GS pass Mark?

[koala]

The exam papers are meant to identify those who are most able and therefore suited to the schools in question. My two children took South Warks exam in 2010 and King Edwards Birmingham. They thought the South Warks paper was easy in comparison to King Edwards. Many of us on this forum believe our children are suited to a grammar education because they are expected to get a certain level at SATs and have always been towards the top of a top set. However, our family has since learnt there are many children far more capable than ours in their school. Making the exams easier would make no difference in identifying those children who are at the top, but there would be many more children lower down who are on the same marks and therefore difficult to identify the brightest of those. It may also give false hope to those parents/children who sat an 'easier' paper. Having been through it a couple of years ago and moved on (so why am I still on here?), I feel a bit more rational about the whole process now. Just my thoughts.

[Okanagan]

The exam papers are meant to identify those who are most able and therefore suited to the schools in question. My two children took South Warks exam in 2010 .....Making the exams easier would make no difference in identifying those children who are at the top, but there would be many more children lower down who are on the same marks and therefore difficult to identify the brightest of those.

I don't think anyone is arguing that the exams should be made easier per se - but that they should be set at an appropriate level for it to actually be possible to differentiate between the candidates. If you set 42 questions and none of the candidates manages to get more than 22 (which is quite likely here - standard deviation seems to be about 6, mean is 10, only 2% in a normal distribution get > 2 standard deviation above mean - although this clearly isn't a true normal distribution or 5% of the candidates would be scoring less than 0!) then you only have about 23 possible outcomes (before age adjustments)

Code: Select all

raw score / standardised score
    0             75
    1             77.5
    2             80
    3             82.5
    4             85
    5             87.5
    6             90
    7             92.5
    8             95
    9             97.5
   10            100
   11            102.5
   12            105
   13            107.5
   14            110
   15            112.5
   16            115
   17            117.5
   18            120
   19            122.5
   20            125
   21            127.5
   22            130

Thus you have a very limited number of outcomes, which when you have over 1000 candidates (e.g. for South Warwickshire) doesn't provide much granularity. The less granularity you have, the less you can actually differentiate. Since the purpose of the test is supposed to be to produce a score which identifies the "best" candidates - then setting it a level where the granularity is such that it can't adequately do that means the test isn't really fit for purpose. I'm sure if they'd chosen to only set 22 questions, but with the candidates getting a full range of scores the same would be being said that that the area wasn't being adequately tested to differentiate.

And comparing to 2010 - the average maths score this year was only 2/3 of what it was two years earlier, so unless the candidates have suddenly got an awful lot worse in the space of 2 years, which seems unlikely, the numerical reasoning element of the exam was siginificantly more difficult this year than then.

[Janeymorris]

My son got a very high maths score last year, but I remember him saying that the harder the questions got, the more marks they were worth, so I do think there is a speed element in that if you fly through the earlier questions, it favours brighter kids getting significantly higher scores just by getting 2 or 3 more maths questions right. Certainly in his year, the kids that had tutors just for maths got much higher scores. That being said, there were 3 children who got amazing scores with no help at all, all of them as described by my son as book worms reading 2 or 3 books a week (my son manages 1 a term!)) so likewise I geus if you.re a natural fast reader you answer more questions ? And have better vocab. We did learning complex words all year and only 1 came up in the cloze test, but it was worth 5 marks, so worth learning!. Interesting that this year reports of hard maths. Last year it really favoured the top literacy kids as there was loads of comprehension, maybe they alternate!,.

[koala]

Okanagan - you clearly know your statistics. However, having been through the 11+ with two children without the benefit of this forum, I concentrated on what we were doing and not what everyone else was doing and the chances of getting in if you were a boy or a girl or lived inside the area, outside the area, summer born etc. I would have been a nervous wreck with all this information. The bottom line is, if you want your child to get into KES, AGS etc, your child needs to be prepared as well as possible as they are competing against the other 1100/1200 children and it is the first past the line. All these wonderful facts and figures, no matter how interesting when I can understand them, would have been irrelevant to me. You have made a traditionally quiet Warks forum very busy this year.

[Cheerios]

I think the Warks forum is busy this year because of the change in process, not because of anyone trying to understand what the numbers mean.

For my part, my DS has done OK but not well enough for me to feel secure about a place at our preferred school. Knowing his score but not knowing the AQS is a torment only slightly preferable to not knowing his score.

I am deriving huge solace from the contributors to this forum who are helping me to understand the different variables and greatly reducing the time I would otherwise have spent obsessing. So from me, thank you Okanagan and Bad Dad and all you other mathemagicians and please carry on!

[ChilledDad]

I agree with Koala. Making the exams easier leads to the inability to distinguish between the most talented. Some parents are, naturally, disappointed that there DC has failed to prove they are the most talented. Just get over it and send your DC to a school that is more appropriate to their academic aptitude. For those whose DC has a place if they want it (we are one of the fortunate few) want academic excellence with teaching which will challenge the brightest. Making exams easier is not the answer as it may lead to an increase in higher scores, with even the brightest achieving the same as the less bright. Just look at the exam grade creep at GCSE. As an employer I want to be able to distinguish between the brightest, the good, the average and the poor. Universities have the same issue, and the grammar schools do as well. Maintaining academic standards and robust examinations is crucial to the process at 11+.

[Okanagan]

Making the exams easier leads to the inability to distinguish between the most talented....Making exams easier is not the answer as it may lead to an increase in higher scores, with even the brightest achieving the same as the less bright.

And so does making them ever harder to the extent that you can't actually differentiate between the candidates!

Take an extreme - 2 possible outcomes and you get 50% on each - then how are you going to choose when you only want 30%?

The smaller the range of possible outcomes is, the more candidates you will have clustered at the same point, which actually makes it harder to identify which of those it is you want - remember you're not looking for the top 5 or 10% - but 30-35%. The issue isn't about those right at the top end, who will be likely to be there anyway, but about being able to distinguish at around the cutoff point. The lower the possible range of outcomes, the more that becomes a lottery amongst those. This isn't about making them "easier" it's about whether the level of difficulty in this particular subject area is now becoming such that they are no longer distinguishing at around the cutoff. The raw scores this year had dropped in percentage terms by 1/3 since 2010. Continue that trend and it just becomes more and more of a lottery, and less and less a valid test.

[serendippyty]

I agree with Okanagan - to be honest I do think that the top ones will get through whatever but the cluster in the middle is very hard to differentiate between. For example, the average non tutored child will have had no practice in VR and non VR. So that child versus a child who has been tutored and they score within 5 points of each other, which is cleverer? The non tutored child who fell down a little on VR and therefore misses on a place or the tutored child who was havily pressured to get there?

This is where the whole 11 plus system is flawed as it favours the wealthy or academically savvy parent. It makes the grammars very much elitist and that is obvious when you meet the parents, there is not a very broad social mix of pupils let's face it!

It is a shame that the entry system is the way it is.

[mike1880]

The CEM test in its current form isn't designed to differentiate between the able and the average, it's intended to differentiate between the able and the very able. I don't think anyone here would want the situation that obtains in Kent where you have to get a maximum score or very close (420 in that case) to get into a superselective because their test completely fails to differentiate at all. But I'd suggest that perhaps Warks should be using a different test for Rugby where it's been forced to allow children of rather moderate ability into the grammars, the test might not be differentiating particularly well at that point in the ability curve.

[Janeymorris]

I,m assuming your comment above is a polite way of saying that children in rugby are of moderate ability and don,t deserve a grammer place. Rather upsets me when I read that as let's not forget the original main reason for grammers, ie to give anyone irrespective of income or class a chance to follow a more fast track curriculum. If you were to ask teachers, they would agree that if you get level 5 and 6 sats primary you are predicted to get As and Bs at gcse in a good high school environment, not that you can only get As if you get a score of 370 in an 11plus exam. The point I,m making is that anyone who gets the qualifying mark is deemed to be a suitable candidate to value from a fast track education and is not just moderate ability. They may not be 2 years ahead of the curriculum, but they are likely to be children who work hard and are fast learners. It makes no sense, and is really bad for any town to work together, having schools where very few of the population can access them due to all of the children coming from other areas. It must be really upsetting for some children going to grammer schoolsl who are full of feeling proud that they passed and got a place, only to be taunted by other children by there 'low scores' with parents who feel them to be inferior because they happen to live in rugby. No wonder some of the schools get high levels of bullying. I think a much better system(but probably very unpopular with all those competitive parents) would be to set a qualifying standard and then tell children whether they pass it or not with no mention of scores. Everyone would feel equally valued. I think it would also make sense to only be able to apply to your nearest grammer, ie south stay with south warks schools unless east nearer, Birmingham with Birmingham etc as personally I think the school should serve the area in which it resides. Anyone else agree?