Bucks exam - Standardisation

[Awesomeanshi]

hello, I am trying to understand how the standardisation works..........in a simple way. It seems very complicated to me. How does the actual score work with the standardisation process...........I have nightmares thinking my DC would get a score close to Qualifying 121 and then fall off due to standardisation. If anyone could shed some light please. Tx

[ToadMum]

hello, I am trying to understand how the standardisation works..........in a simple way. It seems very complicated to me. How does the actual score work with the standardisation process...........I have nightmares thinking my DC would get a score close to Qualifying 121 and then fall off due to standardisation. If anyone could shed some light please. Tx

This topic has come up several times in recent months. If you search 'Stroller's' posts and within those, 'standardisation', you will find a good explanation with diagrams.

Essentially, the average raw score (ie the mean of the scores achieved by all the candidates) is given the value 100. Therefore, 50% of candidates will have a score on or above 100 and 50% below. The scores follow a 'normal distribution', with most scores falling around the mean.

[Tinkers]

This is basically it.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/advice ... xplanation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It varies from school to school and area to area, but for most areas, they find what the average score is. Anyone getting that score effectively gets a standardised score (ss) of 100. If a standard deviation of 15 is used (this is the most common but not all use it) then approx 2/3 of the scores will be within one SD of the average, ie between 85 and 115.
Again if SD of 15 is used, the top 2% will score 130 and above and the top 1% score 133 or above.
There's a stats formula to work it out, which I think is included in The explanation in the link.
Age standardisation works by only comparing children with other children born in the same month.

[ToadMum]

BTW the standardised score is a measure of how well one has done compared with others. It tells you nothing about the underlying raw score. An ss of 141 could represent 90% and above, or 50% and above. Also, it is not 'out of' 141 or whatever. On this forum, you will often see people stating that you 'need 82%' to get a place at soandsuch a school, because the standardised score required to pass is 115. Yes, 115 is 82% of 141 - just not in this context .

[Stroller]

Here's the link to the previous discussion, complete with diagrams.

[Awesomeanshi]

Thank you all, much appreciate your input and advice. One more question - would we get to know the raw score of our DS?

[Tolstoy]

Not when you receive the results. Bucks will just give a standardised score because that is frankly the only score that count.

I believe some DP have received them when appealing but not sure if this is the case for all counties.

[Awesomeanshi]

Thank you Tolstoy!

[schlumpf]

If a 121 qualifying score is supposed to qualify about 30% of the children in Bucks, how does that fit with the explanation above? Under the 'normal' standardisation model, a score of 120+ would only be achieved by about the top 10% or so, wouldn't it?

A normal standardised score to qualify the top 30% of candidates would be around 110-112, wouldn't it? Anyone understand how that works?

[ToadMum]

If a 121 qualifying score is supposed to qualify about 30% of the children in Bucks, how does that fit with the explanation above? Under the 'normal' standardisation model, a score of 120+ would only be achieved by about the top 10% or so, wouldn't it?

A normal standardised score to qualify the top 30% of candidates would be around 110-112, wouldn't it? Anyone understand how that works?

Standardisation against a national cohort, perhaps? Is your average Bucks child brighter than the average average child?