Selection review bucks (lea2124)

[Etienne]

In her letter she's put about this extenuating circumstance on why she thinks ds missed out on that 1 mark. Do I also need to explain or will her reasoning be enough? Should our letters match in that sense?

No - it is sufficient for the headteacher to explain. (To be honest, no one is going to pay much attention to what you say about extenuating circumstances anyway, unless they are confirmed by an independent source.)

Fortunately, with 120 you need very little in the way of extenuating circumstances.

She also said I need to put that the AGS is the only school that offers certain subjects that ds wants to study.

Absolute nonsense, I'm afraid. It would be correct advice for an appeal - but not for a review where the one and only issue is qualification.


(X-post with G55)

[lea2124]

Don't mention a particular school; it's not relevant.

If she's written a reason then you don't need to repeat it. No-one knows that it was one mark though as the raw marks are standardised.

Ok cool. I'll leave out the school. Also, I will remove the comment about 1 more mark. I'll change it to only being 0.25 away from automatic qualification or something to that effect.
Thank you.

[lea2124]

Thank you Etienne too

[lea2124]

Hi
a quick question before I finally hand in our SR forms.

DS scored really well on the English and verbal test 132 (his strongest subject), did ok on the Maths section 117 but did quite badly on the NVR 102. Do I need to write an a reason why we believe this was the case?

Will having a lower NVR score affect their decision do you think? How important is a strong NVR score for qualification to a Grammar school?

Thanks

[anotherdad]

The NVR score has already played its part in the overall score, having a 25% weighting, so it's as important as the maths section but only half as important as the VR section.

Look at it this way. Your son scored most strongly in the section carrying the most weight, which held his overall mark up well. Had he got the 132 and 117 the other way around, or the 132 and 102 were reversed, his overall score would have been lower. My view is that drawing attention to one particular section is unnecessary and might even lead a panel to conclude that he was fortunate he did so well on the most-weighted paper - not something you want them to think.

Trust your academic evidence. It's what will make or break a review.

[lea2124]

The NVR score has already played its part in the overall score, having a 25% weighting, so it's as important as the maths section but only half as important as the VR section.

Look at it this way. Your son scored most strongly in the section carrying the most weight, which held his overall mark up well. Had he got the 132 and 117 the other way around, or the 132 and 102 were reversed, his overall score would have been lower. My view is that drawing attention to one particular section is unnecessary and might even lead a panel to conclude that he was fortunate he did so well on the most-weighted paper - not something you want them to think.

Trust your academic evidence. It's what will make or break a review.

Yeah I do completely agree - he's always struggled with NVR, his brain just doesn't work that way. What does NVR tell us anyway? I suppose we should have spent more time on that subject but DS hated it and would only ever do the 10 min tests.
They see the individual section marks and so I'm just worried they'll know its a low score. Thanks