Henrietta Barnett practice papers

[HBswitch]

Hello

DD10 will appear for the Henrietta Barnett exam in September this year. She is doing very well at an academic private school - top 5 across a year group of 50 children. She has also been doing Atom Learning.

This has probably lulled us into complacency. she appeared for a mock exam (hosted by the Eleven Plus forum) and performed miserably in it. I need to increase the level of practice she is currently doing but i dont think we will benefit from tutoring at this stage.

What practise papers and mock tests do parents recommend which are at the right level for the Henrietta Barnett entrance assessment, please?

I heard from other mums that the papers from EPP ones are good. DD never used it though.

However I do think the exampaperplus form mock candidates are the real contenders for this specific school exam, the atom learning mock difficulty or type of questions are no where near resemble for this school test. TBH I'm not surprised top 5 in a top private not ranking high for this.

Beware of the timing, the real exam are in short timed sections, and it will be less questions than those GL mock available. Your DD need to finish the papers (esp comprehension and NVR) in a super fast pace - so a lot of practice is essential.

Sorry I meant elevenplusexams forum mock

I would agree that top 5 in a cohort of 50 isn't really an indicator of reaching second stage HB, ie last 300 out of 1000's. You probably need to be more realistic with your secondary school selection. Sorry I know that isn't what you asked.

@tennissquare it is 300 out of 3000 for first round, among which a significant amount of DD's practice specificly for this school since year 4. Top private school students had little edge over this if unprepare.

I honestly wouldn't stress too much based on one mock. It's one exam on one day and if it was her first, she may well have been thrown by the surroundings / experience of it, and underperformed as a result.

I'd sign up to Atom for a month and start doing some mock tests on there to get a better sense of her overall capability at this time. When you sign up, you can email Atom and ask what score you should be aiming for for HBS.

It's true that a LOT of kids have been tutored like crazy since Y4 (and even earlier) and they may well have also done a ton of mocks by now. But you still have two months, and it may be that she just needs a lot of practice in exam technique.

Presumably you have feedback as to which areas she underperformed in? In which case you can focus on those in custom practice on Atom, and with CGP books etc. As a PP says, EPP papers are supposed to be set at a good level too.

https://exampapersplus.co.uk/henrietta-barnett-school-11-plus-11-exam-information/

CGP is much better than Atom for this specific exam IMO. As one PP said, treat this exam with realistic expectations, unless your DD is consistently rank top 5% of the similar cohort. A lot is down to the exam day, 2-3 questions is the distance between top 5% and top 15%...

She already does Atom and it is nowhere as tough as eleven plus was - even the year 6 sets. She also does CGP. I will get her exampapers plus - thanks.

PS she consistently scores very high on Atom.

For grammar schools, DD's experience is that Atoms question type (except for maths) are quite far away from the actual GL assessment papers. Not sure other parents feel the same, and we only have limited real GL exams experience so just an observation.

Try to do the CGP VR and NVR with 85% of the suggested time, aim for 90% every paper then you will have a decent chance (at least for my DD) . We specific prep for this school for 4 months with practices.

Thank you for these suggestions.

@PreplexJ was it this CGP book you would recommend for NVR.

I asked Atom to change the difficulty level to y6 and as expected they said they couldnt since difficulty was based on the algorithm and her performance. I havent seen her challenged by Atom in the 2 months she has done this (they also get Atom homework from school).

We'll try to make the best of the next 2 months she has. She is at a (at least by reputation) strongly academic private school. Maths is one of the subjects she does very well at, but this wont help for HB round 1.

For NVR, it is the CGP practice papers (red colour cover) I would recommend, the difficulty is close to the real exam one, except that your DD need to practice with substantial less time, real exam was 2 NVR sections, 4 minutes for 9 questions per section. Arguably NVR has the most weight per question in the first round exam.

For VR, probably use the similar CGP practice papers (CEM+GL), even the provider is GL, the HBS prescribed paper has new type of VR questions every year, so be prepared for the surprise, practice shffule sentences may help, more importantly is mastering vocabs. Real exam was about 34 questions.

For English, normally HBS GL paper doesn't have SpaG section only MC comprehension questions. Again prepared for the time pressure and MC techniques. Last year it was a chapter from A Stitch In Time by Penelope Lively. But in the years before I heard the paper did poetry regularly. About 24 questions?

The first round exam were taken place across 2-3 days with the exactly same paper, hence it is likely some girls sit in the later day to have some advantage by knowing the comprehension chapter and the new VR surprises. I heard stories (unproven) that some parents will pay other DD (exam tourist) who sit earlier day to gain info for the marginal advantage. Though this is something beyond your control.

HBS entrance exam has strong focus on English. More so since they changed the format to GL and get rid of maths section. Some strong maths candidates, if not in first round top 10%, will be out. In the past 2 years HBS had negative marking MC maths questions in the second round. But within 3 miles candidate second round result is not that important historically anyway.

Im sure there are some telegram groups (mostly organise by Asian parents) had detailed analysis on the historical paper content, type of questions, the intensity of practice for quite some time.

For this particular entrance exam, since the scale of dedicated prep and the skewness of subject focus, as well as the small number of questions with individual timed sections, it creates a large degree of uncertainty on the exam day, your DD would need luck. We saw cases that perceived strong academic girls (top prep school well tutored for grammar and indie) not pass the first round but passed other top selective school exams with flying colours. On the other hand we know some cases that girls haved yet developed good maths gets in but didn't manage to get offer/second stage from any other schools. Anyway in our experience (and by any measure of odds) this is the most challenging 11+ exam of the country, so please be realistic with the expectation and have a good alternative plan.

Good luck.

Very helpful advice. Thanks @PreplexJ

PS she has done all the CGP GL papers (i bought a pack) previously and got a few qs wrong here and there. but i didnt know i should have asked her to complete in less time. I think taking 2 to 3 physical mock tests will help her understand exam technique and timing better. Worst case she continues in her current school and we work harder to afford the fees 😟

For NVR questions the memory won't persist for long, the techniques and steady performance under time pressure is something can gradually improved via practice.

CGP paper pack comes with online codes I think you can practice again even completed before.

@PreplexJappreciate for the information. Do you have any idea on how much time is allowed for English and VR section in the real HB exam?

CGP is a fraction of the cost of Atom Learning. From the recommendations on this thread people seem to recommend CGP more and the exams are closer to the real one?

@Sitchintime I cant remember the exact time from my head, but it is very time pressure. It is probably about 20 minutes (or less) per session for English and VR. You need to practice at a pace about 30-40 seconds per questions. And for NVR is about 25 second per questions.

Depends on the exam you sit, for super selective Grammar in north London I would say Atom (timing and difficulty) is not really like the GL questions you will see in the real exam. It probably OK for practice maths.

For private selective school Atom is useful for ISEB or similar pretest.

In general it is a good study tool, but if want more targeted CGP test papers is more like GL.

Thank you @PreplexJ

@PreplexJ - thank you detailed notes on HBS format. Would it be okay to suggest some online resources for creative writing too which includes the marking service? thanks

@Cheerstolife , we haven't tried any online resources for CW couldn't suggest any.

you might find this thread useful
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4821998-long-form-comprehension-creative-writing-help

@PreplexJ and others, please could you tell me why you recommend the CGP papers rather than the ones from GL themselves? If a school says they use GL will they be like the GL ones?

@Stealthtoast this is because the official GL only provides the familiarisation papers and limit set of practice papers. It rarely updates over the years and out of date vs the real prescribed GL exams for those London Grammars using GL, in terms of types of VR questions and difficulty level.

CGP GL style practice paper for NVR is more closer to the real difficulty level you see for HBS for example. And the real comprehension paper for HBS or QE are full of inference style questions.

It is always good to go through the papers provided by official GL but just not enough for the most competitive schools.

Does the HBS round 1 paper include Spatial Reasoning?