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.

She just meant tricky problems that take time to get through. After, reading the responses, I have decided to just let it go and wait and see what happens. But it is good to hear of feedback from others. I will also tell my dd not to rush through at the end of the consortium.

My son sat the ISEB in his prep last week. Everyone from the top to bottom sets considers the tests easy, and easily finished these within the time limit, with some having quite some time to spare. The questions are not getting harder as an adaptive test should be. It is only a mildly selective prep with a wide range of abilities. Also, he thinks many of the questions are the same as others.

This seems odd. The final ISEB score is not determined by the ability to do difficult questions, but rather by the ability to weed out careless mistakes in the easy ones?

Also, from his knowledge, nobody experienced the tricky questions or sudden ending of the tests as above.

Thanks, I just hope Atom knows what they are doing and the scores will reflect the child's ability. It seems unfair when you just do not know if there is a fault with the program.

@SamPoodle123 yes, my understanding is that the kids who got booted off very quickly had not progressed beyond the entry level questions. That is to say, their hit rate on the easiest questions was not sufficiently high or consistent to enable them to progress to the next level question and that therefore the algorithm determined their result accordingly and ended the test. Those who stayed on a bit longer, but still finished with a fair amount of time left, may have managed enough of the entry level questions to move onto the next level, but then been beaten back by the increased difficulty. However, the whole adaptive testing process has been very opaque, so this is just my interpretation.

^ This is responding to @SamPoodle123 asking about the ISEB kids who finished excessively quickly, not to the comments on the PHS cohort.

@readingcat I have a feeling it is the same for PHS, as the test is adaptive. My dd finished the English early, so I assume for English she must not have gotten to the super tricky questions. I wish they would let us know the results in the end, even if they do not get in. I would like to have feedback on how she did in the actual exams.

@SamPoodle123 you can get a rough handle on the difficulty level of the English if you ask her about the SPG questions - the more complex the spellings or grammatical categories she was asked about, the higher the level. Same for word meanings or literary technique identification in the English comprehension.

@readingcat apologies, what do you mean SPG questions? I assume you mean the exam questions for Putney? I will ask her today more about the English to see.

I would really discourage anyone to try and read anything into how your child did based on their accounts of how the online exam went. Just try to distract yourself as much as possible, watch football, have a glass of wine, meet friends and wait for the results. Anything else is going to drive you crazy.

For what it's worth, my daughter (who luckily did her 11+ last year) said in her ISEB Maths she had tons of tough algebra and ratio questions which made us hopeful but somehow it turned out Maths was her weakest score in the end and in English which she found very hard from the outset she did surprisingly well. She found WHS super easy but then didn't get into the second round. She found the KGS Maths very hard, didn't finish and ended up getting an offer. And on and on, you just won't know anything until you get the results on paper.

@swgeek , I agree that we should not read too much into our DC's accounts (at least, I do not on the back of my DD's).
Just out of curiosity, how did you find out about your DD's ISEB scores? I was told by our primary that they do not get to see them (but would love to).

@QuiteAJourney it is true that your current school does not get them but if your child is rejected by a school they have applied to, you can ask the senior school for feedback and depending on the school, they might share the ISEB results broken down by section with you.

@swgeek - that is so useful to know. Many thanks for your swift and helpful reply.

SPG: spelling, punctuation, grammar
I do agree with @swgeek however that you can drive yourself mad over this and that you won’t change anything by trying to guess performance or anticipate results - difficult though it is not to!

Good luck to those sitting Ibstock today! @confu5ed and any others

@Daydreamscometrue thank you! Have you got it too? Good luck if so and to everyone else sitting today x

Thanks, yes, I agree....probably best not to overthink it! But I am glad I asked around and now I have told my dd not to guess at the end for adaptive tests. Accuracy is best and not to worry if she still has questions to go at the end. We have the London Consortium coming up, which is adaptive. And we have Emanuel, which is written.

@confu5ed we had it Saturday!

@1forward2back I know you asked to be updated if we heard on the LEH head. They've just announced it is Rowena Cole, think she was at St John's previously. Starting Sept 23. x

Thanks @confu5ed! That seems to have been a very long search for a new head. I read elsewhere on here that Rowena Cole left St John's very abruptly earlier this year (and no-one seems to know why). If anyone can shed any light on her as a head, that would be very helpful!

Thank you @confu5ed - I had also asked about St John’s! So bizarre. Like @LondonMum20222 i read she was moving on very quickly!

For those waiting for Ibstock I imagine we'll probably hear Friday?

@Daydreamscometrue I am assuming Friday. I think there were another couple of sittings today, so they will probably look at results of those and release all emails in one go.

Thanks @QuiteAJourney DS isn't expecting it to be good news.

DD thanks was quite disheartened by the ask of 25 questions in 6 minutes (she things she did 15.. but rushing so not sure). It was one of our favourite schools and very local so it will be gutting - I think I might need to "hide" it for her at least for the time being.
We will be hearing from WHS on Friday too and we are not expecting good news.