ISEB- What are the Implications of Not Completing the Test?

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My son is sitting the ISEB assessments (Year 6) in a few weeks for a number of schools. We are currently overseas so he will be sitting them independently rather than in his school and his current school doesn't advise/ support as it is a through school. I'm finding it hard to find information on how many questions there are and how to give him advice on how to pace the test. Typically he rushes and I am telling him he needs to work more steadily, but what are the implications of not completing the test? Adaptive tests are new to me, so any advice appreciated. I understand that the questions are adjusted depending on whether the child gets the answer right, but are they better to finish or to risk not completing but get more questions right? TIA

Iirc there is no end as such with the online tests, you get questions until time is up.

Thanks - the ISEB guidance refers to a progress bar so that confused me. Possibly it means how much time is left.

I’m pretty sure it is timed? With a set number of questions? But you don’t score more marks for rushing. You score more if you unlock harder questions. Harder questions will take longer than easier ones.

So:Don’t go super slowly on the initial (easier) questions, but do try to answer them accurately to unlock more difficult questions. Work consistently& as accurately as possible. This was my understanding of it, but I could be completely wrong!

Thanks jumpalicious. Yes, it’s definitely timed - it was more about whether you can run out of questions. But you’re right- the key thing is to stop him rushing. I’ve used Atom to familiarise him but feeling a bit ‘argh- we don’t know what we’re doing’ vs. If he was in a feeder prep.

Oh I see :-).

I’m pretty sure there is a set number of questions, not an endless number. And the number isn’t that high. Speed isn’t being tested (unlike at grammar schools, where they don’t expect many if any to finish the test). Since you’re on atom, this should be apparent?

Or is he not in fact finishing the paper in the time allowed so it looks as tho the qus may continue? If he’s not finishing, but getting high scores, this is fine - it means he’s unlocking the hard questions. In which case, don’t worry about not finishing the test.

On the other hand, if he rushes through the test, finishes it/or doesn’t finish!, but gets a low score it means he’s made lots of little mistakes on the easy questions and hasn’t unlocked any of the harder ones. Speeding just to get access to more questions is pointless.

One thing to note is if you’re on atom there’s a chat box where you can ask them these questions and get a proper answer, in case anything I’ve said is inaccurate! Or if things have changed since ds sat it last year.

Our DS sat the ISEB last year, and was at a state primary, so we were completely dependent on Atom for practising too. DS's natural tendency is definitely to rush through tests. I seem to remember Atom did highlight when he'd raced through practice tests - are you getting any kind of message about rushing or "you did X questions in only xx minutes" as part of your DS's feedback?

A friend of ours who teaches in a prep school advised it was really important not to rush the first few questions in the ISEB. Apparently, the algorithm that determines the difficulty of the questions your DC is shown in the ISEB is quite conservative, and will take a long while to get round to showing your DC the harder, higher-scoring questions, if their performance on the initial questions is very up-and-down.
We did eventually persuade DS to slow down, his Atom practice scores went up, and in the real thing, he said he finished each section with a few minutes to go.

Thanks everyone. DS sat the maths and english papers yesterday- will do the reasoning papers tomorrow. He had one question left on maths when he timed out and finished the English with two mins to go so seems that he didn't rush (for once!). Hopefully he'll have done enough. He's bright enough, but homeschooling (we had prolonged school closures here) plus Atom was not a happy combination so we probably didn't get the most out of it in terms of using all the functionality- was enough to try to get ds to do a daily practice without then getting him to go through his mistakes etc. Also quite hard to get him to focus on getting into schools he's never seen - it's such an abstract concept for him!

Best of luck op! Can you let us know how he gets on? Overinvested! It sounds promising. That he was timed out on last qu could suggest he was unlocking the hard questions. Fingers crossed!!