11 Plus Exams Forum

The 2014 League Tables are out.
Congratulations to all Kingston and Sutton Grammar Schools, especially to Tiffin Girls, in achieving outstanding results.

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Congratulations indeed Tiffin Girls - at A Level the average points per pupil seems to be higher than St Pauls or Latymer and Godolphin- of course the IB might not be included in their results - so I'm not rushing to any conclusions. All of these schools push for higher attainment across the board - and I believe both private schools use English Comprehension papers that are very demanding. As I said earlier - you can select a book deemed suitable for GCSE and ask questions that demonstrate a level 5A understanding of that text. Its important that selective schools makes their tests as fair as possible. Hence it is vital that texts selected for testing are very unlikely to have been read before by anyone sitting the exam. By selecting a text that is deemed a GCSE book you can both select a passage that be comprehended by 10/11 year olds and answer questions that you would only expect a 10/11 year old to answer. If the texts selected are all books suitable for 11 year olds - the chances are that the addicted bookworm will have read it and thus have a far greater advantage over everyone else. I'm writing this as my DD is an addicted bookworm - but would never have thought of reading books such as 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird etc. For me this makes it a level playing field in terms of selective ability which is far more important than making sure the English paper can be comprehended fully by everyone sitting the second exam. There are 450 children in that room - all of whom are probably already on level 5 reading and writing - so a robust comprehension is required to separate the girls.

A Level the average points per pupil

That is not a good measure as it depends on how many subjects students take and if they do General Studies which unis don't like.

Points per entry is a better measure as it tells you how good the individual results are. However, these can be skewed by resit policies of schools and by whether they include all their students results.