https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/br ... ummer-born

Presumably, all the schools using that test will insist it starts using age standardisation? But what about tests elsewhere?

I know the Medway test has no age adjustment on the written English paper. Isn't that unfair too? I expect there other tests like that.

I have a September born child taking the test this year, he'd do better in Essex... but the unfairness of that is pretty clear. Odd no one complained before.

This was posted by Sally-Anne last week .... please look at that thread.

Does anyone know/ have a rough idea of how the age standardisation would work? What’s the estimated adjustment for an August v September born child? Have any other 11 plus providers/ regions published data on this?

GL day they compare children born in the same month, then compare the results of one month against the rest to see what statistical difference there is. They then adjust to compensate. If there’s no discernible difference then there would actually be no adjust,ent for age.

I managed to see anonymous raw and standardised scores for my DDs year (GL VR and NVR) much later after the test and from memory there was very little difference, only one or two marks.

Thank you. I’ll take a look. I found some very old SATs (2012) tables with age standardisation. In those age seemed to make a difference. I have an August born.

I suspect age might make a bigger difference against an entire cohort of children who haven’t been tutored as such (for SATS) compared to say an 11+ Exam where typically it’s the brighter and/or tutored children who take it.

I think (based on nothing but my gut feeling) that the biggest difference will be anything vocab based. When sitting the 11+ some children will have only just gone 10 while others will have already turned 11. That’s 10% more ‘life time’ exposure to language. What it can’t account for is the difference between having parents who talk a lot with their children and expose them to a larger range of words and children who read a lot, compared to children who don’t get exposed to a large range of words and don’t read as much.

KS2 test results were never standardised; the tables were just produced but not used in levelling.

It says, "Results for last year showed that only 19 per cent of pupils born in July or August achieved a test pass mark for the grammar school, compared with 35 per cent of children who were born in September."

So admittedly the Medway test only has a third of the marks in a test with no age adjustment, but that still must make a difference. I think all tests should have age adjustment in every test paper. I'm not sure this Essex ruling will change a thing in other tests though.

Maybe grammar schools want older children?

Bucks uses age-standardisation but it is an opt-out test. WHen tests are opt-in it seems that more oder children enter anyway.

Thanks. Ive looked up GL on google and found stuff about the calculation and principles for age standardisation. I am still struggling to find anything that can quantify the impact or adjustment required. I’m preparing for an appeal in Southend, it’s the same consortium as Colchester school. My son is August born and I feel that this was a contributing factor. Any advice from anyone on how to quantify the impact of age?