11 plus support thread for exams 2024

@troppibambini6 my understanding is that it’s the appliccaa login that we have to use, but I don’t know if this is correct or not!!

On the applicaa site

Good luck to everyone waiting for results today

Trafford parents is there something we are meant to log into to get results?
I was messaging with my friend who said the results were posted at 10am on
Thursday last year but then the system crashed for 2 hours. She got an email at 2pm. I

Good luck to everyone getting results today! No news here, there has been no update to the results being sent "mid-October" so I'm keeping a very close eye on my inbox.

Unlikely but no harm in checking!

Is there a possibility Trafford results could be today?

Good luck today to the Gloucestershire folk, I hope you get the school you’re aiming for 🙏🏻 Nervously waiting now, trying to distract myself!

@Oldman3 it really depends on your location. Where I am it's done by catchment/distance so yes if you applied from too far away from any of the schools you could end up with no place at any of them regardless of what score you got. You are not in my area though so the way it works here isn't relevant to you. Have you got anyone local to you that you can ask about how it works where you are (Eg your child's school?).

You can put your non-selective options after the selction. Council check for the palce availability from selective only if they are in your top priority.

Hi, yes got the result yesterday and DD is “deemed selective” but didn’t get to the top 180 who are guaranteed place. We are still waiting for 1 more exam result. Hopefully if she pass that we have 4 grammar schools to put on CAF. I’m not sure if I should put non-selective schools on the CAF but worried that the council will offer non-selective over the grammar. That would be upsetting as DD really tried hard to pass the exam.
thank you for your reply

Assuming they have passed the exam.
It all depends on the admissions criteria and how they are applied.
In Bucks I remember there was a town that was a black spot for grammar schools - you took the exam, got 121+ but still didn't get a place as they lived too far away from the closest Grammars.

Is that what you mean?

Hello,
I just want to ask if it's possible to list 4 grammar schools on CAF and not a place?

@Traffordmum81 here here. It's ridiculous. I stood at Alty boys exam looking round thinking I only recognise about 10% of the uniforms. So many out of area kids.

@BarqsHasBite
In Bucks you have to have lived continuously in catchment from 1st September of the year the DC take the test. This is stop people moving into the area once they know the outcome of the 11+. Still doesn't stop people putting their DC through the process even though they have zero chance of getting in.

Also in bucks it's an age standardised score with a flattened bell curve. I'm not an expert but it's so summer born DC are not at a disadvantage. They know how many places are available and so put 121 at the approx amount they have available.

@Traffordmum81 This kind of thing is exactly why so many people are against the Grammar school system.

I went to the same Grammar DD is hoping for a place at, as did both my siblings. None of us had expensive tutors and passed the exam on academic merit. Nobody in my cohort lived out of catchment, we were all local kids from local primary schools.

I hadn't really followed the system between my actually going through it and now DD, 25 years later. It's quite a shock seeing what has happened and what goes on to get a place.

We have forked out for two years of tutoring for DD (and DD2 who will be sitting next year). Have to play the game to have any chance of getting in. We are fortunate enough to be able to afford it but so many able kids will miss out.

Legally, children out of catchment cannot be treated less favourably. Therefore any child - wherever they live - can take an 11+ exam. This is per a court decision referred to as the Greenwich judgement I understand.

The papers are blind marked. The pass mark is calibrated a bit to ensure more children pass than there are spaces. We don’t know how this is done but the schools generally rely on past data of how many offers they have had to make to ensure all places are filled. This is not an exact science - so they can be including children who live in eg Hull whose parents either won’t move prior to putting the CAF in or have misunderstood the address requirements that need to be in place as at the date of submitting the CAF.

That means there can be quite long waiting lists of qualified children waiting to hear if they’ve got a place in March as places have been offered to the child in Hull etc who might be a top 20 scorer whose address is irrelevant - it’s whether the parents will commit to moving.

What also complicates things is that some people will accept a place whilst holding a private place and only tell the school in September that they don’t want it. DS started at a grammar school this September and there is a pupil there who was only told the week before term started that there was a space. It’s very unsettling combined with the stress of the exams and the fact that many schools won’t even commit to giving an exact date for releasing results. That means that parents are on the back foot when it comes to preparing children for the results and supporting them in the aftermath. Then the situation drags on until the September of the next year whilst people hang on waiting lists waiting to see if an out of catchment super scorer or someone with a private place will give it up. There’s also generally a hierarchy of schools so a movement in another school will cause movements lower down the chain which obviously causes further delay/uncertainty etc.

It is a really big problem here in Trafford. Its not even the children applying from 90+ miles out that are the problem. There are something like 2.5k-3.5k children siting the exams for schools that offer up 150 places.
A large proportion of those children are “out of catchment” not in Trafford, they could be say 7-9 miles away but unless they get one of the top 20 places they will not be eligible due to distance.
Kids are getting in who are closer by but not in catchment and travelling up to 5miles over an hour each morning and night but then children who live in catchment are missing out on the “pass” mark which is inflated due to all the kids who would never get a place anyway. These Trafford kids are then having to bus over an hour away from their local walking distance schools as they didn’t quite hit the mark. The impact on the environment is probably shocking round Trafford.
Having been through the torture of watching my DC attend these exams, the bus loads of privately educated children rock up from out of borough to get a free place is awful. Then to read comments from parents on social media say things like hopefully they’ll get a Trafford spot else we’ll keep them at fee paying grammars just shows how broke the system is.
I agree with the comments above about not allowing those too far away to even take the exam but the schools want those top 20 kids.
I chose to continue to live in Trafford and put my DC in the exams but I don’t think anyone realises how brutal the system is until you are going through it. In younger years you did it in school and the naturally academic kids got the places, something definitely needs to change.

Thanks @Pipsquiggle - I’d assumed you would be eligible if you moved before NOD but I can see the deadline would have to be the end of October application deadline at the latest, or the date of the exam if that’s what the schools decide.

But why do the schools allow kids to sit the exam if they are out of catchment? It seems like a massive waste of school resources to be dealing with tests from completely ineligible kids. (Appreciate you may not know the answer!).

The selective or partially selective schools near us don’t have a magic pass mark - our nearest has 50 places available based on test result and they get offered to the top 50 scoring kids, with obviously a bit of movement to slightly lower scoring kids if any of those 50 don’t take up the place.

With a magic pass mark, how does it work - is the pass mark actually determined in the same way as above? Otherwise I don’t understand what happens if more kids get the magic mark than there are available places (or if not enough kids get the magic mark surely the mark has to drop to get the places filled?)

thanks (assuming you can be bothered to answer my rather academic queries!).

I don't think it is 'rife' but it does happen and it tends to happen where the DC are more able so they will affect the median score - even if it's just slightly.
I think some parents put their DC into various 11+ boards to either get them 'exam ready' or naively think they can just move into the area where they have passed or they have missed out on super selective grammars.
The same 'moving house' queries come up every year when the 11+ results come out

I can’t think it’s rife ppl applying for schools they don’t live anywhere near?!

@BarqsHasBite it's more to do with how the out of catchment DC that live so far out they have no chance of getting in e.g. 90 miles, will have affected the standardized marking system e.g. raised where the median '100' score is and therefore some local DC that scored 120 or 119 could have achieved the magic '121' score.
I think some parents think they might be able to move nearer once they know the score but they can't as they need to be living in catchment before they even take the test.

I think they mean those schools where the pass mark is determined by how many have passed the exam (so the large numbers passing, including those who actually gave no chance of getting in, can push up the mass mark meaning a local kid might miss out by one or two marks)

Am not sure I follow - if a currently out of catchment child has “no chance of getting in” then regardless of whether they move into catchment how would they be depriving a local child of getting a pass mark?

Or is your point that some out of area kids who do well do then move into catchment and bump out a child who has lived there a long time?

Schools don’t select like this where we live so I’m not familiar with the system or its issues.

Good luck to everyone, we'll be going through this again (DC2) next year.

What I find frustrating, from another forum, is the exam tourism.
People putting their DC through an 11+ county exam process when they live circa 90 miles out of catchment, catchment and how long they have lived in catchment is part of the admissions process.
They are now asking whether they should move house when they have no chance of getting in but have deprived a local child of getting the pass mark.
It's maddening