Tips for ISEB - our school’s first time

[Cornygirl]

Hello, we are at a school which has never done the ISEB test before, they are completely clueless (and so are we).

We have done some Atom tests in the last few weeks. Any tips, big or small, gratefully received! eg the school has just told us we may not be able to use their computer room so the children need to bring in their own computers. My son has an old laptop, or he could use an iPad. Is either better?

Many thanks

Why don't you ask the school you are sitting the ISEB for if you can be allocated a place at another school to sit the exam. Don't let your dc be the Guinea pig!

Usual multiple choice test-taking advice: read the questions, try to eliminate obvious wrong answers, make sure you've selected the answer you really want before submitting. Once you're done with each question you can't go back so don't rush thinking you can go back and check the ones you found tricky. If you're allowed to use paper, use it! Even if just to write down information from the question as you work it out, because you can then use it to re-check your answer before you press submit.

The English and Maths are relatively straightforward (except I sometimes disagree with the English answers), the two reasoning ones need a bit more practice as they have formulaic questions eg. cube nets, translations, matching, etc.

I don't know about bringing your own computer in, but I do think they can set their own schedule of tests. Our school does 2 on a Monday and 2 on a Wednesday so they have a break in between and if they have an off day it can be offset by the other day.

the nearest school which does ISEB is nearly 2 hours away, but I am now seriously considering it, thank you!

That's a long distance but if your school IT dept isn't onboard and happy to make sure all the equipment is working well it can be very stressful. For some small preps with perhaps 1 IT person it can be a big leap (I have seen this is practice but the IT person was on board and it worked well, I think on laptops).

we tried atom and pretest. Pretest plus uses much more similar format than the real ISEB test.