Stationery

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anotherdad
Posts: 1763
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2011 5:33 pm

Re: Stationery

Post by anotherdad »

I'm a bit late to the party on this one but this bit of their response is laughable:

"...all venues were explicitly instructed that there would not be one rubber allocated per child."

I simply don't believe it. It's such a strangely constructed sentence. Why issue an instruction to not provide a specific number of erasers when the logical instruction to achieve shared-rubber-topia would have been something like "Each venue must have at least x erasers available per 10 children"? Following the letter of their supposed instruction leaves it open to any interpretation between zero and n-1, where n is the number of children sitting the test at any venue. "Sorry James, you're the only child without an eraser, that's the policy."

It looks very much like a retrospective "policy" written in haste to head-off criticism of inconsistencies in testing.
Amber
Posts: 8058
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:59 am

Re: Stationery

Post by Amber »

Class action?

Someone is on the back foot here. Even from the small sample on here you have massive inconsistencies in the way the test was administered between venues. When you factor in all the children whose parents have never even heard of this forum but who will also have been affected, you have a huge sample.

I agree with anotherdad. What did they say? - 'even if you have sufficient erasers to do so, you must not supply enough erasers for every child to have one. Our mandated eraser ratio is 1 eraser per x children.' It is not credible. I think what the individual who was tasked with including that ridiculous sentence actually meant was, 'we never said explicitly that there would be one eraser per child' but that makes it very clear that the policy was inconsistent so it was reworded to say what it does.

Class action. Seriously.
Sally-Anne
Posts: 9235
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:10 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: Stationery

Post by Sally-Anne »

WCC wrote:Part of the reason for taking the decision not to allocate a rubber to each individual child is related to the very quick pace of the 11+ test that is used in Warwickshire. We want the children to utilise every second of the time available to them, and so did not want to encourage children to spend unnecessary amounts of time rubbing out any mistakes if a rubber was freely available.
From the instructions given by CEM on their familiarisation paper, as published by WCC themselves https://apps.warwickshire.gov.uk/api/do ... CC-699-915" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; :
Equipment required for the assessment
• You will need an HB pencil, an eraser and a pencil sharpener. Some schools supply these; further details will be sent to you after registration.
"Need" an eraser, not "be able to borrow sometime in the next few minutes".
What should I do if I make a mistake when completing the answer sheet?
• If you change your mind about an answer, rub it out thoroughly and mark your new answer clearly.
• If you have mistakenly marked your answers on the wrong question numbers or if you have completed the wrong section, please raise your hand and a teacher or invigilator will advise you.
• You will not be given extra time to correct mistakes.
It is absolutely clear that CEM consider a rubber to be an essential tool for the test.

WCC should be ashamed of themselves, trying to fudge their way out of this complete shambles.
anotherdad
Posts: 1763
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2011 5:33 pm

Re: Stationery

Post by anotherdad »

I agree with Amber. Collective action is needed to address this. It's clear that's something's gone wrong and WCC are frantically back-pedalling trying to justify their processes.
Amber
Posts: 8058
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:59 am

Re: Stationery

Post by Amber »

If someone affected is a lawyer, or knows one well, it might be worth considering a letter on formal notepaper, alongside, if you are feeling really mischievous (but seriously also), a media item asking for parents to come forward. This is maladministration on a grand scale and many parents will be unaware of what happened.
Mumofgirls
Posts: 114
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2018 1:44 pm

Re: Stationery

Post by Mumofgirls »

Really appreciating all the replies and valuable information in response to my initial post. I have responded to the Council email I received disputing all their justification so I will see what reply I get this time. So frustrated by how something so simple has been handled so badly. My biggest frustration is for my daughter and what this means for her now.
Mumofgirls
Posts: 114
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2018 1:44 pm

Re: Stationery

Post by Mumofgirls »

Amber wrote:If someone affected is a lawyer, or knows one well, it might be worth considering a letter on formal notepaper, alongside, if you are feeling really mischievous (but seriously also), a media item asking for parents to come forward. This is maladministration on a grand scale and many parents will be unaware of what happened.

I’m not a lawyer, what would be the likely outcome from this action? What would it mean for those children affected?
Amber
Posts: 8058
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:59 am

Re: Stationery

Post by Amber »

Mumofgirls wrote:
Amber wrote:If someone affected is a lawyer, or knows one well, it might be worth considering a letter on formal notepaper, alongside, if you are feeling really mischievous (but seriously also), a media item asking for parents to come forward. This is maladministration on a grand scale and many parents will be unaware of what happened.

I’m not a lawyer, what would be the likely outcome from this action? What would it mean for those children affected?
I am not either! I don't know, but to me this looks like a situation where there is no right answer. I don't want to worry you but my own child, who is now in Y13, realised when sitting the 11+ that he had put every single mark in the wrong box on one section (he got to the end and there wasn't a box left, so he clicked that he had put all his answers in the wrong box). He hastily rubbed them all out, went back and put them in the right place. If he had had to wait for a rubber, I imagine this would not only have written off the whole section, but spooked him even more than it did (which was a fair bit) going on to the next part. The situation you describe could very realistically lead to children scoring lower on the test than they might have, and the distribution of disadvantage cannot be made even, no matter what tinkering is done now. Every child who took this test has been disadvantaged in my view, but not in a quantifiable way. It ought to be incumbent on the LA to sort it out - to me that looks like a whole new test, but of course there would be those who would be disadvantaged by that too. It really is a shambles as Sally-Anne said and I would be very unhappy if my child had been in one of those rooms.
anotherdad
Posts: 1763
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2011 5:33 pm

Re: Stationery

Post by anotherdad »

What might the options be?

A. WCC hold the line they've put out and defend any challenges or appeals on the grounds of erasergate.

B. a re-sit for those test centres shown to have been affected (which of course, could mean the "miscreants" are the centres that defied policy and issued erasers to every child!) How they would ensure parity with the other centres is beyond me because if it's the same test the re-sitters have a big advantage and if it's a different one, how would they ensure standardisation is fair across different papers?

C. a complete re-sit for the entire cohort.

Option B doesn't look viable. Option C would be enormously disruptive, expensive and difficult to arrange. That leaves option A as the logical choice, which will probably invite mass appeals.
streathammum
Posts: 1252
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2016 6:02 pm

Re: Stationery

Post by streathammum »

Could there not be some sort of standardisation check across the two different cohorts? If the numbers are large enough in each cohort - those with rubbers and those without - you would expect that the average scores would be similar. If it turns out that the average scores of those without rubbers is significantly lower than the average scores of those without, some remediation could be done, maybe?
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