11 Plus Exams Forum

My daughter will be taking the test in September at a test centre as she is home-schooled. Several friends (with children in her year group at local schools) and I were concerned about the variety of dates for the test. I contacted the Admissions Dept at Medway Council and spoke to a lady who was extremely helpful and understanding about the concerns I had with the test arrangements. I raised the issue of unfairness regarding the written task and the possibility of Saturday candidates knowing the subject matter and was told that the written task WILL be different on the Saturday paper. I was reassured but also concerned that the children would then not be judged fairly - the lady said that this had been taken into consideration and that each child was judged on their individual competency. I then suggested that I still felt it would be unfair unless the two tasks were similar in nature, ie both letters, both creative writing tasks, both playscripts etc as children can be stronger in some areas and if it was a factual task on Wednesday and a creative task on Saturday for example, that the children were not being asked to do something similar. She was certain that the tasks would be different, but not certain that the tasks would be similar in nature.
My elder daughter went through the primary school system as normal, took the test at a test centre 2 years ago and went on to her first choice grammar school with no problems. I have to say I thought it a fairer system, albeit a horrible one in terms of the time it took and the sheer volume of people. At least you knew that everyone was in the same boat! My daughter is happy to go to a test centre thankfully, just hoping that it will be a little less chaotic than my other daughter's experience!