young test takers

gogogirl · Post by **gogogirl** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:32 pm

we live in catchment for king edward louth and my dd has a august birthday. we know that when the scores are standardised this can go in favour in terms of gaining additional scores but can anyone explain how much we might expect. we used a tutor and was told this could be advantageous.

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:57 pm

It is difficult to say just how many marks difference the age standardisation makes because it will vary year to year and exam to exam. Basically it makes sure that children are compared with other children of the same age to take account of the fact that older children on average score higher than younger children. There is an explanation of Standardisation on this site at:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/standa ... scores.php
and it has a link to a fuller explanation by NfER.

gogogirl · Post by **gogogirl** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:44 pm

thanks for that its all a bit tricky to work out when you dont know this years standard. does it mean though that for the children that are 10 yrs 1 month at the time of sitting the test that all the children born then and taking the test will have their scores averaged and the above average scores will be likely to pass. we know the pass mark is 220 over the 2 tests but is this achievable by say this years children answering say 50 out of 65 when maybe last years children had to achieve 55 out of 65 ?

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:58 am

You have lost me! The actual maths of standardisation is quite complex and definitely beyond my skills. However, the actual adjustment of the raw results will depend on the differences in the average scores between children with different months of birth - theoretically it would be possible one year for the August birth children to score just as highly on average as the September born children and therefore not to get the scores adjusted upwards, but apparently this does not happen in reality as the younger children always score lower on average than older children. As the exam is supposed to be selecting out the top 25% the actual raw score needed year to year will depend on the difficulty of the exam and the skill of the cohort.

Guesstimates of what is needed vary but it seems to be commonly thought that a raw score of roughly 75% + would get you through on a normal year and that there may be a variation of up to 8 raw marks between what an oldest and a youngest child might need to get the same standardised score - BUT I really do not know just how accurate these are.

If you put "Standardisation" into the search facility at the top you will come up with loads of previous discussions on the subject which you may find enlightening or baffling depending on your own particular mindset!