Can someone explain ISEB to me?

Your DS has worked tirelessly hard - well done to stay that motivated & dedicated. Atoms FAQ suggests however since the tests are adaptive, it is probably impossible to ever achieve 100%. keep us updated.

Thank you so in reality there is still a great deal more work to do and he probably is not at the standard required. I will ask atom too.

@noughtmare the mastery numbers are driven by the questions your DS has repeatdly answered correctly. Think of it as a probability of getting those type of questions correct. The more answers attempted, stronger the correlation with how he may perform in the real test.

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I may start my own thread on this topic. It is helpful to go through the responses.

I think the 4 percentages are the "mastery metric" so he is the top ability quartile based upon their data.

Hello can I ask someone who is familiar with atom. I see people here seem very knowledgeable.

My son has the following percentages:

maths 76 percent

English 74.4 percent

VR 77.3 percent

NVR 63.7 percent

His marks show they are in the 1st group of percentiles on the atom dial thing.

He has been doing atom since May so 5 months.

In that time he has answer 5590 questions.

He has spent 3 days in time accumulation but has only done 56 percent of the atom syllabus. Maybe he is repeating questions?

He has done about 32 mocks (so that would be equal to 8 full 11 plus tests if you include the four topics) results have ranged from 107 to 142 - he did bomb badly with the first mocks he took so I am not including them.

He is from a state school so all of this is new.

Would you let him sit for state grammars or private schools given the above?

Thanks, all, we have started with Atom Learning this week and it's quite heavy on the grammar questions!

Thanks a lot for your insight @iamthankful , this is very useful information and confirms what a PP said.

I think Atom scores are about 10 lower just as a previous poster said, just gauging using my son's scores last year. He was scoring about 126 - 130 in the Atom mocks, with the highest score in Maths (129, 130 ish), his Kent test however was full standardised score 141. He did get a scholarship from the independent sch we sat the iseb for.

Guildford High School and Tormead School have both announced November/December entrance examinations today, also. It seems the switch to the tests at an earlier, pre-xmas date, is becoming widespread. I think most schools want there to be a level playing field and are probably concerned about the deteriorating national picture / winter lockdowns in the new year that might disrupt the traditional entrance exam season? The good thing is, in Guildford for example, that all the kids are in the same boat (I think Priors field are doing December too). Good luck all, its been a tough 12 months!

You have to take the earliest date for the schools you are choosing

my understanding is that you can't

That is how we (a few others at our school) have interpteted the drip feed nature of this years 11+ info.
If school A needs the exam period end by 28 November; I am not sure you can delay school A criteria to satisfy wanting to sit the ISEB at school C in January, if that makes sense.

Thanks for your help @Dailyjunglegrind - at least I'm aware from this thread this is a possibility now!

The schools haven't mentioned that this is something that needs to be thought about either - just that they can use the results if we sit at another school.

Sadly, that is the lay of the land this year. Many selective schools opting for ISEB tests are starting late November’s. A December or January test date would be idyllic and allows for a traditional period of time for study prep.

Suggest you line up your schools with ISEB and figure the latest possible date you can take the test to qualify for your school.

So we could confirm with Jags (they seem to be more on the ball than SCHS) and have a date of Jan. Then SCHS get their act together, give us a date of Dec and we have to sit that because it's the earlier date? That hardly seems fair.

From my understanding, you are time bound by your earliest ISEB test date. That test becomes your Test outcome for all ISEB assesses schools.
Hope that helps.

I'm so bloody confused by all this! DD is state and we have definite dates from Jags for the ISEB of 6 or 7 Jan.

Just had an email from SCHS saying mid-Dec - Jan 8 to be confirmed in early Dec.

So can we choose to sit with Jags based on the fact they have given definite dates?

Does anyone know if City of London boys are making any changes? Their website is pretty useless.

Aha, I hadn’t spotted that! Thanks.

@ProfessorRadcliffeEmerson Do you mean City Girls? If so they state on their website that they are also dropping the written exam. They won’t do ISEB but the CEM select pre test (same as the SPGS pre test). Successful applicants will be invited in January to sit academic interviews.

Any word on City of London?

I think those CAT scores are a guide to scores the schools might like to attract, but in reality even the best schools will have more of a range. So even a super selective will have people who on these kind of tests score in the range 115_25 Remember a score of 125 puts you in the top 10% of the population and although many in a super selective might be top 5%, not all will be.

Schools which are pretty selective (3 or 4 applications per place, with the majority actually wanting to go to that school rather than an alternative) will probably be taking some students who have scores from 110.

Schools would like everyone to have their highest scores in predictive ability tests, but won’t fill with everyone being that level, even when they are the very top schools. There is always a range.

So if a child hasn’t got 135+ I wouldn’t be put off applying to St Paul’s if they have 125+ as it’s not beyond possibility. However, if someone is scoring 105 it’s probably an indication that it’s not going to happen.

With the independents, they need to fill the majority if their places with people who can pay the full fees. In itself this limits the pool of applicants and bearing in mind the large numbers going to the super selective independents and very selective independents, they can’t all be geniuses! As Guildford High says in this website, they are looking for bright girls to apply....some will be super bright but many who get places will be ‘just standard bright’ _ they are regularly in the top 5 schools for results, but they don’t want people to be out off applying because they think only children who are geniuses go there. There are lots of pretty bright but normal girls.

With the super selective state schools, the pool of applicants is always so much bigger. 10 per place isn’t that unusual but is unusual for independents. It’s why lots who get places at top independents don’t also get packed at Tiffin or Olaves - they are simply competing against a much bigger pool and so it’s harder to get a place. It doesn’t make those schools better ....and often the results of state grammars aren’t as good as some Indeoendents with a wider range of ability, for all kinds of reasons.