ISEB PRE-TEST 2019

[Ds123]

Interested to know how others found the pre-test this year. Lots of the bright kids at Son’s prep school found the VR very difficult. I thought it was supposed to be adaptive so should not have been too difficult. Is that for English and verbal reasoning as well?

Yes my son sat it yesterday and found it very difficult and nothing like BOFA. Supposed to be adaptive....

Same here, My son sat Yesterday and he was hopeless. He said Atom learning was nowhere near.

I hope you all receive good news in the coming weeks . This won't really help but in case anyone is sitting next year, we used Keystone tests. My son worked his way up to level 10 after which he found the ISEB straight forward.

My twins sat just after the half. They say it's similar with BOFA but overall it was more difficult. They found VR is the easiest and Maths was the hardest for DC1 but English for DC2. I hope everyone will hear good news in a couple of weeks!

My son attends a state school so he sat the test at the independent school he applied to. We used Atom Learning and he did say the questions in the pretest were easier than Atom and that he found some almost exact questions in the Maths (as Atom). He said the Verbal was the easiest followed by Maths.

It is my understanding that the ISEB pretest is intelligently (algorithms?) adaptive. So if the child gets a question right they get a harder question, if they get it wrong they get an easier question. So every child gets a different test. Also the results are adjusted up or down for the exact age of the child. So a child that is only just 10 that does as well in the test as a child already 11 would get a better result than the older child.

So the children who found it hard could have done very well and those that found it easy might have not done so well. My children have all done it and found it hard, much harder than the practice ones they sent round and MUCH harder and nothing like the BOFA ones the school had them practice. We never got the results though they just got invited for interviews, so must have passed a base line requirement.

The impression that I am getting for English at least (and getting there with Maths too) was that it was tough from the very outset, rather than adapting to be tough when you’re hitting harder questions on the algorithm and scoring highly.

That is exactly what I heard from my son. He said the questions started really hard and stayed hard. Whereas with maths it was hard but doable.

Is the pretest they sit in Y6? Which schools is it for?

It’s a consortium of schools including St Pauls and the city of London. If you look it up on the ISEB website you can find the list of schools.

Thought so- thanks. This is all very useful as DS is sitting it in a couple of weeks!

Why do they all sit it at different times? The system is a bit odd.

Depends whether they sit it at a prep school or at the school they are sitting for.

But even at the various prep schools, the test is administered on different dates.

Each child essentially sits a different test as it is adaptive and results are determined by performance and age.

And some take it in year 6 and some in year 7

But the year my son took it, a friend did a week alter and they had the same english comp text so I don't think that one changes as much, as one would expect really

My son did ok , but did find some bits very hard.
Looking at the scores, amazing someone scored 193/195.....and every module saw at least one child getting full marks !👏

Where did you see the scores? I thought it was out of 145.

My son did it last year - we never found out scores

His school sent the website link together with his login details.
As well as his scores/answers to go through, it had averages and highest/lowest scores achieved by those that took it.

...this was the practice pre test

You can only find out the scores if you do a subject access request to the senior school. Only do this is you want to annoy them and don’t really want to get in!

You can’t find out the scores for the actual pre-tests unless you contact the senior school/s as Trinity says. Even your current school don’t get to know the scores.

Whilst platforms like Atom Learning / BOFA offer ‘mock’ tests, the actual pre-tests can vary significantly from these. ISEB does not have an official practice platform.

Has anyone gotten call backs yet from the senior schools?