ISEB Atom dilemma - don’t understand

[Kitkat189]

My son is not doing well at all on Atom. I’d say his average is around 100, sometimes as low as in the 80s. He’s been on atom for about a month now so it’s not just a dip. I tried a different platform with him but it’s the same.

The issue is that he is a good student, so this isn’t making sense to me. A few additional data points: his school suggested we apply for Westminster and SPG (they frequently send boys to these schools so should know what it takes to have a fair chance), and his cat score was 137 last year. He is not the top of his year but I would expect him to be very solidly above average and to have a chance if not at the most competitive day schools, at least a good boarding school.

For the life of him he can’t do well in any of the ISEBs on Atom or Pretest plus. In fact he is doing horribly, since a month, so it’s not just an anomaly.

I don’t know what to make of this. Clearly the 11+ is unlikely to go well and with just weeks left there is not much we can do.

Has anyone been in a similar situation, with a child who does well in school & cats but just can’t do well in exams? I’m so confused, we weren’t ready for this and are now scrambling to find a different set of schools which will take a late application

I would ignore the Atom comparisons compared to average applicant. DS took the 11+ last year and was showing as average for the schools we applied for. Two of the schools we applied for gave feedback he was in the bottom 20% of applicants for exam performance so Atom was way off the mark. He scored top 2% in the country for his Year 6 SATS.

Go by test accuracy and use both paper and computer based. If your child is scoring well enough then that's all you need to know. We saw an exam consultant who gave the following benchmark for the London schools:

• top private schools (600+ applicants for 100 spaces) - score 95% in exam
• mid tier schools (500 applicants for 100 spaces) - score 80% in exam

Hi OP, on exactly the same boat (aside from DC with lower CAT score 😂). DC has always scored above average but when doing ISEB mocks they are suddenly average or well below average. I've complained to Atom. They just reply with some standard Oh, it's their first mocks, it's difficult, they need to get used to it and there's the adaptibility etc. Clearly, something is very odd in the scoring and they're not being transparent about it.
I have no advice. I'm just now glad that we registered for a mixture of ISEB and traditional paper tests schools and que sera sera. But I'm not happy. Atom should be transparent about their system.

ISEB never transparent to student or parents their system either - it is also a black box.

Do we think mock ISEB maths tests on Atom are harder than the real ISEB maths test?

I don’t think the exam is harder, but the way the sas is presented might be inaccurate. Possibly, some children are taking so many practice exams they have had previous questions? or a minority with high scores taking hundreds of exams to confuse the sas grading?

I don't know. And because the test is adaptive, it's hard to tell. But I agree with @Wlondon14 , something is not quite right about the SAS on Atom.

Yes, we have found the same. Something is off and others have noticed it. Atom had whatsap groups closed because of it.

Do you mean Atom are trying to keep their dodgy algorithm quiet?

That is the impression I got. Parents were questioning it on the Atom groups and they such the chat option so people couldn’t discuss it. Of course they used another excuse. It happened in multiple groups

We are using Atom but also working with a very experienced tutor. She’s told us she thinks something is “off” with the Atom questions being disproportionally difficult - she’s finding this with a number of her students. Presumably this in turn could be skewing the algorithms and the SAS and comparative scores, I don’t know. She’s quite cross about it!

Unfortunately for us, our target school uses Atom for its entrance exam, so I can’t take any comfort in the knowledge it will be easier on the day! 😱 That said, if DC finds it hard presumably everyone will, and the scores will reflect that.

But for those discussing technique for these adaptive tests then agreed, the focus should be on taking time to get the questions right- especially the first 10 - rather than trying to finish them all.

@Himawarigirl congratulations to your DC that's amazing. It is very interesting to hear about the iseb and atom. My son is getting quite low marks on the mock iseb tests and it has been quite a downer. He has his iseb test next week and I am really panicking!! I'm praying that he does better than he does on atom or by some miracle he gets the same questions he's been practising.

There's definitely a technical fault with Atom, the IT team admitted it over email and I closed my account as they said that it couldn't be fixed. When I raised it in the whatsapp group and numerous others said they had the same problems, they closed the group down.

@HanSB What was the technical fault? Did it have to do with the SAS scores or the adaptive tests?

Agree there is a problem with how Atom is scoring. Very shady that they're attempting a cover-up.

This question, meanwhile, is from a mock test on Bond Online. Given the ISEB only goes up to the end of the Year 5 national curriculum in maths, this must surely be beyond the remit of the test?! There's no common denominator to be found here, unless they're expecting 11-year-olds to put all of these fractions over 16,380? Am I missing something?

Atom SAS are nonsense in my opinion as a teacher at a prep school. We used it to prep kids mostly for a state 11+. We did a mock VR and NVR test with about 12 kids and not one got anywhere near a pass mark 2 months before the exam. I raised this with atom who said they must have had a bad day. A whole cohort, twice?!? They pointed out one kid had got like 45% in the maths, which would not be a pass. Fair enough, except, as above, the questions were far far far too hard. That one above is definitely not y5 level. My top y5s could do it but it’s not y5 level. 2 months later, 7/10 kids who took the exam passed and the other 3 were very close - no one bombed like the atom scores suggested they would.

Atom is good for practice and homework but take all scores with a huge pinch of salt.

We didn't need to do adaptive tests for our area (sounds hideous) but I just ignored the sas scores and comparisons to others applying on atom and used it to practice the exam skills of completing a test on time and to cover the concepts that hadn't been done at school.
It could be argued it is in the interest of a website like that to under predict performance a) to avoid complaints if child doesn't pass despite doing well in atom tests and b) to worry parents that they need to keep using the website to do more practice... Their comparisons to other children applying to the same school are never going to be accurate regardless of their processes because not all applicants will be subscribed to atom.

Best way to solve this is logic rather than common denominators. Compare to a half - D and E are both way less than a half so that rules them out,

1/4 is 1/4 less than a half
3/7 is half a seventh less than a half
2/5 is half a fifth less than a half

as 1/4 is bigger than 1/5 and 1/7 it must be smaller than both these. So it’s between 3/7 and 2/5. As 1/7 is smaller than 1/5, 3/7 is closer to a half than 2/5 so is the biggest.

looks complicated written down but IME kids who are very good at maths sort of work this sort of thing out for themselves. I’d say it’s beyond what I’d expect of most y5s though.

We did Atom this summer before grammar tests. The more DS practised the daily islands, the higher his score got. He did get full marks 142 in some mocks close to the exams and he did get good grammar results (superselective).

As far as I understand it from a quick google, Atom is not the official prep for ISEB anyway. It is Century Tech Bond Online this year?

Atom has taken some children that I know with no tutoring to excellent grammar results though in a short space of time and they offer a free programme to FSM children. So we should not diss them, they are doing their bit.

That maths question - it could come up in Stage 2 superselective maths grammar papers.

I cross posted with the prep school teacher - happy to see I came up with the same approach as a DIY 11+ parent! (That is not meant to diminish all your other skills - there is no way I could manage a primary classroom....).

Curious if you continued on with Atom in September, because that is when their SAS scores were changed and the problems/complaints began. In August my ds was getting scores in the 130s-142! September hit and suddenly scores dropped to 105-110!

Thanks for your insight. I get how to do it but expecting any child for whom maths is not a strong suit to grapple with the very notion of 'half a seventh less than a half' is just unfair when ISEB purportedly tests Year 5 skills.

Do you reckon this is a case of Century, like Atom, trying to keep hold of subscribers? Making mock tests harder than the real thing?

Interesting - my DD was doing tests in Aug / Sept and Oct, her highest scores are mainly in Sept - no significant pattern I can see but tbh she wasn’t doing loads of practice tests

They admitted to faults with cem practice tests, mostly not accepting or allowing answer to be inputed. Someone on the chat suggested they email all subscribers and the moderator said they wouldn’t since most subscribers don’t use the cem tests, but would address it if anyone emails them.

@SamPoodle123 - we did do some online mock tests into September. I wonder if it is a school year switch issue? To be honest, I had always put my DS a school year up on their system. They have his date of birth but I am put him as a year higher because the London superselective grammar Maths can be really tricky. Atom for us was just a little extra practice when he got bored of the harder Exam Paper Plus papers and I did not supervise it much, it was more comfort that he is doing “something” or can watch videos on eg algebra or poetry or creative writing (the tricky bit of the superselective grammar).