QE Boys format

[garima.varma]

Could anyone please share the current maths paper format of QE Boys? Most of the places I found it to be 50 questions in 45 mins, but a few sites also mention around 60-65 questions.

Also, is the time more challenging or the difficulty level of the questions? Wanted to know if should practice more difficult questions or focus on timing more.

Thanks.

[jazbaati99]

For QE test practice please use 65 questions in 45 minutes as your yardstick for both maths and english. Speed and accuracy is more important than level of difficulty. For english, practice with two comps.

Good luck

[garima.varma]

Thanks jazbaati99! I couldn’t find any practice papers with 65 questions in 45 mins for maths, so wondering how to get an idea if we are the right speed/track.

My son is now able to do Bond 10-11 assessment papers in 15-20 mins with 100% accuracy. Could that be an indicator of any sort? Bond has 50 questions per paper. Somehow Bond papers seem to be on an easier side to me. GL/CGP papers he finishes in around 40 mins with 80-90% of accuracy (those are also 50 questions). Are these papers comparable to QE paper in the level of difficulty? Should we try any more challenging papers (any suggestions on that?) OR try to achieve 100% accuracy on this level only but more speed?

Tried Exam Paper Plus practice paper for QE, but that seemed very difficult - the questions were extremely challenging and 65 to be solved in 45 mins. Do we need to prepare at this difficulty level? Sorry, but don’t want to give him something that’s very challenging if it won’t help much with the exam.

Thank you!

[jazbaati99]

There are no standard papers available with this amount of questions so you will have to improvise. Combine two tests to have questions around 65 marks or one full test with one 10 minute short test. Bonds is too easy for QE level so you will have to use CGP / FPTP for a more realistic difficulty level. From our experience, QE questions are not hard but tricky so speed and accuracy is the key. However don't go for papers that are extremely hard as they are pointless IMO. As a rule of thumb, if the question is too difficult for the parent, then this is the wrong question paper. CGP and FPTP probably better reflect the QE level of difficulty but its really difficult to say which publisher reflects better the difficulty of questions for QE.

Obviously 100% results are the best but aim to be above 90% and within these times and try to weed out silly or avoidable mistakes. Also exam technique is important for example it is more beneficial to take a guess on a hard question then to waste time on it trying to figure it out and running out of time for other questions. Lastly there are no easy questions in QE exams so if the question seems too simple or too easy, take a pause and read the question again. I hope it helps

[garima.varma]

Those are some very helpful suggestions, thank you so much.

[garima.varma]

Was wondering if any tips could be shared for improving the speed. We are doing the 10 min tests and also focusing on doing a lot of topic based practice questions to introduce him to as many different types of questions as possible, but not sure if thats helping much, at least as of today (may be we will see improvement in couple of weeks). What else can be tried?

- I tried telling him to spend first 2-3 mins to scan through the whole paper and mark the 5 trickiest/lengthiest questions to be tackled at the end, but this didn’t work well with him. He ended up spending around 10 mins doing so and in the end was fully confused as to what to do and what to leave for the end.
- We are also working on guessing and moving on to the next question if he thinks its taking more time while solving or the his working is not giving a seemingly correct answer. This may work with more practice, but as of today, he either ends up leaving all the questions midway and move on to the next one (as get stressed if its too late) or try to complete it to end. Somehow he is not able to judge its around 1-2 mins already on the questions.

Please excuse if the above looks very common, but any suggestions will be very helpful.

Thank you.

[2Socks]

I don't know anything about the format, but we had the same issue with speed for maths - accuracy was great, but completing a test in the time wasn't so good!
The advice we received was practice, practice, practice, but also we just had DD answer every question that was a quick question - not looking through the paper in advance, just getting straight on with the quick questions. We had her just guess anything that was a lot of calculation for just one point, make a note of the guessed questions, and then go back to them if she had time - we had two categories of guessed questions - one for "long, but could do" and one for "don't know how to do". We got her to prioritise the first set of questions and not worry about the second set of guesses. I'm not from your area, but we saw a good improvement in speed between May - September. Before May we pretty much focussed on learning how to do the questions, not worrying about speed at all. Then from this point we focussed a bit more on speed.
Hope that helps.