SW London Girls' Private & Grammar - applying for year 7 in 2023

Apologies, you are correct. Sorry.

I’m not even sure how it is even supposed to work.
If 1000 girls try for G&L they probably all have a “true” theoretical Atom score in the range of 100-140.
If you then apply an Atom error/inconsistency adjustment which is probably + or - 20 (by my experience) you basically end up with a random distribution.
It might be possible to identify the extremes of the range but trying to sort the 800 girls in the middle will surely be impossible.

I don't think LU is using Atom - on their website it says they're still doing their own paper-based tests. But given many of the experiences on here thus far re PHS, I'm imagining there will be a number of complaints going in re PHS and Consortium schools when emails go out re second round / interviews, and girls who were expected to sail through don't...

It will be interesting to see which DDs are selected for G&L and LU using the Atom entrance exams this year. Will these new exams actually result in any different selection of students? We'll find out soon enough.

Thank you x

My DD did CEM at both GHS and SPGS. SPGS is more difficult.

Yes it is very weird how this has just been accepted.

It is puzzling why the senior schools would want this. Godolphin and Latymer is one of the “Hammersmith trio”, with every ambition of continuing as one of the best schools in the country. However, as part of the consortium, they have accepted selecting girls using this chaotic platform.
It is bad for the students using it but surely also bad for the schools who rely on these exams as a selection tool?

The whole thing is utterly corrupt. Someone should look into this. I cannot believe schools are letting this company be in charge of their admissions process. It also puts parents in a tricky situation as you feel pressured into using atom to prepare for exams, as they are the ones writing the exams.

We didn’t use atom at all this time around as I can’t stand it, following older dc’s exam a few years ago. We might well come to regret that decision.

I think anything adaptive risks being fundamentally unfair and biased and I believe all schools should revert to non-adaptive testing.

@confu5ed I am not sure, tbh.
We have used CEM 10 minutes' tests and DD is fine doing them (sometimes with spare time after 12-15 questions) but this was a whole new level!
It may be that they do not adjust the level of difficulty or speed but they adjust the pass mark!

@Daydreamscometrue yes, holding onto the warm feeling from KGS too!

can I ask a potentially stupid question, Radnor tomorrow is also CEM, but presumably the schools can set the difficulty of the test? Or do you think Radnor is going to be as hard as Ibstock seems to have been? x

Yes the dreaded February wait. I'm grateful we know about the KGS interviews ahead of the Christmas holidays.

@Daydreamscometrue Agree. I am not good at waiting!! And this whole process is a waiting game with lots of chapters and, in my mind, unnecessarily so (most of the schools have moved their exams forward, in some cases by months) but offers still coming in mid-February.

Atom Learning received a cash investment of USD £25 million in Dec 2021 from a bank. The mushrooming of its use as an exam (rather than just learning) platform has swiftly followed. How can this have been allowed?

It's the waiting for news that's stressful isn't it? I realise that I'm a glass half full person during this whole process but it's just so hard to predict.

I think my DD also prefers paper exams (she feels more in control of what to do and when).

We have a strange week ahead, potentially 2 schools telling us whether we go to stage 2 (and not looking particularly good on either front). And we might even her final result from one!! Plus Emanuel exam.

DS prefers paper exams generally. I think Atom has definitely put him off computer based tests. He also said the same as yours re KGS. He quite liked the Learning Workshop although there was another boy with the same name and DS had his label on his coat which was on the back of the chair! I'm not expecting good news later this week.

That seems the general feeling - so I supposed the kind of exam that is designed not to be finished.
Interesting that your DS found it harder than Tiffin round 2 (by the way, well done him for progressing to that!). We did not do that but DS said that definitely harder than KGS.

My DS found it very difficult and didn't finish any of the sections. He said no one in his group did. He thought it was harder than Tiffin round two but not in terms of questions. More just the time pressure.

Not sure, tbh. Only thing that their website says is that they have around 80 places available for external.
There were lots of kids taking the exam today - 3 sittings today (plus a 4th one at least on Wednesday). I think that there were more than 20 groups per sitting (a friend of us was in the group 21!) and 8-10 kids per group. So I recognise that there may well be in excess of 700-800 kids sitting. At my daughter's prep, it seems to be almost as popular as Emanuel in terms of ratio of applicants per places.

Agree with all of this. I genuinely don't understand why more prep / primary school heads aren't challenging the use of Atom for 11+ exams. They should be advocating for their students, and challenging the Consortium / PHS on it's efficacy. As you say, it's highly likely that there are going to be some very unexpected results this year, and the only people who will suffer will be the students.

What's also baffling is that all the reviews online of Atom - including on Trustpilot - are overwhelmingly positive. The bad reviews are almost exclusively about pricing and not about content / algorithms / it being completely rubbish. I suggest all of us who are less-than-happy with it should start being a bit more vocal about it on other platforms....

Do we have any idea on numbers that get through to that Ibstock second stage?

@QuiteAJourney yes! That sounds like they definitely take the reference into account, yay. Good find, and great news! It sounds like your DD did well though, I wonder if anyone can actually finish it?!

Good luck for Emanuel!

We did not do Putney but experiences seem to have varied.
The IPS experience seems to have been more uniform... but harder.

On the issue of what they look at, I found their admissions policy. It refers to
"Performance on the computer-based test, the learning workshop and the confidential reference from the candidate’s current school are analysed and candidates may be shortlisted to sit the English and Mathematics Entrance Examinations based on their performance."

May be clutching at straws, but trying to keep hope ... (we have Emanuel next, so will keep any potential bad news on hold, in any case)

PS Well done on Surbiton. We had quite a friends there and it seems that the school made the experience not stressful and most girls came out quite happy. Which, at this point, is the best we can hope for.

@QuiteAJourney I have heard the same about IPS from friends who sat it today. We have it on Wednesday. I don't know if they consider the references but I have a feeling not, I think this is a quick initial cull before the next stage. But, it seems everyone had the same experience and 2 answers per minute sounds good, I know DD won't be that quick.

We had PHS also and DD definitely didn't have hard maths, despite that being her strongest subject, so that doesn't bode very well, sigh.

Surbiton today though which seemed to go ok. Keeping everything crossed.