The Hall - assessment this year

[bakinka82]

Any parents here whose boy (s) is due to have assessment for The Hall (for reception year) this month? The procedure this year is very different because of the pandemic and I feel quite lost as to how to go about it :S

How is the Hall’s assessment different this year? There are numerous posts about how various schools are changing their 4+ admissions process, so other parents whose children have been through a similar assessment process may be able to help.

This year, instead of 30-40 face-to-face playdate, they want an unedited video of 60 seconds max (!) of the boy doing something showcasing his fine motor skills... 60 sec video vs 30+ min of live interaction... seems quite unfair to the kids... I am seriously thinking of just asking for application money to be refunded because we did not sign up for this. They could just wait till schools open and do the playdates and move the date when they make offers.... while everything around is changing, the date the offers come out remains the same

meant to say 30-40 mins of playdate

Honestly for 4+ selection they might as well be flipping coins. I would do the video.

Maybe during the activity you or a sibling could pass him something and he could demonstrate saying thank you as well.

My son is really good at all those fine motor activities but 60 seconds is just not enough! I wonder if we go a bit longer - do they just 'disqualify' you?... it's not like this has been tested before... as far as we know anyway. Thinking of writing to school about this but unsure whether it will do more harm than good

This might work out in your favour to be honest. In a 30 minute play your child may have time to get in a little fight, start crying, say something rude etc. Just a little thing that disqualifies him when there are so many applicants. He won't have that chance now.

In a playgroup how many children attend? If it is about 25 or 30 they won't have more than a minute or two of individual attention anyway really. People form first impression in seconds, I don't think this video will be more or less fair than other years. Remember it doesn't matter how the selected last year or how they select near year - your son is not in those cohorts or 'competing' with those children. Your son is being selected this year through the 60 seconds video but so is every other little boy.

Finally2021 - you might be right... i hope you are right :-) however, for the ftf playdate they were going to have max 5 kids at a time, so definitely a little more attention than a minute for each child

I see re numbers, that is a pretty different scenario. But hopefully it will work out just fine.