11 Plus Exams Forum

Does anyone experienced in CEM know if there is a mental maths, listen to a tape, jot down the answers, element to their maths tests?

The Kent tender specification does not specifically request any maths tested in this way. The contract is not yet awarded. Once it is awarded hopefully we can find out whether it does contain this kind of maths - I think though that one could say with 99.9999% accuracy that it will not. It involves a lot of time to test some pretty "low order" maths skills.

Ok, thanks for that: I thought I'd check.

As much as anything with CEM, as far as I can tell, it will be a question of testing time management skills. If the format is supposed to change yearly, let alone the types of questions asked, a DC is going to need to be able to quickly assess and calculate how long they should be spending on any given question, as soon as they open the exam paper. Or have I misunderstood?

KCC have got 29 days to announce their test provider, so I suppose that's not too long to wait. But I do wish they'd just get a move on!

I don't think they need to announce it. It will appear on the Kent business portal as a current contract when it is signed, but it's jolly difficult finding anything on there.

I found the current contract on there - £1.15m for three years I think. How many children sit the Kent test?

Of course, even once we know it's CEM, if it is awarded to CEM, we don't actually know if the grammar schools that we will be applying to will be using the Kent test. Academies do not have to.

So you don't know that much more even once you do know who was awarded it.

Is there a central place where one can look up which Kent grammars are academies and which are not?

Try Edubase - put Kent in the local authority box, choose Academies, open, and secondary, in the other boxes and you'll get them (along with all the other secondary academies in Kent).

I think the majority of good ones will be academies.

That does not help our uncertainty does it?