Hello there,

My dd did a mock test @ Harrow some weeks ago, did two out of three papers well. On her second paper she skipped qn 4 and marked 5th asnwer on qn4, only realised when she was on qn 20. She rubbed out all that, did the right answers, needless to say didn't gt to finish all remaining questions. When we got the results, all those rubbed out were marked as wrong. I know it is how OMR works, as she might have not rubbed out properly, resulting in two answers for each qn. so told her not to worry blah bah. She wanted to try again, so we booked another test.
Mock test2 : this time again on paper three she did something wrong, panicked, went back to check again what she did and left 10 questions,only had one incorrect answer,(clearly she thought she did a mistake when she didn't) making it to 77% ( I think) . She scored 95 and 92 in other two papers. Invigilator told her to make her answers more bold while she did the first paper( Mock test2), so clearly she was not doing it bold enough.

Hope the above makes sense. Could you please let me know what would you say to your kids if it is you.
Any help/hints to avoid " not seeing" questions and your response IF she made a mistake,whether to rub or not.Really panicking, exam is on 15th Sat. Thanks

This is a known problem and it is good that this has happened in the mock so she can avoid doing this in the real exam.

Leaving a question blank and getting out of sync with the following questions is high on my list of the most common mistakes students make in exams.

The best strategy is to not leave anything blank, guess the answer but mark that you have guessed so you can come back to it later when you have answered everything else.

Then if she does not have time to come back to it at least she has a 25% of 20% chance of getting it right depending on the number of questions.

Reassure her by saying that it is good it has happened and photocopy a block of answersheets and get her more used to doing this by doing it at home rather than booking more mocks.

it is clearly the mechanism and not the subject matter that is catching her out. The mechanism can be worked on at home. DG

Thank you, we are doing at least one test a week, she never had problems at home. and when she got it wrong for her first mock, she was sure of making the same mistake again I don't know what to tell her to re assure.

I didn't make myself clear in the first post, she didn't see a question and marked her next answer in that grid and carried on for sometime. Skipping a question to come back, we have discussed many times and she is comfortable with what she is doing. This NOT seeing scenario was something never occurred to me. so when the marker couldn't read her answers, she is not confident about rubbing out either. She is normally confident and bright. Just saying that it is not because, she is under pressure from our side.poor thing.
please help us

How much time do you have before the exam?

Don't do any more mocks.

Rebuild her confidence at home.

Get her to tick a question when she has done it and write a cumulative score so she will realise if she has missed a question.

It is critical to get her back on track confidence wise.

That is more important than the material as even if she knows the material she will not be able to tackle it properly with a lack of confidence.

This happened to one of my dds in a set of exams and we had three terrible ones in a row before it finally started to get better on the fourth exam.

Her issue is the answersheet not the material so stop the material and work on the answersheet issue from now on.

Give her some very simple material so she can put all her focus on getting the answersheet right and then build it up gradually.

It does not matter how much she knows, if she can't crack the answersheet she will not be able to communicate that knowledge. DG

Exam is on 15th, coming Saturday. CEM
No more mocks, not learning/teaching anything new either. just going over simple maths stuff which she loves.
ticking a question when she is done is a good idea, will tell her to do that. I keep telling her to read the question number and check she is marking on the right one. All this will take time/distract her from doing what she is supposed to do while racing against time. But there is no point in getting it all wrong, so missing out 4-5 more questions will be better than that( I keep saying this to myself)

Am I right in thinking that no one will be able to attend all the questions , heard last year they had 34 qns to do in 12 min, Non-verbal. Is that even possible ?

My DD was very good at NVR. She didn’t do CEM, she did GL, but I think she would have struggled to do 34 in 12 mins. She could easy have done 24 though.

It also depends on the difficultly of the question

good to hear that Tinkers,from someone who already did the test. I must make sure my dd is not rushing to finish then. I keep telling her that you will at least need 30 secs to read a question , comprehend and mark the answer. I know it is different in areas/NVR/Maths/ VR, and depends on difficulty but there will be plenty more questions left as CEM is ridiculous that way. She is not taking any of it and that is how she ends up missing/not seeing questions. I really wish I could help her somehow One more week to go

Could she use the answer sheet on top of the question paper and move it down as she does each question?

Both of my DC did CEM exams (2014 & last year) and neither managed to finish all the questions especially NVR.
Both qualified.

Very best of luck, this time next week the exam will be all over!

Thank you Guest55.

DD is so surprised to see you reply, as I told her exactly the same two days ago. It is very difficult to convince her that she need to change her way, she mostly just dismiss anything else as too time consuming/ difficult/ not convenient. In this case, " then I have to drag the answer sheet after every question". So your reply helped her to see mummy knows what she is saying and now I think she will give it a go
I understand where she is coming from though with so many questions in so less time. Which ever way she does it, getting the answer in the right place is more important than getting to do every/more questions, that is what I keep telling her. Hope she will be able to do it properly on the day.