Your Experience -- VR Raw Scores (CGP/ Bonds/ ElevenPlus) Needed for 11+ North London Super-Selectives?

[BeSillyUser]

If your child has secured a place in one of the North London super selectives, what kind of scores on the CGP tests have they been getting on specifically on VR?

Just to gauge our chances on whether we should redirect our focus to comprehensives instead. . . My DC is in Y5 now and will be applying in one year's time. He's currently doing CGP tests and getting 50s out of 80s on VR tests... seems rather low -- 70%. I think he can get better scores, as he's getting 85-90% untimed, but is rather slow and I'm not sure if he will get much faster. Other subjects are 80+% but VR is a real sticking point. I feel that my kid is pretty bright, but so are many other kids.

Also just to note, we're really the only people applying to grammars from our area, and we have no one to ask ... we chose a lovely little village state primary school with lots of creative parents going to the local comprehensive (and maybe we should join them!).

I don't want to be one of "those" posters but my DD was getting about 95-98% by the time she applied, and 100% in a couple of the real things, though she probably over performed on vr in particular and it brought up her other scores. It's likely ok to have one weaker one but overall I think about 95% is what is needed to be comfortably confident - my DD ended up around #60 for HBS and Latymer. They obviously take a lot more kids than this when you take into account waiting lists. Do you have atom learning? I found that quite accurate in the end, though it was hard to trust it at the time. They do a free trial. She also did a mock in harrow where she scored quite a bit lower, which shook her confidence, but she was in the "green" bracket though the scores weren't well explained.

@Magnificentkitteh Thanks!!! Looking exactly for experiences like yours. Good to know now rather than later when we're scrambling around to get ourselves positioned for the grammar vs comprehensive. We're currently renting so we have freedom to move.

Can I ask, was her VR score always high or did she improve in the one year prior to application? Trying also to gauge also what kind of progress I can realistically expect... 🫣🫣

We had Atom Learning last month but we like the feel of pen and paper more, so stopped it for now and resumed workbook practice.

Tbh I am not really sure because she didn't start practising a full year ahead and started with atom learning which was more practice exercises than full practice tests. She did her first practice test from a workbook in about june and got 95%. I do know that across the board she did improve on atom learning more or less in line with their projected progress but was always quite a bit above the boundary line that they showed and I think above their end target from the beginning, though not sure how that translates to paper tests. She also did a couple of examberry papers right at the end which I regret as she did quite a bit worse on those and was upset, but the real thing was not as difficult.

I think you can make progress because my older daughter did not practise very much at all and didn't get in, though she's also a bright girl. But I also think that there are diminishing returns and there's no point flogging it to death. I didn't know about atom learning for dd1 though and think that made the biggest difference for dd2. She did some of the little lessons and videos too. Don't want to sound like an advert for them though! It is expensive and a lot of screen time. But if you don't have a tutor or lots of peers to compare with then it does give you some benchmarks which I liked.

Have you looked at st Mary Magdalene? It's partially selective and I think we're going to change their assessment this year so it's not just vr, but not sure.