Northern Irish mums preparation for AQE exam?

[mykiddies]

Are there any mums from Northern Ireland who can give advice on AQE. Are you helping your child with practice papers at home or other and if so how often would you say is reasonable to expect in doing practice papers at home in preparation for November?

Didn't want your post to go unanswered!

My DD1 went through it last year, the school were able to give her loads of practice papers from the old 11+ (without the science) and there was a company who contacted the school with extra papers as well, which we did at home.

I did work with her at home, as well as the school stuff which they did - maybe if you ask the school they could tell you what areas your child is weakest in so you can concentrate on them?

Oh and good luck - it's hell!

Thanks for replying. I have bought some AQE practice papers from Easons and we did do some today. The problem solving questions my dd says they haven't done anything like that in school yet so i'm not sure if I would be explaining them properly. I'm sure if they are in the papers they will be doing in class?

Why don't you try going in to the school and see what they are doing?

Are the school preparing them at all? I was very lucky, my DD's school prepared them as if it was the old 11 plus IYSWIM.

Apparently they are doing a practice paper a week to prepare for it but lots of things in these papers I have bought DD doesn't seem to have done in class. One problem was multiplying by 3 figures and I'm not even sure how you do this myself but DD did say that they did it last year but she can't remember how you do it. Would it be a good idea if anything she wasn't sure about or wanted to know to ask the teacher but then I don't want teacher to say we'll be covering that soon.

whereabouts are you?

if you want to email me my addy is mairimcburney @ hotmail dot com

My DD did the 11+, she did a couple of papers a week in school, none at night but 1 or 2 a week in the summer holidays.

I know her old PS is still doing the 11+ papers minus the science.

The talks about them were this week in my area, have you not had yours yet? You can ask questions then.

Mine were doing a paper every other day, with some to do for homework as well. And they went in to school every other friday for 3 hours as well.

Just spotted this thread. I'm in NI and my DS will be doing the AQE test later in the year.
He is doing one test a week at school - its marked out of 80, and looks like the real thing.
We then get extra questions based on the same comprehension passage or poem, which takes around an hour to complete.
Homeworks are generally revision type work sheets.

The school hs is at, a normal primary in Co Down seem to be encouraging everyone to do the tests and the AQE later on in Nov/Dec; but it is possible top opt out if you want to.
We are being given work books for the summer holidays if we want them.

My DS wants to go to Methody or Inst, so he knows it is like an entrance test to get into a popular school and has accepted that.

Hi,

I'm in the same boat and have just started a small website to help people like us.

I have been finding it very hard to find any information on the internet, no-one seems to be really discussing these transfer tests and it was just by chance that I saw this post while I was scouring google and joined this site.

So far I have only put together a few pages but as I find more information I am adding it to the site.

At the minute I have just put links to a few forms for both the AQE and PPTC exams.

I was speaking to some other parents about the practice papers, we were all being told that it should be a paper a day with one day break a week but the practice papers and books in the shops seemed so expensive compared to what I was looking at online.

I ended up taking the isbn numbers and names of any papers or books that people were recommending to me and I am starting to put the links to them on a page too(don't know how successfully,I'm getting help with the technical things)

I don't know if I am allowed to post links here but I will put it in and see if the post gets edited by the moderators.

I call the website 'Northern Ireland Transfer Test' and the address is www.nitransfertest.co.uk

Now that I have found a place to chat I will be on here too.