EEEEEK!!!!

[laluna]

Oh my! I have just received copies of the english and maths papers taken last November. I am quite shocked at the content and the little optimism for DD's success that I had has quickly diminished! I think that I have had a realistic idea of what is required but when my husband and I struggle with some of the questions I find myself really questionning the whole thing.

We are fortunate to have our super selective schools and I whilst I appreciate the requirement for stringent entry criteria, is what's expected from our (mainly) 10 year olds appropriate? It appears that my gifted and talented, level 5 across the board DD is not likely to be up to the standard so what do they want?????

[hermanmunster]

Have you shown your child the papers yet?
They might not be quite so fazed

Remember some kids must make the grade - the schools are not empty !!

[toolate]

Please don't despair. It doesn't set a good example for those of us whose kids are not G&Ts and are still blindly optimistic!

I agree - I looked back over my file of past papers a few days ago and thought 20% in the English wouldn't be entirely surprising.

Please do check the threads of scores required for your choices though because it will encourage you; they are not expected to get 85% across the board in these exams....

[MrsB]

Don't panic don't panic. We felt the same when we saw the paper from the year before - despite thinking I was pretty good at English I got quite a few wrong!
Despite that, and without a tutor, our DS got in comfortably within the entry mark for KEGs and CRGS.

Take it slowly and don't do those papers yet - work through the materials suitable for Essex and build up, then when DD is doing pretty well on Bond etc, have a go at the Essex papers.

[hadenoughnow]

Don't panic! My son came out of the test last November devasted and convinced that he had completely mucked up because the tests were so much harder than the past papers he had sat (plus the stress of the day) - particularly the maths (which was his forte) and the verbal reasoning. On results day he got into SHSB out of borough very comfortably with the following scores:

English Score 26/50
Mathematics score 27/40
Verbal Reasoning Score 61/80

We decided that we wouldn't get the papers to look at until after the results came out and when we did we were amazed that he did as well as he did! My husband is a secondary school teacher and couldn't believe the complexity of the questions, many of which would have fazed pupils taking a GCSE. On the English paper there were several answers that neither of us could understand how they were right.

Hope this helps