Practising 11+ or SATS test papers with your children at home

[tigermoth]

Anyone else out there doing this over the summer holidays? I'm trying to do half and hour or so with my son most days. Not too much, just something to keep him ticking over, I hope. Little and often as opposed to a sudden panic a week before the 11+. I am trying to reduce the pressure as much as possible. No other homework, reading or music practice demands are made of him and he chooses the topics and the time.

I praise lavishly when he gets questions right, and we go through the wrong answers together. I try to teach him, but he seems to hate me taking on the teacher role and often refuses to listen to me till I threaten to ban things. I have no idea if anything I am saying to him sinks in. Sometimes he whizzes eagerly through his chosen questions, other times he looks at them for a millisecond and says he can't do them, his brain hurts, when I know he hasn't given them any thought whatsoever. He wants me to sit with him for the whole time he is doing the questions. I do this but I know I won't be there to hold his hand in the exam.

My dh also sits with him sometimes. My son seems to cope better with dh teaching him, but my dh can't do this every evening.

I worry that my son will not work independently when it comes to the exams, will look at questions and instantly reject them before thinking them through. I can see he is improving (I am too) with practice but it's a struggle. And he does got some proper tutoring in a group each week, and seems to be ok with this.

The questions we are working on - NFer Neilson ones - are really not easy. I can well understand my son feeling daunted by some of them. I do too. Even if he doesn't have to get all questions correct in order to pass the exam, the sheer fact that on the day of the test he will face questions he can't do is bound to dent his confidence.

Sorry I am rambling. I just wonedered if anyone else is going through this. And what about those with older children now at secondary school. Do you think the practising at home helped? Did your children act like this? Any tips to pass on?

I haven't done this, but my kids are younger.

One thing that you said that struck a chord with me was the 'not wanting to learn from mum, thing'. My dd never likes to learn from me, and I am a teacher!

One thing that we are being encouraged to do in school is to get kids to assess their level of understanding before they start a topic and then assess their learning at the end of the topic. The idea is that you get them to learn to be an independent learner (IYSWIM) that way. Can you get him to mark his own work at the end? Tick charts , I can do this now, I have learned to do this, I have revised this, may work.

Re the 'stickability' and no wanting to take on difficult things I'd say that is very common. Let him know that they are often marks for getting part of the question right, and if he doesn't have a go he is bound to miss out on them.

HTH

DS1 has been going to a tutor for a few sessions over the holidays. Mainly for the maths paper, although maths is his strongest subject. It makes me really angry that they put questions in the 11+ papers which children sitting the exam will not have met in class, such as algebra (which is a secondary school subject). His tutor pointed out questions yesterday which she said were A level stuff! DS1 totally freaked when he saw these questions. Not sure if the examiners intention is to unsettle children and then see how they cope, but that isn't really a test of their intelligence.

He had his last session yesterday and the tutor said he should be fine, but that it would be helpful if we gave him some past papers to do. I'll start doing this once we get back from holiday at the end of August. His school do not do any 11+ stuff apart from a mock exam in September. Based on that result, they will tell you whether your child should or should not sit the exam.

Although DS1 worked fine with the tutor, when I have sat with him, his mood is definitely less cooperative. So I think your son's attitude is probably normal. Working during the holidays is always a bind and it's easier to take this out on Mum than anyone else. DS1 works better with his dad too. Rather than trying to work with him every evening, how about agreeing with him one or two evenings a week? Whereabouts are you? I know there aren't many places in the country still faced with the 11+. I'm in Kent.

hmb, freckle - other earlybirds! hello.

DS does sometimes ask to mark his own work and I hadn't really seen the relevance of this till you mentioned it, so I will make a habit of this from now on. It's reassuring to know the learning from mum thing is not unique to ds and I. I did think of letting him off the hook more, but he is not the most motivated of people and I know would feel pressurised if we did, say, an hour two or three times a week. He can just about take 30 minutes teaching from me at a time so I feel we've got to do 4 or 5 days at least. I've only being doing this during the school holidays, before that, most weeks he just had his saturday tutor class.

Hmb, I have told him that he must try each question and as they are multiple choice, he has a one in five chance of getting them right anyway. I hope all the wailing and moaning are dramatics put on for my benefit. It's so difficult to tackle is stickability though if it's commonplace, the 11+ marks hopefully take that into account.

Freckle I so agree about the difficult questions on the paper. It makes me really angry too. It must be such a knock to many a child's confidence to see them. And if a child hasn't had any practice, then even more so. And those maths questions are hard. As you say, they cover things not learned at school by the end of year 5. ds has had to learn long division especiallly for the test.

Yes I am on the SE London borders, so sort of in your area I guess. As our London LEA has no 11+ the children get no practice at school. I don't know if they get a test paper in September, but I will enquire. So if we didn't do something, ds would face the exams 'cold'.

Tigermoth - Hi! Did you have a good time away?

I don't have any experience of this, (and hope we never have to go through it - sounds so stressful!) But I understand completely that your son struggles with you as teacher role. How long is the actual test on the day?

Just a thought: I wondered whether you know of any tame students who are waiting around to go back to uni. Maybe you could hire one (cheaply) to sit with him; ideally not to help (unless he gets really frustrated), but just to provide 'exam conditions' for him to do some practice tests right through and get used to doing the full hour (or whatever) on his own. Then you could concentrate on looking at the results, and focussing in on analysing the questions; giving him strategies for tackling the sort of question he struggles with ...?

I'm sure you've tried all the usual threats and bribery already!

Anyway, hope this isn't blighting your summer too much, and you're enjoying yourselves too. Have you been to Alton Towers yet?

I have never seen an 11+ paper, as I teach in a state comp at secondary and went to a comp myself, so this could be very wide of the mark. However, a thought has crossed my mind. At GCSE level our students take multiple choice modular exams, one correct answer out of 5. But of those 5, one is always obviously not right, and anothers is fairly obviously not right. Eliminate those and he is then down to one in three. And I always tell our kids to give it a go, the odd have to be better if they try!

If it's multiple choice, he really should have a go and, if still stuck, just tick any box. By the law of averages, over a paper, some of those are going to be right! This is what I've told DS1. If he gets to near the end of the allocated time and still has a number of questions to do, he should just tick anything as some might be right and count towards his overall mark, whereas if he doesn't tick anything, they will all be marked as wrong.

hello roisin!

I'm racking my brains to think of any students who could sit with him. None around here, unless I rope in one of our babysitters. It's a possibility. The tutor group he attends each week is staffed mostly by 6th form students, though, so close to what you're suggesting. They can make him work independently more than I can, though apparently he has been known to wander off 3 or 4 times in an hour for loo breaks....however they seem generally pleased with his attitude and progress ( no we haven't been to Alton Towers yet, but hope to go at the end of the holidays or at half term - I am looking forward to it lots, though it's a bit of a treck from our area).

Hmb, that elimination tactic is really useful - I will definitely use it. I have been told that some of the questions he faces are of GCSE standard and beyond.

Freckle, yes, I must get it into ds's head that ehe must attempt all questions. It's so important to give an answer.

Of course the other thing is that 11+ practice has to take place in the evenings at the moment as I am working during the day and ds is at a playclub. I should not be spending time on mumsnet if it's time I could spend doing a test paper with my son. Ahh the guilt!!

My advice would be, don't waste your child's time practising for SATs. SATs are only a reflection on the school, not the child. Do not hinder or panic your child in this way.
In terms of practising for 11+, don't over push them. How well are they doing? What are they doing best with? I don't know where you are, but know from Greenwich to Bexley. Bexley children did practise for the tests, but nowadays teachers would teach to them (to many other things). Lots of parents hire tutors!!!!! Give them practise papers but if they are finding them too difficult the 11+ is the wrong thing for them. Sorry to be brutal!

I agree about the SATS - I know they are mainly for the school's benefit, though I think they also help determine what abilty stream a child is put in when they start some (not all) secondary schools.

As for the 11+, I think some practice definintly helps but as you say, it's difficult to know how much. I certainly can do the tests better now I am used to them and I'm sure my son would not feel confident if the format was totally unfamiliar to him. At least half my son's class are receiving some form of tutoring for the 11+ - we're near the Bexley borders so there's the impetus to get into a grammar school. As Greenwich LEA, unlike Bexley LEA, don't allow schools to offer help, parents are left to their own devices

I'm really a bit confused about my son's abilty to pass - according to the 11+ assessment he had recently, he did score enough to pass comfortably. At his coaching classes he seems to do ok. However he says the NFER Nilson 11+ practice papers are harder, so I am not sure what to think. I know lots of other parents around here are surprised how difficult these papers are. I know my son will inevitably get some wrong answers, but I'd love to know what percentage of answers he needs to get right. I know the pass mark varies each year, but it would be too to know the approximate percentage he needs to achieve in the tests. Don't suppose you can help me here thepin - you seem to know a lot about our local education system?

We are doing some really low key ones with DS, personally if he does not gain the 11+ easily then he should not be in the grammar school, I am lucky that the local comp and even the tech school are awesome...
I have the bond papers from Nelson Thornes
at our local grammar school they only want the verbal reasoning test done two exams and they have two practice runs at the school too...
It just seems so wrong to be expecting this kind of effort from such young kids... but then again damned if you do or don't aren't you really?

I seem to remember the the average pass mark was about 116 or there abouts. If he is doing OK on everything but the NFER-Nelson tests I would personally trust those. If he is doing well on tests similar to the ones used in Bexley then that must be OK. Is any of his friends experiencing problems with the NFER-Nelson tests? It might not be just him.
In terms of groupings at secondary school, from my experience they seem to ignore most of what they are told by primary schools and change it around within the first few months. I still wouldn't push the SATs bit.

thanks, thepin. I think some of his friends are finding the NFER Nelson tests difficult, too. It's the maths paper especially - some of the algebra, geometry and long division questions go way beyond what my son has been taught at school.

I've heard that the pass mark is about 116. Is that 116 questions over all 4 papers? There are between 40 - 80 questions per paper, so I don't understand what this '116' means exactly. Could you enlighten me? thanks!

Tigermoth, we went through this last year. I can't remember which practice papers we had- they come from WH Smith, multiple choice in individual subjects. It is a good idea to practice because it just gets the child into the mind set of being able to do the tests.

I found that my DS was getting into a panic & throwing a wobbly every time we sat down to do them because he "couldn't do it" and was getting a lot wrong. We decided he probably wasn't up to it but let him do the 11+. Teacher said he was borderline. He sailed through the real thing!

The pass mark applies to each paper & they have to pass all of them to get through. I think when DD did the 11+ back in 1997 the pass mark was 116 for maths & 130 for English, with the verbal/non verbal reasoning somewhere in between. They don't tell you the actual marks they scored unless you ring up & ask.

All you can do with your DS is what you have been doing. Just provide a variety of different question papers & do a little at a time. Good luck

That sad face of course should have been a Going doolally!!!

tallulah, are you in my area? thanks for that info. Yesterday, I asked one of the helpers at my son's coaching class how the pass mark was calculated. Say the pass mark is 118 - how I now understand it is the scores from all four papers are added together and the average is calculated, to get the overall mark. As far as I know, you don't have to pass all four papers, as long as your average score is above the pass mark set for that year. Reading your message, I better ask again!

As there are about 265 questions in all four papars, it looks like you would have to get 118 (for instance) correct, which is less than 50%. It all seems really, really wierd to me.

Why is it accepted that children can get so many answers wrong and still pass? Why not make the questions a touch easier? Why stress children out with such hard quesdtions? Surely to the ignorant (like me) the implied expectation is that you must get most of them right.

oh forgot to add, it's reassuiring to hear you had the same experience with me when going through practice papers with your son. Thanks again for posting

Tigermoth, I'm in Kent. I know my friend's DD failed last year because she scored low on the maths one, although she passed all the others. As far as I understand it you have to pass each paper, though it may be different area by area. The questions start easy & get harder. They don't expect children to get them "all" right but it gives some indication of how good they are (wrong word but can't think how to phrase it) by where they stop.

The pass mark of 118 or 116, whatever, is an average score for all four papers. Ignore the number of questions on each paper. It is an aga standardised score unfortunately. Scores will accept it if children do not get this on one of the papers as long as the score is close to this. Therefore, they would prefer a children that is close to average across all four rather than strong in some and weak in others.
I would imagine that you would need to get about 3/4 of the questions right on each people. Unfortunately, although I've had children that have gone through the Bexley test I have never seen anything that explains how it is calculated.

my ds did the a nelsons one for verbal reasoning last week, as we are told that this is the only 11+ test the grammar school he wants to get into use... does this seem plausible? Perhaps I'll ring them again to check
It is said they use a higher pass mark because of this.
DS did very well in the test I gave him, he has never sat anything like it before and the mistakes he made were all in one section where he had no spare paper to write on (my fault)
So am feeling much better about it now...
He will start a new school in the new county (lincs) and surely they will do a few practice paers too?
Fancy worrying about this stuff when they are still such little people, it really goes against the grain IMHO

thanks thepin and tallulah. I am going to phone up Bexley LEA and the coaching class teacher to see if I can make more sense of this, as the info you have given me is slightly conflicting and the coaching class teacher also said something different.

I want to see if someone can explain roughly how age standardised scores affect the average mark. I will put some of the points raised here - must ds pass or nearly pass all 4 papers? does the 116 mark loosely translate into 116 correct questions etc? I can but ask.

I will report back here.

Good luck piffle. I hope you find the answers you need, too. I like the verbal reasoning papers. They are my son's favourite. He doesn't get them all right but finds them the most fun to do.

Have just interrogated DS2 about his internal Y5 exams, tigermoth, in an attempt to be able to explain the 116 or whatever.

He was given indexed scores for English and Maths (ie +/- 100) but he prefaced most of his answers with "I think" so don't quote me, and of course in any case your 11+ tests may work on a different principle. Anyway, my understanding is that there is an average mark for each test which is then converted into a basic index score, ie where 100 is the average for all the children in that school year; and then the child's age is taken into account, so that for a given mark, an older child is marked down slightly and a younger child is marked up.

He said his English test didn't have numbered questions so he doesn't know now how many there were, but he thinks there were 2 parts to the Maths test and each had 20 questions - so the maximum mark would have been 40 (assuming only 1 mark per question) and an average maybe 25 (I am making this up as I go along!) so 25 would represent 100 for an average-aged child, ie with birthday on March 1st. An older child getting 25 marks would get a score lower than 100 and a younger child higher; and anybody whose mark was higher than 25 would get an index score relatively higher too, and vice versa.

How the actual mark converts into a score, and how the age weighting is calculated, I don't have a clue, they will have tables for all that.

Does this make any sense or have I made it sound even more complicated? (I may be completely wrong anyway, there may be eg 120 questions in each of your papers and the age weighting is then added to or deducted from their actual mark.)

janh, I can follow what you say, and I think that bit about finding the average mark, then doing some age related calculations is right, but the finer points of the calculation escape me. I bet the people who calcuate these marks passed their 11+ please say thanks to your son for explaining.

Anway I here's what Bexley LEA told me. Unlike the Kent system, you don't have to pass all four papers. The four scores are averaged up and then they see if your child meets that year's pass mark.

Assuming that the pass mark is, for instance, 118, that doesn't mean your child must get 118 questions right out of the 260 total. It's far more confusing than that.

If your child gets every question right, they score 140. But it is actaully possible to score over 140 if your child is younger than average. The usual score range for all year 6 children is between 70 - 140. The average is 100, but to pass the 11+ your child needs to score above average. The answers from the test paper are translated into a justified score (still not sure what this is). The justified score is put into NSER tables to take into account the child's age.

I did a rough calculation. Assuming 140 = 100% of the 260 questions right, the it should be possible to calcuate how many questions approx your child needs to get right for a pass score. Anyway thepin is right again - it's about three quarters, isn't it?

I really wanted to make some sense of the scoring system. The person I spoke to was not very cooperative. They really talked down to me and questioned why I wanted to know. FFS why are they being so secretive!!! I just want to have a rough idea of what my son needs to aim for, if only to see whether it's worth him taking the test or not.

They were very dismissive about coaching, as I expected they would be. Apparently they don't allow Bexely schools to offer special 11+ coaching and don't encourge parents to go this route. They say any bright child should be able to reason it out. If a heavily coached child passed but was boarderline, they really shouldn't accept a place at a grammar school as it would not be suited to them. I agree but only up to a point. The test IMO would be very hard to do if you had no idea of the type of questions you would be asked.

Reassuringly, Bexley do offer a familiarisation test for all 11+ entrants before the real test dates, and on the day itself, go through a practice run just before each paper (I think I got this correct).

I questioned them on the maths paper. Some questions a child simply could not do if they had not been taught the necessary theory IMO. They disgreed. They said any bright pupil could look at any of the questions and apply reason, even if they were unfamiliar with the terminology. Utter rubbish IMO! you either know what shape a rhombus is, what a mean average is, or you don't, as far as I am concerned.

the yr 5 internals are the QCA's I think and yes you get age standardised scores for sure. Quite hard to work out...
I'm not sure how the 11+ works or if it even the saem principle, our grammar school seemed to suggest not?
One more phone call to make then!!

Interesting about the top score being 140 because that's the top score in the school internals too...I have come across "140+" which would be a younger child with full marks, presumably...curiouser and curiouser!

Makes sense actually, if a good system already exists nationally for marking this kind of thing they might as well make use of it instead of cobbling their own together.

Actually 140+ is not necessarily full marks on the QCA tests. Some scores are even beyond measures and are not even given the 140+ score. Usually 140+ is close to or top marks depending on age. This is why age standardised scores are not necessarily useful.