Part 2: SW London Girl's Indies 11+ Pandemic Panic!

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www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3962084-Upcoming-girls-independent-SW-London-schools-11-exams?pg=40

Hello all, this thread continues from the previous "Upcoming Girl's Independent SW London Schools 11+ Exams" thread set up by @Oceane11Plus.

@PatoPato cleverly noticed, message slots were running low for the epic long thread as above, so all chat now continues here...

[Post edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

Yes ours is tomorrow, so maybe that’s why we got it yesterday. Although it sounded like a general email sent to everyone because we got a separate email today with the interview invitation on

Re the WHS assessment - until the weekend, I couldn't envisage how a team activity could work but IPS had sessions of 2 teachers hosting 12 children on Saturday making full use of screen share, the mute button, hands up, private chat and turn taking.

It worked quite well but I would say that if a question was asked of all the children, the child first up would inevitably leave the rest who'd come up with the same answer without anything new to contribute. Equally if the first child comes up with a clever answer it's easy for the subsequent children to say 'I was going to say that'.

I know the schools say they are looking for a mix but I really hope the quieter/reserved child that takes a more considered approach as opposed to the me me me types, of which there were many on Saturday, will not get overlooked on the remote format.

I wish all the Registrars would pile on and give us their insights. All the guesswork is driving me mad & I've just got too much time on my hands!

What are these information sessions for LEH? We have only received the invitation to the interview but no further information? Did this come in a separate e-Mail? Not sure what to expect at the LeH interview and how “academic” it will be...any intel from previous years?

DD currently sitting an exam invigilated through Zoom with mics & video on. All I can hear from from the room next door is a cacophony of typing noises from 9 other kids' keyboards coming though the mics
Is there a setting in a group zoom where your mic is only linked to the host? It's very distracting - poor DD and all the others! I can't even go in to tell her turn her volume down

@PatoPato apologies, my tech knowledge is appalling.. I have to get DD to remove the ‘fake’ backgrounds and expand the screen for me!

Which exam is this? You’d think they’d all be done by now!

SPGS - it's appalling. I may as well be in there with her unloading the dishwasher. I can't believe the noise coming out of her speakers whilst she tries to focus!

I would call the school and flag it. There might be an instruction the invigilators can give that will change the settings and if not at least it’s recorded as a concern. x

@PatoPato That's very annoying. The host should have asked them all to mute themselves or muted them all

I use Zoom a lot for work and I don't think there is a way to mute other participants without sharing co-host control, or a way for the host to be the only one that hears everyone. Unfortunately Zoom is designed so that lots of people can hear one person without distractions, not the other way round.

Plugging headphones into the microphone jack but then leaving them on the desk rather than wearing them would re-route the sound from the speakers - might make the noise less distracting? May be too difficult to hear instructions from the invigilator properly though.

@TeddyDidit I think the problem is that the invigilator needs them all to have microphones on to make sure they're not receiving help off-camera.

Oh, I see: I'm guessing the mics must be on so the invigilator knows if someone else is in the room. How tricky! Must be a way around it. I hope your daughter isn't too put off by it

Sorry @HereIAmDontTreadOnMe - cross-posted!

It's over (was mercifully short) & DD said it was indeed really distracting but it's done now.
I just can't believe they all managed to work through the keyboard two finger bashing, pencil scratching & big sighing noises & there was avoiding it.
We've now done every type of online exam available. I'd say Mettl with an on-screen exam seemed the best cheat proof, non distracting form of invigilation & Zoom invigilation with mics on and exam on-screen was definitely the worst. Zoom with mics off but sideways on (for paper exam) was far better. ISEB was by far the least painful or stressful.
Just listing my experience here in case Admissions ever tread these threads. I would if I were them

*no avoiding it !

interested in comparing real ISEB scores versus ATOM's ISEB mock. has anyone had a chance to get hold of their DCs results yet ?

Ahh, @PatoPato, I feel you!

Thanks for the encouragement on earlier re Hampton. It's very much down to interviewers at this age (and, based on my own experience, for a considerable length of time thereafter), and you just can't control it.

The "big sighing noises" made me laugh. My DS does exactly that when he is stressed through a challenging problem, but, luckily, all've been spared of this, as none of ours were via Zoom.

Mettle was ok, but personally felt a bit re-purposed and unpolished. Also, faffing around with the QR-codes, when it turned out that I could just use the existing scanner, was unncessary.

Anyway, nearly done now, and we'll be able to laugh about it eventually, I am sure!

@PatoPato - same here with DD's exam this morning, a lot of typing noises and shuffling of papers but thankfully it was all over rather quickly. Good luck to our DDs!

@montlieu - yes, I'd really like to know that as it would be useful to corroborate the correlation stats they are spouting.

@YossaHughes we received the LEH info session email yesterday around 4:25pm, maybe check your spam? But it could have been sent at different times to different people. The dates are:
Mrs Hanbury’s Information Sessions
The sessions will start at 4.30pm on the following dates:

Tuesday 19th January
Wednesday 20th January &
Thursday 21 January

@montlieu the cynic in me believes very few ISEB scores will ever be shared. It opens the floor to comparison between candidates and comparison between schools. I think the closest parents will be able to do is compare average atom score with ability to reach interview/offer stage and even this could be skewed by state/indie boy/girl type demographics.. infuriating though!

LU will tell you which quartile your child was in, but that's all.

@noellejoy thanks for that - I checked all my in boxes and haven’t received anything. Just an invitation to the interview on Wednesday morning. Can you let me know who it was sent from so I can e-Mail them and query? Many thanks!

I wonder if Atom subscribers will be contacted by Atom in March to ask which schools they got offers for. It would be great data for them to have.
After one of their ISEB seminars I emailed them to ask what sort of Atom SASs few of the schools we'd applied to might expect and they provided the following:

SPGS: 120+ SAS, equivalent to 128 CAT.
G&L: 118+ SAS, equivalent to 126 CAT.
PHS: 115+ SAS, equivalent to 123 CAT.
WHS: 117+ SAS, equivalent to 125 CAT.
FHSS: 114+ SAS, equivalent to 122 CAT.

I feel these are on the low side in term of Atom SAS. I have no idea about CAT scores as our school have never done them.

I think those CAT scores are too low. Top CAT score is 141 and I imagine super selective schools would look for 135+. But this is all speculation of course. The schools are never going to reveal this stuff.

On the CAT4 scores, I think it works slightly differently to simply adding 8 to the SAS. I know that online providers have been saying this to parents but it just isn't correct in statistics. CAT4 is a measurement of academic potential and is represented by a normal curve of distribution. What that means is that the vast majority of children's scores are grouped near the mean which is 100. There is a standard deviation of 15, so around 2/3 of children will score between 85 and 115.

As the scores get higher, the number of children achieving those scores decrease exponentially. So for instance, only around 3% of children score over 127; 2% over 130; less than 1% over 135; and when you reach 141 it's something like 0.1%. And to note, it is technically possible to achieve over 141 but that's the ceiling for most cognitive assessment providers (I think Atom's ceiling is 142 though).

I appreciate that there might be an uplift but it wouldn't be a blanket number such as 8 for all children's SAS, because the uplift would get smaller as the scores increase.

There's a really nice explanation on the elevenplusexams site if anyone's interested! www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/viewtopic.php?t=512

And you can see the normal distribution here: www.gl-assessment.co.uk/sites/gl/files/images/Files/Testwise/CAT3-guidance.pdf

Hope that helps!

I agree with you @Flossietea on the Atom 135+ being more likely at the top end with an equivalent uplift all the way through that list

I wonder if Atom will continue to stand by these figures in future years - especially after this year and the prevalence of the ISEB as a means of entry test. If people's experience is that the Atom SAS being seen at home is mismatched to school offers coming through it's sort of a mis-sell.

@dazedandconfused11plus - there's so much chat on MN re CATs and they are just a mystery to me. Our small, non selective indie doesn't do them. Are they an independent school thing or a state school thing. Are they commonplace? I enjoyed the stats part of Atom as it gave me a measure which we'd not had before other than how DD did % wise in a test and sometimes what the median % mark attained in the year group was. CAT sounds useful

Those scores look right. The gap between ISEB and CAT is because CAT is standardised to the entire U.K. school population while ISEB is standardised to independent school children cohort only.

If you look at St Paul’s ISI report the school says based on national standardised tests basically all its pupils are in the top 10 percent and about half of it’s students are in the top 3 percent which is a standardised scorer of 128 or higher.

There really aren’t any schools whose entire intake is above 130 (top 2 percent) on standardised tests.