11+ independent schools entrance exams next week - now remote!

[mammmamia]

My DS sitting exams next week for a north London boys’ independent school and we were told yesterday the exams will now be remote.

They’ll have to log into a zoom call and parents print off the papers and scan them and send back.
Is anyone else in this position and feeling very uncomfortable about it?

Hi OP, there are a couple of current threads on this that you might be better hopping onto - one on Tier 4 Entrance Exams and one on Upcoming Girls Entrance Exams - both in the Secondary topic.

We are sitting for the same school. Incredibly frustrating and I'm worried about the turnaround times for printing scanning etc but we're all in the same boat. What can you do?

@warfinch I saw those and it’s been interesting to see what other schools are doing. But really wanted to hear what people think about the remote exams specifically.

We are sitting the entrance the exam for south west london independent and it has been move to online mode too.

My son is also doing an exam at home next week and I’m very uncomfortable with it all ...
Will the children concentrate at home as they would in an exam hall?
Maintaining a quiet house for the whole morning will be a challenge - we have three children and three dogs!
What if the WiFi glitches?
How cheat proof is it on zoom?
Printing, scanning and emailing the scripts will be a sprint!

I think you will find it works out.

My son did a familiarisation test paper abs if he moved away or did a sudden movement it clocked this.

I don't think people with cheat.

Preferable now to in-person. I know that some pupils were meant to be in isolation and they still attended an in-person test.
This was the last week of term.

Thanks for the reassurance @highfiver
They’re just being invigilated over zoom so I don’t think it will be that sophisticated. Our biggest fear is people cheating. We would never cheat but I think people will and DS will lose his place as a result. He’s worked really hard and it makes me angry.

@mammmamia

Thanks for the reassurance *@highfiver* They’re just being invigilated over zoom so I don’t think it will be that sophisticated. Our biggest fear is people cheating. We would never cheat but I think people will and DS will lose his place as a result. He’s worked really hard and it makes me angry.

If it makes you feel better I swear that we will also be doing it to the absolute letter of the rules and I'm sure most will. I actually think it would be quite difficult to cheat and bear in mind there have been interviews and there are school references and for many CAT scores to compare it to. Not worth getting more stressed or stressing your DS at this point.

I think it would be incredibly hard to cheat. And surely very very few would even contemplate it! They record the child throughout and would detect anything suspicious at all. It’s a total faff but I have total confidence that it will be pretty much cheat-proof

Yes - I’m not worried about people cheating (and would never dream of it) surely even people who don’t care about the morals realise they would be caught/ it was obvious?

I am however worried about DS focussing at home at all... I just can’t see him performing properly without a teacher or any exam environment pressure!

Agree that it's not all just on the exam. I remember talking a while back to an admissions registrar I know socially, and she said that by this stage, the schools have a pretty good idea who they're likely to offer to - the exams are really a final check and confirmation of academic ability before the interview. Of course there will always be surprises - kids who perform much better or worse than expected - but generally the final offer list probably isn't very different from what an experienced registrar would already have predicted from CATs, references, grammar scores or whatever other data is available. In terms of practicalities on the day, can you start preparing now by setting up a quite sterile exam space, to replicate an exam environment as much as possible? When we were doing 11+ practice at home, we made sure the last couple of practices were done in exam conditions, with a cleared desk, sharpened pencils, rubber and ruler lined up with no other equipment nearby, an exam clock on the desk, silence in the room/house, and no getting down from the desk until the time was up, regardless of whether DS had 'finished' (to make sure he actually did check his work thoroughly). It seemed to help achieve a balance of taking it seriously enough but not getting too overwhelmed by the novelty of an exam environment on the day.

Yes my DS has already had his interview but needs to score a certain % in the exams to get a place.
The problem is that he hasn’t done particularly well in the mock tests at school but has really turned a corner over the last 4-5 weeks. So I am worried that a much better exam score than what he was producing at school will now look suspicious.
He’s quite borderline for getting into this school anyway but we thought he had a genuine chance of doing well in the exams before this happened.

I completely agree with @annahavana , the registrars have so much experience that they can almost predict who they will offer to regardless of the exam result. Once your dc is settled in a secondary school and you get to know the dc in the class you can understand the selection process. (Ie you think I can't believe that person got in and then you discover they have 2 siblings at the school and they play county level tennis).

What I think might be more difficult this year is some of the academic secondaries will take an academic boarder line sportsperson to help their teams success esp in rugby/football/cricket/hockey and this will be more difficult without sports scholarship assessments, I'm guessing they will use sports references and level played at clubs instead.

Gosh - that makes me feel worse! DS as I said is borderline and in a year group of some very academic, sporty and musical kids, the vast majority of whom have siblings in the school

Can I ask (as a total newbie to this, with son in state school) what schools are looking for re references? Obviously they place a lot of importance on them, but is it confirmation of academic ability, behaviour, extra curricular interests/ achievements - or all the above? Thanks!

I really don't think I'd be worrying too much about cheating. I imagine it's pretty difficult to do, certainly to an extent that's going to make a huge amount of difference. I mean, how would you actually do it? Stuff secretly pinned on the wall isn't really going to help a candidate that much, without knowing the questions in advance, and if you've got loads of English and maths stuff pinned up then it's going to be pretty obvious if a child is frequently referring to it. If there's no parent in the room then they can't give answers - and again, if they're secretly in the room then I can't see how they can give very much help without it being incredibly obvious. I just can't believe many parents would have the balls to try cheating, particularly as this is a new situation for everyone, so no one will have thought much about it in advance. As for the risk of you being accused of cheating, again, I don't see how a school could do this without some pretty concrete evidence - so just make sure you stick scrupulously to the rules and procedures and I'm sure you'll be fine.

In a way, if your son has to meet a fixed score to get a place, then I would see that as an advantage. Where there isn't a fixed score, then a registrar might decide that one very good exam score in the context of a child who perhaps hasn't performed so well previously might not be enough to trump another child who has a slightly lower score on the day but a more consistent performance in previous assessments. But if the school has already said that your son just needs to score X% on the test and he does, because his performance has improved recently, then that's great.

notomisogyny it's a combination. And again, don't forget that registrars are very experienced and good at not only seeing through references from prep schools but also understanding that state schools are less experienced at writing them (and may refuse altogether). We also went through this experience from a state school, and were given lots of reassurance about this from the school. If your primary either refuses to write a reference or you suspect it might not include what it needs to, you might have the opportunity to provide things yourself like previous school reports and your own summary of your child's interests and achievements? In a way, the private school process can be kinder to a state applicant than eg a state grammar entrance process, because an independent school has the leeway to look at the whole child, and to consider all the data they have in light of the school the child attended, rather than being obliged to rigidly use a single result from an exam that a prep school might have endlessly drilled for.

Thank you @annahavana! I think our state school
is quite practised at reports as quite a few children apply for indie schools every year. But obviously us parents never see them! We were asked to send in details of out of school activities/ achievements etc. But I also assume they can’t write a negative report so I assume there just be an element of ‘code’?

@mammmamia

Gosh - that makes me feel worse! DS as I said is borderline and in a year group of some very academic, sporty and musical kids, the vast majority of whom have siblings in the school

Honestly it's starting to sound like you've convinced yourself he is going to be disadvantaged and if he doesn't get in you're going to blame the change in method. The change is common to all. Fill him with confidence and see how it goes.

I hear St Paul's girls have abandoned the exam altogether and are basing it on a zoom interview. At least your son is sitting an exam. My son is doing the same one as yours. We tested positive for Covid on Boxing Day. But he's going to do the exam, at home on Tuesday, no excuses or special dispensations. What will be will be. I'm not sure what you're looking for from this thread. Your son is no harder done by than anyone else

Hello!

Just popping over from the girls indie thread to express support/mutual frustration..

As pp have said I think ability to cheat (and desire to do so) is relatively low. Most parents want their child to be given a fair chance to demonstrate what they are capable of and they have all worked so hard.. from a personal perspective there’s no way DD’s chances would be improved by me helping her.. she’s far better at maths than me!

DD has already undertaken 2 pieces of parental invigilated creative writing at home and tbh it was really tricky as she didn’t understand the fixed time scales and how a piece of work written under exam conditions wouldn’t look the same as one written up in ‘best’ at school. We had a tug of war at the end of the first one with her sobbing and refusing to submit something ‘shoddy’ and me having to enforce the boundaries and say “tough!”

I’m hoping with a third party invigilator this will be easier, but it’s still hard to get them in the exam mindset. I really feel for those who don’t have a suitable home environment or limited tech.. how is this levelling up?

I think both schools and parents are trying to make the best of a tough situation, and as pp said, it’s a great life lesson in resilience and flexibility. It’s definitely worth running a ‘mock’ if you are homeschooling this week and have a strategy in place if there’s a meltdown.. plus a big bribe and something fun planned for after!

@NoToMisogyny

Can I ask (as a total newbie to this, with son in state school) what schools are looking for re references? Obviously they place a lot of importance on them, but is it confirmation of academic ability, behaviour, extra curricular interests/ achievements - or all the above? Thanks!

I think the most important aspect of the reference (if coming from a private primary) is if you are up to date on your fees!

Otherwise - attendance and behaviour

It's common for state primaries to not provide references so I don't think they matter much

Thanks! You made me lol re the fees 😂😂

Am also laughing about fees!

I've always wondered what is in these 'school references' as I have no idea at all. They are thing of great mystery at our school. I'd pay money to see what's in ours.

My very tiger sister-in-law who has been through it 3 times with her now teenage children told me that one of the public schools she applied to asked the preps (some of which were very much feeders) to rank their applicants in order of who they though was most suitable for the school. I was completely by this and still can't actually believe it.

PatoPato If you ask for a copy of it they are legally obliged to provide it