Travel from Bham

Eleven Plus (11+) in Warwickshire

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mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Re: Travel from Bham

Post by mike1880 »

It's difficult to find appropriate numbers to use for B'ham because there is so much more opportunity for people to express multiple GS preferences. That, I think, creates a very exaggerated impression of the demand for GS places in B'ham. Fewer than 3,500 put one of the (now) Consortium schools as a first preference last year - that's considerably fewer than actually sat the KE test. Across the whole WM fewer than 4,800 put a GS as first preference for 1,300 places.

However, since fewer than 4,000 used to take the KE test, and 700 put a Sutton grammar as first choice, I think we can safely reckon that between 4,000 and 5,000 people took the Consortium test this year. The number per place is therefore similar to the 1,800-2,100 taking the test for Warwickshire's 458 places each year.

I hope that makes sense - it's very convoluted reasoning.

Mike
fm

Re: Travel from Bham

Post by fm »

No, I do get your reasoning, Mike. I just think the significant thing may not be the numbers applying versus the number of places although that is roughly in proportion. I think it is more a matter of the quality of candidates. For instance the top 500 Warwickshire candidates might take the KE exam and get the last score in achieved by the top 250 in Birmingham, making them a generally cleverer cohort, or vice-versa.

There are other factors at work. For instance, the schools in Warwickshire are a lot better, I imagine, so many reasonably clever children may not even bother going down the grammar route. It could be that only the seriously clever aspire to grammar school in Warwickshire, feeling a selective school is essential for children of their level, whereas in Birmingham the schools aren't great so children are entered for grammar school as an act of desperation to keep away from their local comprehensive.

When I get round to writing my book on selective education in the West Midlands (subtitled how to pass a University of Durham exam), I may investigate further!
mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Re: Travel from Bham

Post by mike1880 »

I agree, and as I've always said, the only way to find out for sure is for a statistically valid sample of parents to enter their children for both exams, obtain their results and post them here! Same goes for QM, of course.

Mike
um
Posts: 2378
Joined: Sat May 30, 2009 1:06 pm
Location: Birmingham

Re: Travel from Bham

Post by um »

If anyone does have scores for the same child having entered the Warks and Bham Consortium tests, that would help build a clearer picture - you could pm to me or mike1880 if you'd rather not post under your 'name' (hope that's ok mike?)

I do have a few questions to ask Warks admissions but will wait until things quieten down a bit as this is a busy time of year for them.

I'm annoyed though that they are usually very unwilling to answer questions, ring me back as promised, and in the case of my oldest son, they never even sent me the application form as promised (a baby came along just before the deadline, I didn't have time to chase up, and so he didn't take the test!). Not that this mattered, he got his 1st choice anyway.

So I am wondering if my requests for further information will only ever be met by writing to the freedom of information officer formally.
KenR
Posts: 1506
Joined: Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:12 pm
Location: Birmingham

Re: Travel from Bham

Post by KenR »

Just a word of caution - Warwickshire used to adjust the standardised scores of the initial Durham CEM 11+ exam to make sure they were broadly equivalent to the old Moray House papers - but he problem was that they were standardised against a national sample rather than the cohort and so were skewed towards the top end (ie quite a few kids score 141 + 141)

Not sure if they still do that
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