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Original poster

Can someone explain ISEB to me?

291 replies

Stircrazyschoolmum · 26/09/2020 15:32

Just that really.. a number of the indies are using ISEB this year due to Covid. I understand it’s online, multiple choice and covers English /maths/VR/NVR. But how in practice does this actually work? Is there paper to work out the maths on? Is it intuitive how to click on answers? What does adaptive mean in this context?!

We are at a state primary so it’s all gibberish.. it seems a good way to keep kids safe and reduce stress from multiple exams but if your DC has a bad day then all eggs in one basket?!?

OP posts:
Helen1978R · 30/10/2020 16:46

[quote Oceane11plus]**@MarshaBradyo In maths the main difference I have noticed is that past papers often include some longer questions, involving lateral thinking and testing innate mathematical ability, especially towards the end. Questions on Atom tend to be pretty short although there are also multi step problems. And of course Atom like ISEB is multiple choice.
If you have a limited budget and already have resources at home (past papers, books from various editors in all 4 subjects), I would be focusing on that, and a week before the actual exam, use Atom as a free trial so that your DC gets used to the format/working on a screen, the time pressure etc
My older DCs did not have atom when they sat the ISEB pre test or CEM assessments and did very well (I can guarantee that my DS would have failed pretty badly had the ISEB pre test been as grammar heavy as the Atom English mocks Grin )

@SuiGeneris I fully agree. The more I think about it, the more I realise Atom have a “commercial” agenda. In hindsight I don’t regret it as my DD liked the novelty of practicing on a screen and their explanations are fairly comprehensive but it’s not a necessity and there are plenty of other great quality paper based resources out there.[/quote]
@MarshaBradyo and @SuiGeneris don't worry my experience last year was that the pretests are definitely easier than Atom. We used peakprep free trial for mock tests, and IXL is good for revision at the right level because you can opt to just do Y5 stuff which is what the pretests are based on largely.

Helen1978R · 30/10/2020 16:43

@starlilly88

Struggling with the English too. DS goes to a prep school but has never heard of half the grammar terms. Doing well on the comprehension part but not on the grammar. So English scores very average. Surely most Year 6 pupils can't have covered all those grammar terms so not sure what they're basing their average on
The pretests are only based on Y5 curriculum with tiny bit of y6, so we found Atom too hard too... its definitely beyond that level. There are alternatives like PeakPrep (free trial includes mocks) and PlanetBofa. Pre-test plus also do mock tests. IXL. is also good just for practising the Y5 English grammar only.
Helen1978R · 30/10/2020 16:40

@Utility

Is this really a fair solution? State primary entrants have not had to prepare for computer based tests. Many prep school entrants have been undertaking computer ISEB practice daily for up to a year... The timing strikes me as being potentially tricky.
@Utility most schools do take into account whether the applicants have come from feeder schools and been prepared for the tests, or not, so they should try to make it fair. Last year I felt the same concern, so we used Peakprep.co.uk to familiarise for the tests - they have a free trial with mock tests, so at least my son was used to the test format. AtomLearning.co.uk also has a good free trial, and Planet Bofa sells mock tests for preparing for the 11+ and pretests. I know the tests are v soon now, so good luck!
GrammarHopeful · 30/10/2020 15:25

@Oceane11plus Thanks a lot, same to your DD (and you)!

We are still doing paper-based tests too. He actually prefers it, not least because I am doing them with him more often than not (and he enjoys beating me [occasionally :D])

Oceane11plus · 30/10/2020 15:17

@GrammarHopeful Our experience with maths is fairly similar but I have noticed that after a number of tests, the same questions keep coming back which I believe is artificially inflating DD’s scores. That’s partly why we are no longer working on Atom. She will probably do one final mock of each subject closer to the exam but otherwise I think we’re done with Atom.
Good luck for the upcoming exam!

GrammarHopeful · 30/10/2020 14:47

Our experience over the last few weeks is a bit different. He is now regularly scoring top marks on the maths ISEB pre-test (last four: 142, 141, 132, 136) and English has settled at low 120s level.

Just like the others above I was initially confused by the grammar expectations, but we simply took this as an opportunity to learn something new.

Will spend a bit more time on reasoning in the next several weeks, but he's got Sutton Grammars' SET on the 11th, so English and Maths take priority for now.

Original poster
Stircrazyschoolmum · 30/10/2020 14:06

I agree with the above. It’s main benefit is learning the timings for each paper and perhaps the hardest thing for my DD is accepting you can’t go backwards so not to rush but also not to spend 8 mins on one question!! DDs scores gave fluctuated wildly with some of her best ones early on. The free trial is more than sufficient to get a taste and may be less stress inducing!

OP posts:
MarshaBradyo · 30/10/2020 12:39

Thanks Oceane that’s very helpful.

I signed up to another general resource when lockdown occurred and ended up not using it hugely and I found it too much, pushing content taking payment etc.

If they don’t automatically take £49 I’ll just do the trial.

Oceane11plus · 30/10/2020 11:59

@MarshaBradyo In maths the main difference I have noticed is that past papers often include some longer questions, involving lateral thinking and testing innate mathematical ability, especially towards the end. Questions on Atom tend to be pretty short although there are also multi step problems. And of course Atom like ISEB is multiple choice.
If you have a limited budget and already have resources at home (past papers, books from various editors in all 4 subjects), I would be focusing on that, and a week before the actual exam, use Atom as a free trial so that your DC gets used to the format/working on a screen, the time pressure etc
My older DCs did not have atom when they sat the ISEB pre test or CEM assessments and did very well (I can guarantee that my DS would have failed pretty badly had the ISEB pre test been as grammar heavy as the Atom English mocks Grin )

@SuiGeneris I fully agree. The more I think about it, the more I realise Atom have a “commercial” agenda. In hindsight I don’t regret it as my DD liked the novelty of practicing on a screen and their explanations are fairly comprehensive but it’s not a necessity and there are plenty of other great quality paper based resources out there.

MarshaBradyo · 29/10/2020 22:02

I’m not sure I want to bother with Atom.

If you do the five day trial I assume you can opt out before they take the £49

We’ve done quite a few paper tests including for the schools he’s applying to.

Op, or anyone, how did you find Atom compared with past school papers etc

SuiGeneris · 29/10/2020 21:58

Agree with all the comments about the Atom grammar being way too advanced. I think it is a ploy to make parents feel their kids are behind and therefore need to do Atom for longer.
Some of the maths is also way off the curriculum required for ISEB so we are leaving Atom aside and focus on more realistic paper tests.
I do think Atom should think a bit more about kids’ mental health rather than their own bottom line: in their year of all years, creating extra anxiety should really not be on.

Mycatslovedreamies · 29/10/2020 15:17

@Stircrazyschoolmum @Oceane11plus I think the grammar is waaaaay too advanced. Both my DSs (who have sat ISEB previously) had a look and said there is nothing that complex in the actual ISEB. They both seemed to think that verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions are enough and knowing how to use punctuation like capital letters, colons, semi colons, full stops etc. DD hasn’t covered any of the complicated stuff in prep school so I’m just ignoring it - and I can’t believe the schools will be interested in that stuff either (especially as they are moving to iseb to not disadvantage kids who have missed lots of schooling!)

starlilly88 · 29/10/2020 09:53

Struggling with the English too. DS goes to a prep school but has never heard of half the grammar terms. Doing well on the comprehension part but not on the grammar. So English scores very average. Surely most Year 6 pupils can't have covered all those grammar terms so not sure what they're basing their average on

ProfessorRadcliffeEmerson · 28/10/2020 18:00

Lots of expletives here too! We got Atom yesterday for the trial period: DD is strong on maths, only just above average on everything else. I’m also consoling myself with the thought that I wouldn’t want her to be bumping along the bottom in a very selective school.

Original poster
Stircrazyschoolmum · 28/10/2020 15:49

I hear you oceane there have been a few expletives in our household over folded bits of paper and top views of cubes!

I’m consoling myself that is we flunk it then it probably wasn’t meant to be and I’d hate her to go to a school where she’d struggle.

OP posts:
Oceane11Plus · 28/10/2020 15:14

NB: DD’s ISEB test takes place in a couple of weeks so it’s too late to learn new concepts now.
I think her scores in VR and English are good enough so we are focusing our efforts on NVR (working within the allocated time + some questions are pretty tricky even for me!!) and maths (mainly avoiding careless mistakes).

Oceane11Plus · 28/10/2020 15:08

As for the maths, I believe most of the concepts needed are in the Y5 curriculum but to have a good score DC need to have a solid understanding of all these concepts in order to be able to use them in unfamiliar questions. I’ve also noticed there are quite a few multi steps problems in the Atom mocks, some of them with more than two steps, so I can see how time can be an issue if the actual test is the same.

Oceane11Plus · 28/10/2020 15:01

I just had another look at the ISEB website, and here is what it says about the English section: “ English question styles include reading comprehension, sentence completion, spelling and punctuation”. It doesn’t mention grammar. I wonder to which extent Atom does reflect the actual test Hmm

stellagibbons · 28/10/2020 14:38

We haven't looked at Atom yet as I only want to do a month before DD has the ISEB mainly for familiarisation, but if those are the sort of English questions being asked it's going to be a bit of a disaster really!

Is the maths covered more obviously Yr 5 National Curriculum?

orcadive · 28/10/2020 13:27

We are surprised at how advanced the grammar is as well! Glad it's not just me completely confused at these questions about verb tenses. We are at a prep and have not covered this. You are not alone @Stircrazyschoolmum

realitybites1 · 28/10/2020 12:46

Glad it’s not just us finding the English very tough! My DC also at a prep school.

Oceane11Plus · 28/10/2020 12:00

I agree with you @Stircrazyschoolmum. And my DD is at a prep. There are quite a few concepts I’m sure they haven’t covered at school. We’ve come across some complicated types of verbs and grammatical terms I’m sure they haven’t covered eg transitive/intransitive verbs, indirect object, intensifiers, delexical verbs etc

Original poster
Stircrazyschoolmum · 28/10/2020 11:22

Is anyone else finding the atom English exams span far further than key stage 2 in grammar? Perhaps some of these complicated verbs and tenses are covered in prep schools but I’m pretty sure they’ve gone no where near in the state sector? Is that because it’s adaptive?

OP posts:
montlieu · 27/10/2020 07:57

@stellagibbons

Our school report last year was next to useless - it gave no indication of DD's ability level, had two paragraphs about things they had done before lockdown (trips they'd been on and things like that) and then one very small paragraph actually about DD. I have no idea how any secondary is going to extract anything useful from that.

I'm also surprised SCHS are concentrating on Maths/ English. The way maths is taught in our school is that the whole school cover roughly the same area in the same half term at varying levels (so they always seem to start off with things like place value in this half term). Annoyingly for us, this means DD is actually covering the stuff she was actually taught last year, and won't be going over the areas she had home learning for until later in the year - so some areas she hasn't actually had proper teaching for since Year 4.

Our school report last year was useless . I don’t understand as the school ran their normal baseline assessment the eek before taking down so could have written the report with data up to that date 🤷‍♀️
ProfessorRadcliffeEmerson · 27/10/2020 07:44

Latymer Upper is saying the same, normally they have their own exam in English and maths only, so they’re not putting ‘very much’ weight on the VR and non-VR. Heaven knows what that means.

I’m not feeling at all optimistic about this, DD had no real teaching at all between March and September, and she’ll be up against kids who had the full curriculum.