Tier 4 January entrance exams going ahead?

I think that may be brave in advance of BJ's press conference, but there you go. We'll see!

and SPGS have just confirmed they will still be going ahead in house on the 4th

Communication from IPS this morning, whose exam is due to place on 5th January, states that notwithstanding the Government’s announcement of a staggered return of secondary school pupils in the New Year, the return of primary school aged children from 4 January is mandated. Therefore, their schedule to run 11+ assessments remains unaffected and they'll be proceeding as planned.

I think it’s probably quite easy to move the paper based tests to prep schools, leaving a smaller number of state schools kids to be able to sit the exam on the school site. It’s trickier if there’s a computerised test involved like the CEM but I would expect those schools to perhaps revert to the ISEB which many kids have already sat? It would seem a bit odd to go ahead with 1000 or so kids all mingling together on the site of a senior school a couple of weeks after we have effectively cancelled Christmas?!

DS has St George’s on site and KGS at his school - although lots of children are taking it at KGS. It seems unlikely they can go ahead but who knows. Hopefully the numbers will be more under control after 2 weeks of very limited contact - if not there will be all sorts of disruption to schools let alone entrance exams for the few.

DD has the ISEB at JAGs at the start of January. I'm hoping it'll go ahead as the majority of applicants have already done it and the senior school aren't back until the 11th anyway.

We have two in the first week and one in the second. The second one is to be held at DS's prep. But if they delay schools going back, god knows. I really thought they'd all just take the ISEB results. They could always have added, like one school did, a creative writing assessment to be done at home and signed off by DS's English teacher as a true reflection of ability.

Hoping we'll hear more today.

Hmm, that could be interesting. DC is at a primary and they've barely got enough staff resource to keep the school open, let alone invigilate an exam. I doubt they'd look kindly on that request.

DS2 is due to sit an entrance exam for a London senior school in January, and we've been told that he'll do the exam at his current school.

Same here in London. I wondered if they might post the exams out to the kids current schools and let them sit them there to help preserve bubbles (assuming we are going back to school in January).

I was wondering the same for London/Surrey. It would be good to get some idea of what’s happening so we don’t spend the holiday prepping for the wrong thing or something that might not happen - things are miserable enough as they are...

Waiting to find out the same thing. I just don't know. Even if it's permitted, will schools decide it's irresponsible? I wonder whether it's too late to switch to ISEB now (presumably quite a few kids will already have taken it for other schools)? Or whether they'd consider making offers based on other data (eg 11+ results, school references etc). Can't do anything except wait to hear from the schools, but would be quite nice to know now if exams are off!!