Common Entrance Grades

[MrPickles73]

We have just moved to a prep that does common entrance. Our Yr 6 has just sat internal 11+ exams. Are the 11+ results an indication of what they will get at 13+ CE or is CE a significant step up?

So if you are say getting 75% average at 11+ does this mean you could get 75% at CE or 65%? how does it equate?

One of the big public schools near us has a min CE requirement of 50%. Is this difficult to achieve or does it mean its pretty much non selective?

I'd be grateful if someone can provide some advice on this as I don't know how CE scores equate to 11+ / GCSE. Thank you.

My two children sat CE, one sat it last summer.

Achieving 50% is not difficult, most public schools ask for 50 - 70% depending how selective they are. One of my children was top set at prep school and achieved mainly As, the other was middle set (but likes exams!) and achieved a mix of As and Bs with one C.

So unless your child is currently bottom set at prep I would think 50% average won’t be a problem.

Mine didn’t do 11+ so I can’t advise on that.

Hope that helps.

Me again. Just saw you were asking about percentages on another CE thread. The way CE works is your child sits the exams at their own school (usually), your school sends their exam papers to your first choice senior school and the senior school marks the papers (very quickly, within a week) and gives the results to your school.

Your senior school has its own grade boundaries for CE, so Sherborne might give a A* for 79% and Marlborough College might grade this as B. (Please note I have changed the names of the senior schools but the percentages and grades are true, my friend and I compared after last years CE results).

Your prep school should guide you through the system, the important thing is to choose a senior school that suits your child’s abilities so it doesn’t become stressful.

The exam board that run CE is the ISEB and they have a website which is pretty helpful if you want to check it out.

CE is a totally different ballgame. Also depends what level of paper is entered.

seablue1 thankyou this helps. So each school has their own grade boundaries!

Lizs are you able to elaborate? DC has internally sat papers for 11+ CE as practice in yr 6 and I'm wondering whether this is any indication of what they might get in 2 years time

The teaching in year 7 and early year 8 is specific to passing the CE exams. However there are different entry tiers and CAS level so a single % at 11 will not be directly applicable to those. The exam papers are marked by the destination school so marking may not be consistent from one to another. Different schools have different entry requirements and the tier entered will be relevant to that .

Is the level of difficulty equivalent to normal year 8 for CE or something more challenging?
If you do the common entrance and then move to an all through school in year 9 is it likely that you will be 'ahead' in say maths, french etc?

Potentially in French for example, if taken at higher level or CAS, but not necessarily so with some other subjects as they are text/topic based and these may differ to what others have already covered in y7 and 8. Ds had to do extra Latin over the summer to match the standard of existing pupils when joining at year 9.

LIZS thank you that's helpful. We have just moved from an all through school to the prep and it seems like the prep is advanced in French and Latin, the latter not even yet started at the all through school. So I was wondering if you join a girls school at year 9 whether a CE child would be ahead in e.g. languages, but it seems not necessarily.

Ds had actually started Latin in year 5 but was still "behind" comparatively by year 8. I think there was just not the same pace of teaching or timetable given over to it at prep.

What is an all through school? Is it just age 4 - 18?

When my children went to senior school (after CE aged 13) there was a big mix of abilities ranging from new Latinists (from state schools or abroad) to children who were so able that Greek was added to the mix. Their school has 9 sets (I think) so there is a place for all abilities and year 9 is a very fluid year with lots of movement between the sets.

I think sitting CE does put children at an advantage in that they have the discipline of studying for and sitting a number of formal exams. My children found the French oral pretty intimidating, they had to learn four separate topics (describe where you live, all the rooms, furniture, your garden, city or country side was 1 topic) off by heart and answer questions on them.

Not sure how much longer CE will remain in place, there are newspaper reports of dropping it and replacing it with senior schools own entrance exams.

Seablue1 quite right, a school that goes from 4 til 18. We came from one of those which tbh lacked pace and moved to a prep. Our children are top set but the Yr 6 is behind at the prep with French and hadn't done any latin but is catching up quickly.
I'm sure you're right - if you join a large senior school there will be plenty of sets so this will not be an issue. I'm wondering how it works at a smaller senior school say with 60 pupils in a year so maybe 3 sets.

Year 7 and 8 at prep schools is all about CE, plenty of time to catch up if needed and if they are generally in top sets they should be absolutely fine.

One other thing I would say and you probably already know this, is that senior schools look at English, Maths and Science grades first, these are the subjects that good grades are a must, all the other subjects have wiggle room. I say this as a parent who has heard a hundred stories over the years of senior schools being persuaded by the prep school Head to take Freddie who got a D in French and Geography (well below the 65% required by the school) because his English/Maths/Science were good.