Did anyone take Birmingham AND Warwickshire?

[Okanagan]

The weightings in Warwickshire have changed this year to match the 50% verbal, 25% each NVR and numerical you have in Birmingham. Did anyone do both? It would be interesting to see how the scores correlated, especially if as has been speculated the change in Warwickshire is a precursor to a combined exam covering both in the future.

[emmiwa]

The weightings in Warwickshire have changed this year to match the 50% verbal, 25% each NVR and numerical you have in Birmingham. Did anyone do both? It would be interesting to see how the scores correlated, especially if as has been speculated the change in Warwickshire is a precursor to a combined exam covering both in the future.

my son did both and there is 9 points between the scores..Warwickshire the lower...DS did say he found Warwickshires much harder

[MSD]

I have one score, and I hope the parent doesn't mind me sharing as it helps with the stats.

The girl scored extremely well in Warwickshire and achieved 245+ and in Birmingham the score dropped by a massive 17 points.

This really makes me think if CEM does really test the true potential of a child and is reliable enough? But the above score surely highlights that a child can have a bad day and the test doesn't necessarily filter out the better and brighter children.

MSD

[Sharp25]

DS had 2 points difference and Warwickshire been 2 points higher than Birmingham. So it seems very similar criteria to me. Unfortunately for us we are just outside the area for Warwickshire. I'm not sure if we should put it on on Local LEA as last preference, as DS has got the ranking for Warwickshire. Does anyone has had similar experience/info's?

[Okanagan]

The girl scored extremely well in Warwickshire and achieved 245+ and in Birmingham the score dropped by a massive 17 points.

This really makes me think if CEM does really test the true potential of a child and is reliable enough? But the above score surely highlights that a child can have a bad day and the test doesn't necessarily filter out the better and brighter children.

From what we've seen so far there's not a lot of consistency - some do better in Birmingham, others have done better in Warwickshire. If anything we've seen more so far with lower Warwickshire scores, when all else being equal we might have expected it the other way round as all of these will have taken Birmingham first, and then Warwickshire with the benefit of having already experienced a CEM test.

[Thegodfather]

This is very interesting! My son did the Walsall test and the Birmingham test. I have compared the two by making marks into the equivalents (divide by 3 or 2). He did slightly better in the Birmingham test (+3) and I've told him thats because he worked hard over the summer. Am I correct in thinking that the Walsall test favoured maths? And Birmingham VR? He is better at Maths but I basically targeted VR over the summer and the breakdown of the marks in the bham letter showed me that his increase was solely in VR.

Anyhow I'm very proud that he worked hard and made gains in his weak area. The added bonus came in his parents evening when his English teacher commented that there was a noticeable difference in his spelling since last year.

[Turtlegirl]

Agreed, thegodfather, very interesting. My boy took Walsall and Birmingham too. He scored 330 for Walsall but only 197 for Birmingham. We had a lovely summer but I think we all know that we didn't put the effort into studying that we could have. His maths speed was down and I think his brain just wasn't in gear with an exam so close to the beginning of term. My boy did best in his school in the Walsall exam but some of the others did far better in Birmingham. And language is his strength so I'd always thought he'd do better in the Birmingham one. But of course, we'd majored on his maths, so in the Birmingham exam he was weaker in the verbal reasoning section in the end.

The whole experience this time round has convinced me that the early September exam favours those prepared to sacrifice a summer (certainly to a greater extent than we were able to do). It also shows that bright kids can bomb or get lucky - and that hard work can have an effect. We are thankful though that our preference is for QMGS so the other score isn't so significant.

We were just so exhausted by the summer term preparation that we didn't have the drive to keep going. I think this is the significant disadvantage of the current set-up. But perhaps we were unconsciously not so fussed about the September exam because we favoured QMGS.

[DIY Mum]

Msd, she must have had a bad day with the B'ham test. So many things can go wrong on the day...illness, missing a page, mistiming, wanting to go to the toilet during exam time- they're only 10yr olds sitting a highly pressurised exam.

Not sure how difficult the Wark exam was for VR and Maths but it seems that the 'decider' for B'ham was the Maths and NVR this year. Anyone else feel the same?

[Amelia]

My ds did both Walsall and the B'ham exam.. He scored 373 for the Walsall exam, which he found extremely tough, he came out saying that was really hard mum! With the B'ham exam he came out saying that was okay, not as hard as QM. He scored 250 In the B'ham consortium exam. Saying all this Maths is definitely his strongest subject.

We weren't able to relax in the summer holidays because we had the final prep to do, so yes turtle girl our summer was sacrificed, but it was do tiresome and the momentum went at the end!

[um]

I'll break my silence...MSD may be talking about my dd.
She scored 376 in Walsall, 247 in Warks.....and 231 in Birmingham.

We are very grateful that she will have a place at KE VI Handsworth. However we have found it hard to understand how, despite being academically quite far ahead of her older brothers in all areas, she has scored far lower than they did.
The Maths/NVR (she was level 6 by mid-Year 5 and is strong at NVR) was the greatest surprise. It was 127 each in Warks and 113 total in Birmingham.