Completion of Exams

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Footballdad
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:20 pm

Completion of Exams

Post by Footballdad »

Good morning all

My eldest child shall be sitting the Sutton Grammer/King Edwards Foundation test in the next few weeks.

The question i have if one can be kind enough to answer is:

I am led to believe that most children do not complete the exams they are deliberately set this way. So therefore within the exam do the staff notify the children that they have 1 min until this section of the exam finishes.

Also is it recommended at this point of time for the child to guess the remaining questions which they have not had to the time to finish or leave them as answered.

Basically in plain english i am wondering do they get penalised for incorrectly guessing the last few questions.

Kind Regards

PS. I wish all of your children the best of the luck in there respective exams.
mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Post by mike1880 »

No, they're not penalised for incorrect answers. Our son's tutor used to advise him to guess when he started to run out of time, it used to give me a terrible headache because on the one hand it's a good strategy but on the other hand with a child like our son you really don't want to encourage him to take an easy way out!

Mike
fm

Post by fm »

Agree with Mike. However, your child should expect to finish Sutton with time over. That is the norm for that expect. It is only KE where there is a likelihood of not finishing questions.
Footballdad
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:20 pm

Post by Footballdad »

Mike and FM thank you very much for the quick response back. It’s much appreciated.

At this moment in time it’s quite a stressful time for many parents as our children get close the tests. I believe my child has a good chance in obtaining our first place choice of KECHG but the uncertainty of it all just brings you down a bit. Luckily my eldest is confident and if she gains a place at a grammar school she will not struggle there.

Next year I will be at this bridge again with my middle child. I am not sure if I would put her through this as I reckon she can be tutored to pass one of the 11+ tests and gain entry BUT once this support is taken away I reckon she could struggle. With my eldest I do not have this fear. Its a tough decisions as you don’t want to show prioritization for one child over the other. Ooops ramble over. Lets hope our kids appreciated one day our choices for them.
Dibble
Posts: 125
Joined: Sat Nov 04, 2006 5:23 pm
Location: Dudley, West Midlands

Post by Dibble »

[quote="mike1880"]No, they're not penalised for incorrect answers.â€
Footballdad
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:20 pm

Post by Footballdad »

Dibble

What i am planning on telling my child is to guess only if she has run out of time on that section if its multiple choice of course. Otherwise i agree with you i dont want her to guess the earlier questions rather have her correctly work them out.
mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Post by mike1880 »

The advice, if I can choose my words carefully, is that if the end of the test is approaching and they still have questions unanswered, make sure they put something down - because they will definitely get no marks at all for questions they haven't answered, but they might be lucky and pick up one or two marks by completing them at random.

It's important to stress, though, that they should only do it when they don't have enough time left to work out a correct answer and would otherwise leave it blank, not just because it's a tough question.

Mike
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