Moray House - what's the best preparation?

[KenR]

Hi All

The Moray tests are freely available from Hodder but restricted in areas where they use the tests:-

Moray House Tests are available to most schools, but may be subject to restriction in areas where they form part of a local assessment programme or selection procedure. These tests must be ordered in writing on school/LEA headed paper, and will only be supplied direct to a school or LEA address. The publishers reserve the right to decline to supply without stating a reason.
MHT Evaluation Pack £35.00
The MHT Evaluation Pack comprises one copy each of MHTs 86–89, Manual and sample Answer Key/Conversion Table

See http://www.hoddertests.co.uk/tfsearch/k ... mhtnew.htm

However it is was well known in Warwickshire that many tutors are ex teachers and had access to the papers. hence the reason why Warwickshire were forced to switch.

I do have some detailed informationabout the tests as I assisted a parent during an 11+ Appeal which was on the grounds of cheating. In the end the results were inconclusive and the Appeal failed.


The Moray tests are published on a CD which enabled automatic scoring and Age Standardisation - thats why they were popular with LEAs. The Age Standardisation is against a National sample of pupils rather than the cohort - that why many pupils get the highest standardised score of 140 or 141. That's not unusual for National Age Standardisations.



I have to say that I'm amazed that some LEAs are still using Moray House, I just hope that a number of parents write and complain.

Hope this helps

[Daogroupie]

So Ken, can you walk me though how the VR score is arrived at. As we were clearly told that children born in September would lose up to 5% of their marks compared to a August baby I was at a loss to understand how a November baby could have got 140/140. So they mark out of 100 and then compare the results to a national cohort, but where do they get the marks of a national cohort from? And does this mark change from year to year?

[Daogroupie]

WP, Thanks for the clarification. At least ST M's stepped upto the bar and offered a solution. Was it really just based on a few boastful children who were overheard after the exam? This sounds very much like the situation this year with the North London Consortium Group One Comprehension Paper where the passage and questions were lifted from a Common Entrance exam past paper being used by tutors and children were overheard boasting that they had just done the passage with their tutors and parents were seen to be celebrating, one even punching the air in delight as she realised just how well spent that tutoring money was. But unlike St M's North London did nothing and selected their girls for Sept 2010 ignoring the fact that same were not quite as well versed in comprehension as it would appear. I personally think this was far worse than using Moray House papers as Common Entrance Exam papers are readily available to all and I feel confident that I could create a comprehension paper, so why couldn't one of the 14 odd English Teachers from the Consortium. I certainly could not create a VR paper that would fit the time and range requirements. But many can if you look at the huge variety of providers in this market. So what will it take for DAO and the Herts Consortium and others to drop Moray? As no more are being produced surely the incidents of identical papers will become more and more common?

[herty]

I didn't realise Dame Alice used Moray House papers as well - we went to the Open Day, where they sold us VR Athay papers, so I assumed that (or something v close) was what they used.

Daogroupie - do you know if that means that the Moray House papers are v similar to Athay then, in terms of types of quesstions?


DAO using Moray House as well won't directly affect us, as our DD prefers single-sex, so we're not applying there. But there must be loads of kids who apply to both there and the S Herts Consortium.

I assume Moray House tries not to give them the same paper...

[KenR]

Hi Daogroupie

can you walk me though how the VR score is arrived at. As we were clearly told that children born in September would lose up to 5% of their marks compared to a August baby I was at a loss to understand how a November baby could have got 140/140. So they mark out of 100 and then compare the results to a national cohort, but where do they get the marks of a national cohort from? And does this mark change from year to year?

I think you need to read up on Age Standardisation, there are a few sections of this site that explain this in more detail:-

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/standa ... scores.php

Raw scores are converted to Age Standardised scores via a conversion table. The table is either calculated for the specific cohort taking the test based on statistics and curve fitting etc, or it is already Age Standardised by the supplier against a national trial sample - in the case of Moray papers there is a CD program that does the calculations once the candidates scores and ages have been input. National smaple age standardisation result in more candidates in the exam getting higher scores (because the ability of the 11+ cohort is much higher than the national average sample.

The age standardised score of 140 (and 70) are special scores - the following extract from a previous post explains this further and gives examples of actual Warwickshire scores in 2006 using Moray House papers:-

The usual mechanism for very high (or very low scores) is to give them all 140 (or 141). This is done for example in the KS2 Age Standardised scores:-

Quote:
Very low and very high scores are printed in the table as ***. This means that they would be below the lowest score in the table or above the highest, but cannot be calculated with the necessary degree of statistical reliability. If an exact score is needed, for example to calculate an average for the class, the next score below (69) or above (141) should be used as appropriate for these pupils.


For example, In the 2006 South Warks 11+ 123 candidates (out of 951) achieved an age standardised top score of 140 in at least 1 of the papers.

For South Warwickshire in 2006, it doesn't mean that 123 candidates all had the same raw score - far from it. What it means is that 123 candidates achieved a high raw score which translated (taking age into account) to the highest Age Standarised score available. I'm afraid I don't have the actual raw score to Age Standardised conversion - only a detailed analysis of the Age Standardised scores for that particular year (and also 2005 as well)

Hope this helps

[KenR]

I assume Moray House tries not to give them the same paper...

Normally it's up to the school which papers to set from 5 standard papers on the CD. That was the problem with Warwickshire - some people (particularly tutors with actual papers) had spotted that the papers were repeating

[chicko-mum]

Still trying to get my head around the different papers/question types used and therefore which books to use as practise. Does DAO definitiely use Moray House then? I'm sure I've read somewhere in another thread that they use NFER (quite possible that I've got that wrong though ). I heard from a child now at DAO that lots of the kids found the VR paper v hard. Not sure how that fits into this pattern?
I think the DC sitting these tests go through enough without being disadvantaged unfairly too! A bit more transparency from schools/LEAs would be helpful as would better communication between schools.

[Daogroupie]

Yes, DAO uses Moray House. My dd sat a lot of VR exams and grew to recognise how to distinguish NEFER from Moray House. You can tell because the practice questions are the same. In terms of being hard, it is the speed that it is the issue. 100 questions in 45 minutes. What year is your friend at DAO in? The VR has changed recently and become harder. The time given has become less as well.

[chicko-mum]

Friend's DS is now in Yr 7 at DAO.
Yes, speed is key with that many questions to get through; but DD needs to ensure she reads the questions thoroughly - esp with Maths papers - as she tends to speed read everything. Tried explaining that she's throwing marks away. Hoping that repetition will make it sink in. Vocab sometimes an issue as well.
How do the Athey papers match up to actual test? Apologies for the questions - don't want to waste time & effort on the wrong materials.

[ebf3]

The thing we found surprising about Moray House, compared to the practice papers we had tried, was that the questions only had an example - no instructions - the children had to work out from the example what was going on and then apply this to the questions which followed.

We had practised reading the instructions carefully and applying the information, which was the wrong tactic. I should have hidden the instructions and asked DS to figure out what was going on. The difference didn't matter in question types which occur in other practice papers as the children just recognise these instantly, but there was at least one question type this year that had not turned up on Athey, Bond or NFER practice papers. Also the test was much more spelling based than the papers we had tried at home - less 'choose from a list of options', more 'here's how many letters there are - what word are we thinking of'. Hope this helps.