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Original poster

Atom Learning, useful? When to start?

33 replies

Coconut2010 · 18/06/2020 08:51

I have been recommended to subscribe to Atom Learning for my 10yo DD who will be sitting 11+ exams for independent schools. Some pre tests shall be happening in October/November.
Would you recommend it? How does it compare to Bofa (which I used in the past for my other DCs).
When would you recommend me starting the subscription? Isn’t now a bit too early? I was thinking about starting in September but I don’t want to leave it too late.
Thank you!

OP posts:
LondonJJ · 21/06/2020 14:44

Our DD used Atom learning for 6 months last year in preparation for the Consortium exam. She found it very useful. It’s multiple choice like the consortium test and there aren’t lots of past papers etc to practice. Try and get some feedback from your current school as well, but I think starting now would be worth it.

Original poster
Coconut2010 · 18/06/2020 17:33

Thanks all, this is super helpful!
I know that at least one of the pre tests will be online so Atom might indeed be useful. However I don’t think they are set by ISEB. One of them might be CEM and the other one is the girls consortium exam.
Actually does anybody have any insight on the consortium exam, whether it’s more similar to GL or CEM or totally different?

OP posts:
mumcreates · 18/06/2020 16:25

@iamthankful

I used it last year for my son last year, bought the 6 months and we did the mock tests. My son told me straight after coming out of his iseb test that he saw some "exact" questions from Atom in his Maths paper. My feeling is, it may not have been exact, but surely would have been similar enough for him to have thought so. Also he said the test platform looked just like Atom's, which is a plus. My son got a scholarship, difficult to say how much input Atom had to that. The questions in Atom are more difficult than 10 min tests (or perhaps my son got difficult questions after getting a number consecutively correct, as I know Atom is adaptive), this really helped him.
My DS said the same after his iseb pretest last year and he got offers from the super-selective schools he applied to, that might not be entirely down to Atom but it definitely helped. I also spent time working through and explaining the corrections with him and this really helped. He's also a tech-inclined so, the online testing was preferable to physical books.
iamthankful · 18/06/2020 15:23

I used it last year for my son last year, bought the 6 months and we did the mock tests. My son told me straight after coming out of his iseb test that he saw some "exact" questions from Atom in his Maths paper. My feeling is, it may not have been exact, but surely would have been similar enough for him to have thought so. Also he said the test platform looked just like Atom's, which is a plus. My son got a scholarship, difficult to say how much input Atom had to that. The questions in Atom are more difficult than 10 min tests (or perhaps my son got difficult questions after getting a number consecutively correct, as I know Atom is adaptive), this really helped him.

leeloo1 · 18/06/2020 14:35

Ds had it for a year, last year - at the time it was £400 for the year. It was good in some ways - mainly for nvr and vr I'd say, but:
-it was clunky - you had to scroll up and down to answer questions; or for comprehension you had to scroll between 4-6 different pages to find answers which was really unhelpful.
-After the first month we had a report saying what he needed to work on, videos to watch etc - the links didn't work and we never had another!
-there were 'points' he had to get in each subject, but he always focused on some subjects and ignored others. When I told him off and asked why he showed me some subjects were completely gold ticks (eg were finished) but he was being asked to practise them loads - it didn't make much sense.

You can go through questions they've got wrong, but the explanation videos are very simple compared with the problems, so aren't much help.

I didn't find I had as much oversight as I did when ds was doing the paper based 10 minute tests etc and I feel we lost ground using it.

If your dc is doing iseb then it is good as Galore Park produces atom and iseb, so apparently some of the questions are familiar. If your dc is doing paper based exams I wouldn't use it.

Sorry thats a rant, I hope it's helpful...

Original poster
Coconut2010 · 18/06/2020 14:10

Thank you for your replies. She already has a tutor focusing on English as English is not our mother tongue, and at the moment I have the time to support her on the VR/NVR and maths so I thought Atom could complement it nicely and get her used to on screen assessments. For those who have been using Atom, do you know if parents can review the tests DC have done and go through the mistakes with them, ie does the system store these tests that have been completed for further review? thanks again

OP posts:
Beachcomber74 · 18/06/2020 13:03

Expensive. You would be better to spend the money on a tutor.
If your child is motivated and happy to sit and do the screen activities but when we subscribed DS only did it a couple of times so felt like total waste.

mumcreates · 18/06/2020 11:55

We used Atom for my DS last year, we found it very useful. Definitely preferable to Bofa, infact I would say not really comparable. We found out about it late so, only used it for a couple of months.
My DD is the same age as your DD and I subscribed for a month over the Easter holidays to keep her busy, plan to subscribe again in August till she writes her exams in Oct/Nov.