How does date of birth affect scores

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Mrs JG

How does date of birth affect scores

Post by Mrs JG »

I would be grateful for any advice as a complete novice to this 11+ adventure. I have three children, all with different birthdays, obviously. Can anyone explain how the date of birth affects scores: we have January, March and August birth dates. August being the brightest so far!
Catherine
Posts: 1348
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 4:47 pm
Location: Berks,Bucks

Post by Catherine »

Hello Mrs JG,

Firstly, its depends on your region. Most regions where the board is NFER standardise the scores according to age but some regions don't.

The NFER takes age into account in this way:
The average score of children of the same age in months is compared to the overall average score for each paper. Usually children who are younger acheive slightly less than older children so they get a few points added to the final standised score. The exact number of points may vary from region to region and has been so far a well guarded secret.

If you are not familiar with standadised scores, you can read the thread in the exams section "Regional variation in exam level and academic standard ?" where standardisation is discussed in quite a lot of details (amongst many other subjecs ..)

If this is still not clear, please ask again. Standardisation is quite complex and hard to explain.

Hope this helps

Catherine
Mrs JG

Post by Mrs JG »

So for standardardisation scores the older the child the higher relative score they need to attain compared to their peer group?
Catherine
Posts: 1348
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 4:47 pm
Location: Berks,Bucks

Post by Catherine »

Mrs JG,

For example, a child with a September birthday may need 85% aboslute score to obtain the pass mark, whereas a child with May birthday may only need 80% (This is just an example). The pass mark would be a standardised score.
Here's is a link to a page of this forum about it
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/standa ... scores.php

Hope this helps

Catherine
chad
Posts: 1647
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2005 1:49 pm
Location: berkshire

Post by chad »

Mrs JG

This is taken from the NFER website....

Almost invariably in ability tests taken in the primary and early secondary years, older pupils achieve slightly higher raw scores than younger pupils. However, standardised scores are derived in such a way that the ages of the pupils are taken into account by comparing a pupil only with others of the same age (in years and months).
An older pupil may in fact gain a higher raw score than a younger pupil, but have a lower standardised score. This is because the older pupil is being compared with other older pupils in the reference group and has a lower performance relative to his or her own age group.


Hope this helps
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