11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi
My son took the exam on Saturday for birmingham grammar schools, he left out 11 questions. Can anybody please tell me wether he has a chance or should I start looking into state schools instead?
Please anyone reply, anxious mummy here x

How many questions were there in total? DG

Busybusybee wrote:Hi
My son took the exam on Saturday for birmingham grammar schools, he left out 11 questions. Can anybody please tell me wether he has a chance or should I start looking into state schools instead?
Please anyone reply, anxious mummy here x

1. Yes of course he has a chance 11 questions out of 200 ish I am guessing. The other children simply may have managed to guess them, no one finishes cem tests.

2. Grammar schools are state schools, no matter how some of the parents and administrative hierarchy behave.

3. You should always look around the alternative school anyway and find as many positives about it as you can, never be negative about it to your child, even if you feel that way.

Good luck to your dc!

You do not need anything like 100% so 11 is really neither here nor there. If you get all the ones you do right you could in theory leave 20%!! I am sure I read that cem test are very tight for time so most children leave some. Agree about them being state schools. All they really do is try and cream off the brightest children. If you are not keen on state schools you need to go private. In fact when your child goes to GS you realise they are not that different. If you build these schools up to much you will be disappointed. If you want to worry be concerned at the record numbers who applied to sit the test in birmingham.

Leaving out 11 doesn't seem the end of the world to me, although as has been said, it does of course depend on how many questions there were. As SB3 has said, finishing a CEM paper and with an easy pass seems to be actually quite rare. It could be also that he has more correct because he took his time than those who zoomed through and completed. I would say don't write him off yet!

rabbie burns wrote:Agree about them being state schools. All they really do is try and cream off the brightest children. If you are not keen on state schools you need to go private. In fact when your child goes to GS you realise they are not that different.

Second that. No matter how rosy your picture of GS, remember the key phrase: "It's just a school" (and that applies to independent schools as well BTW). They don't get their dazzling results by waving some sort of magic wand and sprinkling fairy dust on average children, they get them by selecting very clever children who are most likely to do well in exams. That's explicitly what a CEM test is designed to select for: children who are likely to do well in exams.

Mike

Thanks guys,

This is just a question i had to get out of my head, my son hasn't had much tutoring.
After doing the qm exam and then holiday break he was getting bored towards the ce test, so i think thats where the problem was, his time keeping.
I am never negative towards him, but i did lie and say there were loads of children who left out many questions.
how many question were there in the ce and qm test??

Busymummy1309 wrote:Thanks guys,

This is just a question i had to get out of my head, my son hasn't had much tutoring.
After doing the qm exam and then holiday break he was getting bored towards the ce test, so i think thats where the problem was, his time keeping.
I am never negative towards him, but i did lie and say there were loads of children who left out many questions.
how many question were there in the ce and qm test??

Not a lie, just an optimistic assumption of what is probably the truth anyway. Keep the positive thoughts flowing for alternative schools too.

Btw, are you busy bee under a different name???

My son rubbed out an entire page of answers when he sat 11 plus 3 years ago. He then tried to fill them all back in again but mixed up the places to put them and ended up with an extra one at the end - clearly he had mistranscribed them all. He told me this on the way home and I tried very hard not to worry. He did very well. Fear not - leaving out or mucking up questions seems very common among children who pass. The only 2 children I have ever heard of finishing them all with bags of time to spare did not pass.