AQE Exam Results

stephenni1971

Anyone else in the same boat getting these this morning?

I am at a loss as to what the result actually means???

Can anyone help a confused dad...

money19

I know a little about it. You should have been given a mark and a quintile. You can roughly guess where these line up with the old A - D grades. The grammar schools have all published their new criteria for entrance and these will obviously involve the mark. You can see from the SEELB transfer book which grades your chosen schools took last year but remember that you need to check the intake for about 3 years to get a better picture.

Willyk

This may give you some info:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/education/post-primary-selection/thousands-of-schoolchildren-will-know-the-score-at-weekend-14668756.html

AQE website is not much use !

I would check some of the grammar school websites that you are interested in for further details on how they are going to use the results.

Ex-Spendaholic

Its all clear as mud. :mad:

My child got 104 quintile 3. To be honest we, he and the school thought he would have a higher score due to the results he was getting on the practice tests.

However we now find all his mates have around this score or in the 90s. We know of one child with 115 and he is the school brainchild - excels at everything and was expected to get higher.

The media are saying

Quintile 1 - Grade A

Quintile 2 - Grade A and top B1

Quintile 3 - B1 and B2

Not sure about the others. Where we are no-one has a clue what their mark means. No-one knows what score is needed for a grammar school.

MandyMc

I agree, it has been very confusing.
My 10yr old got 121 today. Her friends have got 119, 117, 115, 110. Our local grammar school head on (Radio Ulster recently) said he expected to be taking only kids from upper quintile as they turned away 10 A's last year.
Fingers crossed for May 28th for confirmation of school choice.

mrsdrb

some commentary here

http://paceni.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-aqe-cea-and-gl-assessment-test-results-advice-to-parents/

suggests trying to apply a/b1/b2 categories to AQE scores is a waste of time, but its hard trying to rationalise what a score of e.g 106 means in relation of my childs chances of getting into the local grammar schools based on their previous intake, one school takes almost all A's and and handful of b1's so I am assuming that as 106, my daughters score, is at the lower level of band 2 that means this school will probably not be interested in her, our other grammar takes in a wider range ... previous years they have taken some b2's so we are thinking she will be ok for the second school, which has been our first choice all along

our backup plan is a third school which used the GL test, our child got A grade in that .... but will the fact that it will be second on the form be held against us???

ni-mum

So far the highest mark in my son's class is 124 and the lowest 86. I think anyone in the top quintile should be sure of a first choice place. Anything lower and it'll be a long waiting game.

Willyk

I do not have a child who sat the aqe test this year, but I do have one next year so have an interest into how this works. Assuming that when they (aqe) use the term quintile they are sticking by the dictionary definition of a whole being split into 5 equal shares, then each quintile equates to 20% of the pupils sitting the test. If you look at the old system it used these percentage groupings:

Grade A To 25% of all pupils in that year group who get the highest marks
Grade B1 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade B2 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade C1 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade C2 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade D To the remainder of pupils who sat the examination

( from here http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/11-plus-northern-ireland.php )

If you do a direct mapping of the above onto the quintiles then:

The top quintile (>= 113) would map onto the old A and no other grades
The next quintile (106-112) would map onto A, B1, B2 and C1
The next quintile (98-105) would map onto C2 and the top 15% of the old D grade.
The next 2 quintiles 88-97 and <88 would further split up the old D grade.

I have no idea if the above is correct or even roughly correct, but it would seem quite logical. Any ideas anyone ?

Ex-Spendaholic

No idea at all Willyk but an interesting take on things nonetheless.

Not wanting to scaremonger you at this stage but I read on another thread that your child is at Orangefield. Mine is too. Please don't be expecting much support from the school in relation to the AQE tests. This year was a shambles - they washed their hands off it and left us parents and kids to deal with it ourselves. They did do a few practice papers towards the end but too little too late in comparison to other schools in the area.

leftieM

Whether we, as parents, like it or not, it isn't the school's job to prepare children for private exams. The transfer tests have been abolished.

Anyone feeling fear about where their child gets in should have a look at the post primary guide and see the wide range of grades that most grammars now take. Most grammar schools are de facto mixed ability and yet they still retain their ethos and standards of behaviour. I was in one recently which takes more Cs than As and I thought it was fantastic and it took away all of my fears of the future for my children.

Good luck to you all. If your child did the AQE/CL then the odds are heavily in your favour that they will get into a grammar school.

blfastboy

Willyk wrote: »

I do not have a child who sat the aqe test this year, but I do have one next year so have an interest into how this works. Assuming that when they (aqe) use the term quintile they are sticking by the dictionary definition of a whole being split into 5 equal shares, then each quintile equates to 20% of the pupils sitting the test. If you look at the old system it used these percentage groupings:

Grade A To 25% of all pupils in that year group who get the highest marks
Grade B1 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade B2 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade C1 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade C2 To the next 5% of pupils
Grade D To the remainder of pupils who sat the examination

If you do a direct mapping of the above onto the quintiles then:

The top quintile (>= 113) would map onto the old A and no other grades
The next quintile (106-112) would map onto A, B1, B2 and C1
The next quintile (98-105) would map onto C2 and the top 15% of the old D grade.
The next 2 quintiles 88-97 and <88 would further split up the old D grade.

I have no idea if the above is correct or even roughly correct, but it would seem quite logical. Any ideas anyone ?

There is no point trying to map the eleven plus bandings above onto the AQE test for a number of statistical reasons :

* The old 11+ applied to ALL those wishing to attend a NI Grammar school, CCMS and non-denominational. Now (largely) the CCMS schools run GL and the non-denominational kids did AQE, so the sample sizes are halved for each (with a small overlap of kids that did both) for an equal number of places.

* Fewer kids in total did either exam than would have originally sat the 11+ so saying 'only As got into x school before' is irrelevant now because As were only given to a percentage of kids that took the exam, but the number of actual places remains constant.

Hope I've phrased that half-clearly. In short 11+ was based on proportions of the number of pupils doing the test. Those numbers are now split over two tests, and the overall number doing the tests is down too. Old grades don't map, and it's pointless trying.

In short, the new system is a shambles and it's going to take some unpicking. It's a disgrace that our politicians haven't sorted this out. They've had six years but chose to create artificial crises over other irrelevant matters. Our education minister should hang her head in shame that she allowed this to happen, and the rest of them for playing politics with education. In a saner world, she'd have been sacked.

One thing's for sure, it's not the kids' fault.