Would anyone care to advise what I should do please? My daughter in Y5 has just done her CAT test last week and will be doing the 11+ this September. She came home in the evening saying that during the exam she thought that she'd answered in the wrong part of the answer sheet. She erased a block of answers and was about to do them again, but the call came to say she had a minute left, so she hurriedly filled in the blanks on about 5 questions. She is usually able, working at greater depth across the curriculum since year 2, and her teachers say she would cope well in a grammar school if she wanted to go.
I'm concerned that if she gets a non- qualifying score in the 11+ she will be relying heavily on these CAT scores as academic evidence.

Do you think it is worth writing to the HT now, before the results come out, explaining what happened, so that the score can be viewed realistically, or should I hope for the best?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Hi Weakandwobbly,

I see it’s a couple of weeks since you posted so you may have already resolved this issue.
In your situation I think I would drop an email to the teacher/head teacher explaining what happened and querying if there is anything to be done. I expect the answer is ‘no don’t worry about it’ but you have a record now that the result may not be representative.

In truth it may not matter at all. Your daughter may have had a better than average result anyway, and 11+ could go swimmingly. It’s always good to learn the importance of keeping track of your answers on the answer sheet well before the 11+.

One way the discrepancy in CAT score might be relevant is if it produces a spiky profile. For example a high NVR score but low VR might suggest to a teacher that there was some kind of SEN involvement. If a greater than 10 point difference was actually the result of an answer sheet mistake then the teacher would probably want to know.

HTH
PS

Thanks! This is a really helpful reply. I did in fact speak with the teacher and email so that they have a record of what happened. As you say, this is a useful lesson in itself for when it comes to the 11+. Your comments ring very true about spiky profiles. Shortly afterwards, my DD did a mock 11+ (we're in Bucks, so one English/VR and one Maths/NVR paper) and she got exactly (to one decimal place) the same score on the 2 papers, so no worries there. My DS, who did the 11+ last year, had a spiky profile of a storming NVR score, but he was weak on English. He was found to have ASD and didn't get a qualifying score in the real 11+.
Thanks again for reassuring me that I have done the right thing! Best wishes PS

Glad to have helped