11+ Exams - Are we being realistic? / Waiting List offers

[Greenstheword]

This is my second time going through the 11+ process. Eldest DS was a breeze - academic and enthusiastic about revising for exams.

My 10 year old DS who is now sitting exams is mildly dyslexic and scoring 100-120 on CAT tests, depending on the day.

He has problems with spelling and his handwriting is slow and untidy. His Maths is great but he rushes and makes mistakes. On ISEB papers he generally scores in the 80's % On Atom he's scoring on average 115.

I am worried he will end up without any offers at all. We just learned he did not make the second round for Kingston Grammar. Our other schools are:

Hampton, Reeds, Emanuel, Ibstock and Radnor House. Realise he's unlikely profile for Ibstock but didn't want to leave it out as we live very close by.

Has anyone had WL offers from the above schools and did your DC have a similar profile.

Thank you

You can ask Atom directly for the scores of any school you want to target. LU is 118-122 I believe.

Thank you - that is really helpful. I’m assuming that is the standardised score that they give on Atom?

I would personally take the SAS / CAT scores information from Atom with a (big) pinch of salt.

I find rather surprising that Atom has information on which scores apply to different schools, tbh. The two sources of that information would be either the schools or the children / parents. The schools won't have the CAT scores for all children and even if they did they won't be allowed to share them and, of course, they won't have the standardised scores. As for the children / parents, not all families are signed to Atom or have CAT scores and they won't be sharing with Atom which schools they are going to.

Beyond that, the kind of tests used for CAT / SAS are rather different to the entry exam of most schools, including the inclusion of dimensions like creative writing, group exercises and interviews play a role.

Putney High have emailed to say that there isn't any movement on their waiting list at the moment. It looks like they are full - at least for now.

Some parents do share with Atom what schools their dc got offers to. I was told this when I asked about the SAS targets for certain schools. After our dd got offers we told Atom which schools she got into in case it might help them get an idea of scores for future parents. I found this target extremely helpful when getting an idea of our dd had any chance to the schools we were applying. She is at a state school, and they were not helpful. Also, we had no idea about the competition out there. Of course, the scores are not a guarantee, but to just give you an idea.

Yes, the SAS score when your dc does a mock test. As @QuiteAJourney says, take it with a pinch of salt. But I found it quite useful when getting an idea of schools. We had no idea when we first started if our dd had a chance at any of the schools. Each time I mentioned a school to private school parents in real life, they would scare me saying how academic or extremely selective the schools are. So I really was not sure if we were reaching for stars when applying. Atom helped us get an idea of schools to target.

It is really interesting that you shared with them. I hace never come across anyone who had shared so good that at least they have some data so I would still question how comprehensive and/or not subject to self-selection bias it is.

@QuiteAJourney perhaps not everyone tells you if they shared or not. I have not told any one of my friends I have shared the information with Atom (mostly bc it never came up). If it did, I would say of course. The main reason I shared, was because I found it so useful for myself, I wanted to let them know I found it useful and to give them feedback in case they wanted to add it to their data base.

@SamPoodle123 I would never claim that people (and definitely not "everyone) would tell me ... I just said that I had never come across anyone despite the fact that I have discussed with others they were as bemused as I was as to were Atom gets that information from. Which points out, as mentioned above, to the health warnings about it.
As to its usefulness, it depends on whether you think that some information, however imperfect, is better than no information. It depends on how imperfect it is and how much you will take it at face value (hence my pinch of salt comment).
For those that have perused the threads on this year's entry in SWLondon, some of the numbers may still look surprising ...
Not did encouraging people to look at them, just to be aware of its limitations and complement with other information.

@QuiteAJourney when you say the numbers look surprising, do you mean they look too high?

I think having an idea of numbers helps those coming from schools that aren't able to guide you on which schools to apply to.

I thought the numbers provided by Atom looked realistic, but then again I have zero experience other then my dd doing the 11+. So I would not know. I just know she passed the targets and got into the schools she applied to.

@SamPoodle123 my son also got into all of the schools he applied to. We did Atom for 6 months but I wouldn't attribute his success to the platform.

Wanted to add, now I am in the same boat with my ds. The schools within an acceptable travel distance are super academic and seem impossible to get into! Even if ds made the targets, I would still be worried about it, as they all are written or the second part is written. Have no idea about the pass marks for that.

@SamPoodle123 I do not mean too high (or too low for the matter). Having a look at this year's thread on SW entry, I would say that placing, for instance, IPS above Emanuel is challenging to explain. Same for others.

I have explained above why I would personally take them with a pinch of salt: self-selection and small sample, tests not aligned, old dataset.

Of course, very much up to each one how much credence they put on them.

No of course not lol. I would never attribute my dd success to using Atom. She is also naturally very bright, motivated, reads a lot etc etc. What I was saying is that it helped me know if we were reaching for stars with the schools or if we had a chance.....

Someone reported (not sure in which thread) that there had been some movement on Friday. They must have moved just before deadline.
I think same with WHS (some movement late last week, seems to have stopped).
It would be interesting to see if, as offers are made to Grammar WL, there is some movement in late March / early April.

I've also heard that there is no more movement on the Harrodian and FHSS waiting lists.

I completely agree @QuiteAJourney - the idea that Atom have any meaningful sample size of parents who have gone out of their way to inform Atom of their child's 11+ outcome is so unlikely that those figures they published in 2019 are meaningless. Having had a fair amount of comms with Atom over the past few months - trying to dig deeper into how the algorithms actually work (we're not currently using it as we don't think it's a great platform) - it's become very clear that their modus operandi is to stoke parental anxiety. Nearly every email we have from them refers to how our DD will "fall behind her peers if she doesn't start using Atom regularly." It's a terrible outfit!

I've looked at all those CAT / SAS scores Atom published in 2019, and again I think they're designed to make parents anxious and thereby use the platform more: parents see you "need" a certain Atom score for a particular school and sign up to another month (/six months / a year) of Atom to try to get their child hitting that magic number. It's such a racket.

If your school does CAT scores, they're a good indicator, but nothing more than that. Practice papers (eg CGP / Bond), voracious reading and - most important - a genuine love of learning are what's going to get a child successfully through the 11+.

Fhss haven’t officially ‘closed’ the waiting list like they have in the past, judging from comments in past threads. Unless other people received an email…