11 plus support thread 2022

[PalindromemordnilaP]

Anyone else have a DC sitting 11+ this Autumn?

If so, would you like to chat on a support thread?

DD is sitting her exam tomorrow.

Anyone else? Waiting for the results will be nail-biting.

I'm so sorry @Emimoo84 . With the background of your DC I expect it came somewhat as a shock. I like the way that @Aethelfleda described it.

My DD said this week: "everyone knows me as being 'the clever one' so I'll feel like a fraud if I don't get in to the grammar, especially if others that I know do." I reassured her that her result to an unusual test on one day does not take away from her intelligence level, her achievements to this point or her achievements after. She mumbled "yeah, I know", but obviously thought I'm just her Mum trying to make her feel better and didn't take me seriously.

Taking the 140th child as the pass mark is hard going. Do they have a small PAN? What if a percentage of the 140 highest ranked pupils don't chose the school as their first preference?

I hope you manage to put it to the back of your minds to enjoy your holiday.

for a lot of places a “pass” isn’t anywhere near a guarantee of a place. Slough gets about 6,000 + applicants each year and has 4 schools with PAN 180/180/150/120 . so there’s 10 times the entrants as places, but 2,000 kids will “pass” with only 650 places available. Superselectives are even worse than this, some have thousands entry for a single school.

all we can do is prepare our children by whatever means we feel is right for them (whether that’s practice/home teaching/classes/tutoring) and see how they do. I’m personally against the huge tutor machine but mine did home practice with me, a short Easter how-it-works course with a friend to help boost their confidence , and a mock exam to show them how it all worked.

and yes it’s veey frustrating when you know how capable your child is and they don’t pass. I’ve been there.

@Emimoo84 your son sounds like a well rounded intellectual boy.

I detest using the term fail or pass, because the children haven't failed anything, they've done exceptionally well. At that age, to go and sit an exam, is in itself a huge achievement.
Your son sounds like a naturally bright child, who will do well in any setting as long as his learning is facilitated.

Also, a lot of the uk doesn't have grammar schools, im originally from a city where we didn't know what a state grammar was (always assumed it meant private as it was just those schools with the grammar name!)

All those children from non grammar areas do well, including the ones that head off to oxbridge.
There are also those, who decide to reject grammar places because they don't suit or cater for the child. The drive to get children into grammar schools can be insane, and people somehow feel that once their child is at the school it is an automatic stamp to success (and we all know that's not true).

I also think, it's better to know at this stage about getting a place rather than wait until March. In our area, achieving the required standard does not guarantee a place, so your child can spend the next few months excited about the grammar and come March have their bubble burst!

Hope you find a school that suits your son, maybe he needs one with better art or sports facilities, and a lot of academies now offer much more in the way of variety.

Hope everyone else is doing well..

Although they don't guarantee entry the pass mark in Dorset seems to be set that if you pass and are in catchment you are very likely to go. You'd be a bit nervous until March if you'd "just passed" but for all the years I've looked back you've got in if in catchment. Then out of catchment it's based on highest score.

We're in catchment so it's kind of pass or fail to get in.

I'm mostly worried about Other Children. Like poster above my child sees themselves as smart/often is seen that way by teachers etc so we've reassured her we think she's amazing and that if it doesn't go to plan to go into school with head held high.

I think she will still feel awful tbh but at least we've acknowledged it. We're actually talking at home as if she's going to Plam B now just to soften the blow (and a nice surprise if she did pull it put the bag!)

One question I have been pondering on the standardisation is this. My understanding is the same as @Aethelfleda in that the cohort determines the pass mark. However are genders standardised separately? How would it work if all girls were Einsteins and all boys were cavemen, given the single sex intake for most grammars?

In my area each school does it separately, so this would result in girls and boys being standardised separately, and also means one child can 'pass' for some but not all schools. In practice a child in that situation would be unlikely to get a place as they pass at least twice as many as places.

I am in Bucks, so a whole cohort test - I just wonder how they balance in this area?

If anyone else in here is CSSE (Essex) they have just updated their website to say results out tomorrow. I imagine preemptig Friday's postal strike.

There is no balance of scores for gender, @monkeyblonde , Bucks do standardise for birth month though, so that all the December-born children are analysed together, all the Jan-born children together, all the Sept-born children together. this is to stop a larger percentage of older children getting higher pass rates than their 11-month younger peers.

(Bucks isn’t a true whole-cohort test: some parents opt their kids out and Bucks definitely has its share of exam “tourists” from places like Harrow and Reading (even with absolutely no chance of a distance-based place).

It’s impossible to know the gender mix of passes (though I’m sure someone will make a freedom of info request at some point!). Some of Bucks grammars are single sex, and they can easily fill their places with those who do pass, which means the mixed ones can sometimes be a bit unbalanced as a result. BGS often has more boys than girls in the year, as a lot of the South Bucks girls who pass will go to Becky High (girls only) and a few of the boys will go to John Hampden (boys only, tight cachement) but more of the boys stay local at BGS.

and the answer is that if all the boys underperformed, fewer of them would achieve the pass mark. in Bucks there’s a thing called Selection Review, where if a high achieving child misses out by a point or few, their head can ask for the test to be overruled and them given a place anyway… which is purely to accommodate for the exam-tourists artificiall pushing up the pass mark by bringing in highly tutored pupils with no actual intention of taking up a place. for every one of those who “gets” a pass, two borderline kids will then fall under the 121 mark.

Can anyone explain to me how the selection review works in practice. Does a high performing child need a reason (eg illness, family problems etc) to explain a lower than expected mark, or is it merely X had a bad day and is normally greater depth across the board?

I was wondering about the reviews for near misses but I don't think dorset do them 😔

I don't they do them in North Yorkshire either. The whole process feels very antiquated and cloak and dagger.

Selection Reviews are a specific process seen in Bucks as an all-selective county. I don’t know if other places do them: they are there so local kids who really, really were expected to pass can be “converted” to a pass on Review and put into the first place allocatoon round (as opposed to Appeals which occur AFTER first of march where all the places have gone already) .

The way Bucks do it, the heads are asked to grade every student BEFORE they touch the papers (in 1st week September ) into 1 “amazing should be at grammar” 2 “well they work hard and are quite bright”, 3 “they try but not sure” and 4 “nah, this child is def not up to it”. The grades remain secret and sealed from everyone apart from Head and the Admissions panel.

then if the child gets 120 or 118 (pass 121) the parent can request a selection review, the head writes a recommendation letter, the secret pre-grade is looked at (heads are not allowed to rank everyone 1 or it gets discounted!!) and the Admissions panel make a decision. if it’s a yes, child’s CAF form is treated as if they passed outright. If it’s a no, then appeal is possible but unlikely to work.

See here for a longer explaination on the elevenplus forum.

bucks review

5 days to go here. Results out Monday. Feeling

Oops, phone glitched and I posted too soon!

Feeling so anxious.
Hate this whole thing.
Dreading having to tell DD if she hasn't ranked high enough for the school she really wants.

@Dynamix I think you might be waiting for the same ones as me. North Yorkshire here 🙂

I have been occasionally dipping in and out of this thread, mainly because it makes me too anxious to admit it's actually happening!

Results are out here, DS has a mark that will have got in some years and not in others, so the agonising wait will now be extended to March and possibly beyond 😥

I am exactly the same! To make it worse we are not in catchment so it'll probably be a no in March regardless of the outcome of the 11+. Nothing ventured nothing gained though I guess. Do you know anything about the waiting list and whether it usually has any movement? I'm imagining not, but have nothing to base that on. Good luck with your DC's results and here's hoping they both pass.

A big well done to your DS for achieving that highly. You are still in the running! I know what you mean about the wait till March though, and I think it's the hope that kills you.

@Dynamix yes! although I'm glad there is still hope obviously. He thankfully is superbly uninterested in knowing his results so I probably won't even tell him unless he asks, theres no need for 2 of us to worry, however it's made the elusive robust plan B feel even more important now and I still don't know which way to go on that.

It is so tough. Our second option of school (which we'd be a shoe in for) is actually also really good, which should make it easier, but it's so hard when you've gone through this whole process surviving on maybes... It definitely psychologically makes you want it more.

Oh wow. Well done Elven Dreamers son on a good score! Is there anyway of finding out - can the school tell you if you're in the top 160 or whatever it is? March is an agonisingly long time isn't it!

We're told in the letter if they've "passed" even though the mark varies year by year - they also report it in standardised scores which make no sense to me!

They should be posting ours tomorrow so hopefully Saturday . First class post isn't what it used to be though so may be Monday. I'd rather an email!

@MagnaQuestion thanks. sadly no way at this stage of knowing where he is in the mix, they don't publish anonymised scores lists until well after offers day as I recall from my DD last year, we just have to look at historical data. More than one school uses same test and some kids will be looking at several, some only 1 depending on their personal choices and where they live etc so it's really completely up in the air. Really proud of him though, in maths he refuses to miss out questions, you cannot convince him if it's a long difficult one to skip and come back, so he will have missed several 'easier' marks by persisting in ploughing through in order, I know he didn't complete the paper because of this so the ones he did do must have been ok at least 🤣