Croydon High School entrance assessment

[joolsxxx]

Hi there
I'm new to Mumsnet and forums in general, so sorry if I'm doing anything wrong or this has been covered elsewhere.
I'm interested in my daughter starting Croydon High in Year 7 and wondered if anyone had any experience of the new entrance assessment. I'm interested in the content of the online test and whether it's necessary to tutor for it.
Any help/advice/experience much appreciated!
Thanks

Bump

I think they only introduced it last year. I understood it was designed so that it couldn't be tutored for.

I have avoided schools who only offer this type of ‘online’ CAT assessment.

GCSEs are ‘paper based’. They are designed so a child ‘can‘ study a given area and perform/apply your knowledge to any given question. These CAT type testing don’t therefore reflect IMHO realistically on a child’s ability and can be very demoralising and stressful for the child to be presented with questions they find difficult/not able to answer, due to the unfamiliar format in which it has been given.

Obviously, some children are able to adapt, but I wouldn’t look less favourably on any child who failed. Just a little advise... take it or leave it but do try to ensure you DD has options and sits a balanced number of traditional paper tests/assessments.

The test they sit is adaptable, so harder questions only appear if previous questions are correctly answered. There would not be a sea of unanswerable questions. In this day and age, I don't think an online test would be alien to most children!

CHS also has other elements to their entrance exam day - lessons, practical tests based on the lesson etc. Full details are on their website.

Echo what Seeline says. Online tests are standardised and adaptive. Schools are using them to gain ability rather than tutoring and you can't tutor for them. I am sure your daughter will be fine - it is a lovely school and I know people who have daughters there and they are very pleased with it.

Thank you all so much for all your advice and help!

Anyone else waiting for scholarship reply? Still waiting here and just wondering whether everyone gets a letter or only those who have been offered...

Croydon High Offer letters should have arrived on 1st Feb. We got ours

Please could you guide on areas to prep for a test and also what percentage fees discount as scholarship can be expected considering good performance in test?

I think the test is designed to be prep-proof (as far as possible).

As a previous poster said, they aim to gauge ability, rather than amount of tutoring.

It's a nice change from the frantic cramming for some school entrance tests. Much less stressful for the kids.

In terms of scholarship amounts, you are probably looking at 10%, 20% or 30% off fees. I know a lot of the girls who have scholarships and none of them is more than 30% (even if they get 2 scholarships, say music and academic, then the total isn't more than 30%).

I don't know about bursaries. I think they are available but I don't know amounts or criteria. It's not a rich school, though, so I wouldn't expect much of a bursary in normal circumstances.

My daughter is very happy there. It's a nice friendly school.

30% ? That seems very high for Croydon High. @Ektorpia are you referring generally to gdst schools or specifically croydon high as they only state 5-10 as a general rule

Yes, defo specifically Croydon High. My daughter has 20% academic plus 10% Drama scholarship. Quite a few of her friends also got scholarships and they discussed them when they got the news. They were mostly 10% or 20% per scholarship, but one girl got 30% just for academic (assuming she was telling the truth, but I have no reason to doubt her!). A few got more than one scholarship, but nobody got more than 30% total, so that seems to be a ceiling.

Oops name change fail!

I know this is an old thread but if anyone has any updates about how they have found CHS that would be really helpful.

Has the school met or exceeded your expectations?