Nonsuch exams

[ardmore]

What sort of distribution has historically captured scores? Normal distribution?
Given 406 is highest and 259 , halfway through mark is 332.5. Any idea whether more than 50% are likely to be above this 332.5? My guess is there will be fewer girls with score towards the top half- so those with score below 310 or so has a fair chance I guess. So those who liked Nonsuch -put that as no 1 in CAF -there is nothing to lose.

[YoungSuccess]

Very interesting, whythis11plus!
Could you please name at least few reasons why would you chose Tiffin first. Not having in mind distance of course. I was suffering couple nights before completing CAF and nonsuch appears no1 on it. What advantages are there at Tiffin?

Watching two close family friends, each with a daughter at TGS, I could see that the work rate is relentless, but I don't expect anything less form the school. First girl, very very bright - cruising through and looks relaxed, but the second girl, once a smiley happy girl, is stressed and always seems to be working on school work the whole day on Saturdays and Sundays. So, I would say, if your daughter is the type who thrive in very very high work rate, very competitive and able to cope with it, then that's fine, but if not, she may be unhappy there.

P/S - I don't have a DS hoping for a place at TGS by the way, so I'm not trying to put anyone off TGS.

[spoon123]

From what I have heard...homework in Grammar Schools is changing year on year i.e. increasing...and you need to bear in mind these are selective schools and will be conscious of their ranking in league tables

[Ela]

Well naturally grammar schools are more competitive with more pressure etc. Only some schools (2 state ones I know) help students by organising Saturday sessions or after school (certain subject) clubs and grammar school just announces that your dd has a problem which must be solved in preferably 4 weeks time. Family hired a tutor for their stressed out dd...It would make me furious. How come girl who was doing brilliantly in Y7 & Y8 just before choosing GSCS appears to have problems? Why these problems were not noticed earlier? Why school doesn't offer any help? Oh because they are short of government fundings...
I just pray that not all grammar schools are like this one. We chose a grammar school as our first choice but definitely we are not going to be be upset if we will get a state school place where children are streamed by ability, offered wide range of extracurricular activities and trips.

[mum]

In the open evenings of these competitive or super selective grammar schools, head teacher repeatedly says grammar schools are not for all, and only for naturally able academic children and not tutored ones. Once children are in, it's assumed that all are very able and hence the pace at which the homework and school work goes on, it's difficult for not so able kids to cope up at times.......and I think grammar school teachers are more interested in challenging more able students than giving extra attention for less able ones, unlike comprehensive state schools as that's what grammar schools intentions are : to produce a bunch of talented and able students to flourish in academic world....

[demitasse]

Is there anyone out there who has heard whether the girls who didn't pass the second stage for Wallington were given any more information than those who passed, such as the pass mark, number passed etc?

I've now heard of a few girls who passed for Nonsuch but not for Wallington, but feel it might be insensitive to ask for further info in the circumstances. Now that a couple of weeks have passed I thought it might be ok to ask on here?

Also, it's interesting that this seems to buck the pattern of previous years. It's only anecdotal, of course, but I've heard more often of girls passing Wallington and not Nonsuch in years before.

Anything similar happening elsewhere?

[agathachristie]

Is there anyone out there who has heard whether the girls who didn't pass the second stage for Wallington were given any more information than those who passed, such as the pass mark, number passed etc?

I've now heard of a few girls who passed for Nonsuch but not for Wallington, but feel it might be insensitive to ask for further info in the circumstances. Now that a couple of weeks have passed I thought it might be ok to ask on here?

Also, it's interesting that this seems to buck the pattern of previous years. It's only anecdotal, of course, but I've heard more often of girls passing Wallington and not Nonsuch in years before.

Anything similar happening elsewhere?

I think more often than not the reason more girls pass Wally girls than Nonsuch is not the difficulty of one exam over the other but rather the way the results are calculated.
Wally girls take an aggregate score of math and English whereas Nonsuch you have to pass both Maths and English( pass mark)

I don't know about Wally girls however my understanding from friends who did not get through Nonsuch is that you receive your marks for stage two but not marks for the first stage.

[demitasse]

Hi agatha,

I know about Nonsuch, thanks. Everyone received second stage scores - pass or fail.

My point was that this year, at least in my circle, some girls have been passing Nonsuch but failing Wallington, which seems different from the pattern in previous years.

Just wondered if anyone else had heard of similar results or if it is coincidental.

[Gringo64]

Demitasse

All the girls from our primary school that took Wallington stage 2 passed. Not so many sat the Nonsuch, but the ones that did passed. I have heard of one girl from another school that passed Wallington but not Nonsuch.

I noticed, in the Independent Schools section of this forum, a poster mentioned that their daughter failed Wallington Stage 2. The poster mentions that they will be interested to find out their daughter's score in March which gives the impression that they hadn't received much feedback.

Demitasse, did you ever find out the answer to your question about whether Nonsuch re-standardises the SET scores over the 890 girls that sat the second stage? I too would be interested to know the answer to this question? If they re-standardise the SET scores, the total of the means would be around 300, I think, but if not then the range of SET scores would be between 100-140, so the total of the means would be around 320. What do you think?

[demitasse]

Hi Gringo64,

No I don't think anyone was able to answer the question.

I think that well over 2000 girls sat the SET. The results email said that 1850 (roughly half boys and half girls) had passed out of 4378 children. But it didn't give the ratio of boys to girls sitting. I had assumed that it would similarly split. But when I was looking for some info about clubs etc. on Wallington's web site, I came across a newsletter from the head saying that they had welcomed over 1300 girls to do the SET, with a similar number sitting at Nonsuch. This would be over 2,600 girls?? Is it possible that the number of girls sitting would be that much higher?

Doesn't really matter, but my point is that the 900 or so girls who passed would only have scores of between 100 and 140 if the cohort was double that number. If the number sitting was greater, then the girls who passed must have all had scores way over the mean of 100. Given the low overall eventual pass mark for Nonsuch and the equal weighting of the 3 papers, I think it likely that they did restandardize the scores somehow. Otherwise it's hard to see how anyone with a score of say 110 from the SET could end up with an overall score of 259.

I'm not quite sure how you worked out your 320 average? At any rate, I think it is really hard to predict how the eventual allocation will work out this year because it's the first year of SET for girls and so many factors have changed.

Fingers crossed for March!