to a headteacher panel if your son is a borderline fail and they are deciding whether to pass him or not before the results are published.

[tigger2]

My son's head teacher seemed clear it was 120 ,as my son scored 119 in one of the practice papers they did a few weeks ago and we were led to believe this would have been a fail if it had been the real thing.....

MMMum...You have been told complete rubbish by your ht ...they won't know the pass needed in each paper until after the actual test . I do wish ht's and teachers wouldn't give parents and pupils this sort of information...its so misleading ,not to mention disheartening. I am going to be generous and say that they mean well but they just don't know what they are talking about !

[MMMum]

Well, I am glad to hear what people are saying on here, as we're given the impression that he had failed two of the three practice papers....They were, by the way, GL Assessment papers and they did give us both the raw scores and the standardised scores, which I took to mean that they had been standardised by age....

[mystery]

Gl assessment is a publisher with a huge range of tests in its catalogue. The 11 plus practice papers that are on sale to the public do not have standardisation, so either the school has somehow done some kind of bodge or it was some other gl assessment product they used. I would ask exactly what it is and look it up.

There is no satisfactory way of linking a standardised score on some test or other to the kent 11 plus test and saying that means a fail.

Why did they do these tests? Many schools do these tests in kent to give some idea of 11 plus suitability. But I think there are schools who do not read the handbook so they do no know how to interpret the results.

I think you may find that they have done cat tests published by gl assessment but that they have misinterpreted the results. A standardised score of 119 in cat test would place a child above the 75th centile and therefore very likely to pass the kent 11plus with the right teaching and preparation.

I would ask for the full details of Tthe test - name, publisher, edition, publication date etc, and also ask to see the manual with the scoring and interpretation instructions as what you have been told sounds wrong.

I think the primary school a relative went to didmexactlynthe same thing and told us borderline when the child could have gone to superselective.

I don't understand how appeal panels understand these things either as they don't seem to be taught how to understand the various assessment results parents and psychologists present them with.

[MMMum]

What is a cat test?

[mystery]

Cognitive ability test - gl assessment do publish amongst hundreds of other assessment products. A lot of kent school used to use them late year 5 or early year 6 so they could advise parents on11 plus suitability.

[MMMum]

Thanks. I have seen the test papers and they don't say they are CATs, they don't really have any titles, just say VR, NVR etc, that they are for children age 10-11, from GL Assessment, one was printed in red, one green and one blue. They do all have a scale at the bottom of the front page, with a note to teachers on working out the "90% confidence interval" of the child's true score.

They school did say the tests were to give parents an idea of 11+ suitability, so it sounds like they maybe were CATs....

[tigger2]

I think that my dc's did these tests in year 5 along with Gl assessments 'progress in maths 10' ...they were intended to be a guide but many parents were sceptical,especially about the maths paper. The primary school was not supportive of the 11+ and based suitability for the Kent test on the results of these tests.If every parent had taken the schools advice in both years based on the results of these papers less than 7 children in each class would have been entered for the Kent test. 14 passed in ds's year and 11 passed in dd's year with 4 (or maybe 5 ) of each year group going to a super selective.

[mystery]

Dunno - that's too vague - if you posted the full title and publication date etc, could look it up in the online gl assessment catalogue. Ask them what centile your son was on each paper. That will give you a better idea whether they have been sensible in interpreting it as borderline or not.