SW London Girls' Private & Grammar - applying for year 7 in 2023

[EmotiveBubblez]

i myself have been looking for this thread and have been unsuccessful. Saw a couple people mention it over the past day or so on the 2022 one.

so here we go, albeit a bit late.

has everyone visited all the schools on their lists?

how many schools are everyone applying to?

what schools are you applying to?

how is the preparation going?

i know some exams have taken place, how did they go?

wishing all the whirls good luck with preparation and exams, hope we all find the right schools for our daughters.

@avaramona Same experience here with Ibstock.

Yes my DS said the same. A boy next to him had some paper but he didn't.

Does anyone know when we get the Ibstock result? I know there is a second sitting on Wednesday.

@Daydreamscometrue I am assuming towards the end of this week. As you say, they have a second sitting on Wednesday so they may want to see results from then.

The email that they sent with the details for the stage 1 assessment referred to knowing on w/c 28th whether DC where to progress to Stage 2.

Yes I remember reading that and thinking it would probably be mid week until I realised that there was a sitting on Wednesday. I'm just trying to juggle work commitments.

@Daydreamscometrue I so know what you mean re: work commitments. The last two months have been so chaotic in terms of taking time off at short notice!

@QuiteAJourney I've been in and out and then realise that January won't be any different if he's lucky enough to have interviews! Or group sessions as they now seem to be.

Interesting to know how people’s employers have been with the short notice or taking the leave.

it’s been a juggle doing it all and keeping everything normal with usual activities.

My DD will have a test next Tuesday but the school has not told us the exact time!

@uk2020 that's difficult to manage

Anyone dd take the Putney high exam? I am worried because my dd said she guessed for the last 5 math as she ran out of time! I am worried firstly, that she did not finish and that she made guesses. I think it would have been better to leave blank!

There is no need to worry. First because you can t change anything anyway.. secondly because the fact that she did not finish or that she rushed the last 5 questions do not mean anything in term of her score first. Also this is an exam so her performance will be compared to all the other taking the exam. If she had finished with no guess and all the other have done as well that does not mean she will pass. If she has not finished 5 questions and all the others have not either that does not mean anything else either..
atom is very unpredictable and a bit of a lottery. unfortunately there is nothing you can do anymore until beginning of Jan.
you can try gauging what the other has done on here but I doubt that it will be reflective of the 600+ girls that sat the exam anyway so you ll end up either stressing more or with false hope when the reality is nobody can say if it is a good sign or a bad sign.
i am sure your daughter did her best and that is everything you can be sure about :)

I went through this process last year, and I’d agree that those who come out saying it was easy / they finished with lots of time to spare etc don’t necessarily do any better than the DC who come out saying the opposite. My dd came out of the WHS exam having not finished the NVR bit (I can’t remember if she didn’t do the last questions or gave random guesses in the last 20 seconds), but ended up with a scholarship offer.

@Highropes could you tell us a bit more of what stage 2 of WHS entail please? lenght , if there is any interview, any creative writing exercise etc?

@Lolakath19 It was online (due to covid) and was about an hour of small group work on a topic. I can’t remember what, but dd found it fun, and that the teacher running it made sure everyone had a chance to speak and no-one dominated.

A few years ago, when older dd did it, it was a long morning with a carousel of activities which were largely group work but a little bit of writing at the end. I remember she did an acrostic poem, as her primary school was very big on them, but it was quite an open question so she could have done a story or a letter or something. There was some maths in one of the activities (how much paper to cover the floor, or something).

I think the WHS dependence on VR/NVR encourages people to focus on that, when in the real world time spent on maths and English would be much more useful. I know they say that it doesn’t improve with lots of practice, but I’m not sure that’s true and I’m absolutely certain that doesn’t stop some people making their dds do tons of practice. My experience with dd1 was that really its about the VR/NVR mark, with the second stage moving them a little bit up or down the ranked list at best or (presumably) weeding out really difficult characters. But I do like their second stage, as it’s just just turn up and be polite, no more revision / practice papers etc.

@Lolakath19 I'm pretty sure there's stuff further up this thread about the WHS interviews last year - all pretty detailed. (If it wasn't on this thread, it was on another 11+ thread, so worth doing a quick search - it was really informative!)

Do you think the girl who finished quickly did not manage to get to the level of the more difficult questions? Or do you think there was a fault to the adaptive test in that she kept getting the easy questions?

My daughter had what the others described as really long word problems that took time to answer, so she was not able to finish the test in the end and start to make guesses in the last minute....which I am really worried about.

The ones who got booted off quickly, do you think it was because they made mistakes and could not get past the easy questions, therefore the test ended early? Why wouldn't the test just keep going to see if they could manage it and move on to the next eventually?

My dd took the PHS and said she got all these long worded problems that took time to do. She said the test started easy, then went on to these long word problems that took a lot of time so in the end she did not have time to finish so she made some guesses in the last minute. This made me really worried that her guesses will negatively impact her score. I wish the tests just kept going for all so kids do not start panicking at the end when they have not finished. I have now told her do not make guesses if you start running out of time on the adaptive tests in the end (we have the london consortium next).

As far as I know, the girl in question kept getting easy questions, as if the test was not adaptive. I would be rather surprised is she made lost of mistakes in easy questions - she has invited for interview at KGS and she did not report having a bad day (she was just surprised that all the questions were so easy).

What I do not understand though, if children who are strong in math kept getting easy math questions on Putney, wouldn't they be getting those correct and moving to the next level? Or do you think there is a fault in the system, and they are just being kept at the same level even if getting them correct?

I am worried because my dd said it started out easy and then she got so many long word problems that take forever to answer so she ran out of time in the end and guessed on a few in the last minute. This concerns me that this will mess up her score. But, I assume, this would be a natural tendency for some to suddenly panic at the end if they have questions left and only one minute left. I am really worried she did this and it might have messed up her results.

Nobody knows what is the algorythm behind Atom and how score are calculated, so I doubt you will the answer to your question. What does your daughter mean by long word problem? can she remember an example. If she found them hard then probably she was doing well.

Does anyone have further info on the ISEBs timing out? DC said one of his subjects finished much earlier than the others and though he thought there were more questions to come (by looking at the progress bar), the test ended abruptly. I imagine it's because ISEB have gathered all the data they need at that point but it also means less time/opportunity to show what you can do

My DD had a somewhat similar experience - on one of the tests she thought she had 4 questions left (or so showed the bar) so rushed answering the one she was at. That was, in fact, the last one! She is adamant that she did not get it wrong and that it showed 4 questions left that suddenly disappeared. Sounds similar to what your son experienced.
The more I hear about this adaptive tests (be it ISEB or Atom), the more I am convinced that nothing beats your 'traditional' paper exam, with same questions for everybody and just a range of difficulty to cater for different abilities.

@Claphamrise @QuiteAJourney my so had the same experience. Has quite a number of questions left and was rushing though to finish then suddenly the test was over and other questions disappeared. No idea if this is good, bad or of not consequence though!

That is interesting to know. So I will make sure my dd understands that just because she sees there are more questions left at the end, do not rush through, because she could very well be at her last question and the others go away.