Support thread for parents of pupils sitting AQE exam in November

jogym

Hi just wanted to set up a thread for parents of pupils sitting AQE exam in November. At the moment we are doing practice papers (we have done about 11 since school finished in summer). We have a range of papers and scores seem to be higher in others. My daughter is panicking with the timing element atm, it has improved greatly from 1st paper, only managed to get about half of paper done, now we are getting about 54/58 or 70/75 depending on paper. She is getting quite stressed and upset if she either doesn't get it finished or doesn't get higher than 80%. The english seems to be holding her back in particular meaning of words to find in passages and not getting right answers (even I am struggling with some). We are doing a paper every other day (is this too much?). Highest score has been 54/58 lowest 62/75. I think i am not helping as I am getting frustrated with her sometimes like saying now come on you should know this or you're taking too long move on to the next one if it's taking too long. Can anyone give some advice. Did you sit with your children while doing practice papers or did you let them do it by themselves and then check it after the hour was up. When did you start timing them and so on. I am quite ok at maths so I can help her but I want to be doing it the best way possible and not panic her about the whole thing cause she is quite sensitive and quite hard on herself if she gets things wrong. Thanks

rolo1_2

I know how you feel!! - so try not to worry to much. My daughter completed AQE last year. Our method was to give her 2-3 papers per week (we used the PMP papers) - sat her down in a quiet room and left her with a timer set for 1 hr (good for time management).

When exactly one hour was up we took the paper away. We then went through all the ones she got wrong. We kept a log of all her scores, and we could see the steady improvement. To encourage her closer to exam day we used the bribe system (I know, not the best motivation, but worked for us), and offered £5 for every score over 70% and £10 over 85% - cost me a fortune in the end!!

She thought the PMP papers were harder than the actual AQE exams, which we took as a good sign pre-results. We did not use a private tutor.

As a rough guide she was scoring around 74-89% on PMP papers a few weeks before first exam. Her AQE score was 113 and got into her 1st choice grammar (starts 2morrow!!!!!!!)

Good luck.

jogym

Thanks for your reply. I looked at these PMP papers online last night. I noticed that some were sold out but there were others and am not sure which ones I should order. Yes some of the papers do seem harder than others. The ones we got from the school before summer seem to be harder than say the CEA ones. 2-3 papers a week I think is what we will aim for. It is very hard to get peace and quiet in our house as we have a 3 year old who keeps interrupting and causing a fuss. I will have to have a word with my husband and maybe he can take her somewhere for that hour. Can I just ask you what the total score is for the two papers is it 128 max as I noticed the papers from last year were 64 marks in total just so I know what to aim for. Am not sure how to improve on the timing issue. I would like her to get finished and have time to go over the paper but atm what is happening is she is say getting stuck on a maths question and taking too long over it and then wasting time. I noticed that on one of the papers it was an english passage at the end and you really needed to have enough time to complete it otherwise you would lose a lot of marks so when we got to that section and she knew we had 10 mins left she totally panicked.

rolo1_2

Last year the AQE was best two scores over 3 papers - assume the same this year? - The scores are then age adjusted, and average score then set at 100. I really have not a clue how it is all done!!. Don't worry to much about total available scores and how AQE convert it all etc.

On the practice tests tests we just coverted score into a %, I think this is a better guage of how things are progressing.

I would suggest if she gets stuck on a question, to move on, and come back to it if she has time. Not easy I know, but it does improve...........

steveymp

rolo1 wrote: »

Last year the AQE was best two scores over 3 papers - assume the same this year? - The scores are then age adjusted, and average score then set at 100. I really have not a clue how it is all done!!. Don't worry to much about total available scores and how AQE convert it all etc.

On the practice tests tests we just coverted score into a %, I think this is a better guage of how things are progressing.

I would suggest if she gets stuck on a question, to move on, and come back to it if she has time. Not easy I know, but it does improve...........

Yes it is still best 2 scores from 3, my son will be doing the tests now:eek: I collected loads of past tests and sample tests for him to do during the summer and so far a grand total of 0% have been done:rotfl:

He doesn't know it yet but he is in for a very busy 2 months:rotfl: well actually he does and he is prepared for it, his scores on practice tests he did at school before the holidays were very good so he told me he deserved the summer off:o

I think as parents we are more phased by the tests than the kids are:eek: but we will see closer to the time:o The College he is doing the tests in have a practice run Saturday morning before the tests which is a very good idea and hopefully will make the kids familiar with the surroundings and help ease a bit of pressure.

Good luck to all who have to go through this torture and a big thanks to the Education Minister for totally screwing up a system that wasn't broke in the first place:o

jogym

My daughter's score in school tests have been nearing the 90% mark but we have had a bit of a shock with these - atm 75% but silly mistakes are being made and the english passages are causing problems. Mind I am not helping matters as I think (know) I am stressing her out so I am stepping back a bit and letting dad do some! My problem is expecting too much from her so I need to relax a bit more about it. I like the idea of a trial run where is this then?

steveymp

jogym wrote: »

My daughter's score in school tests have been nearing the 90% mark but we have had a bit of a shock with these - atm 75% but silly mistakes are being made and the english passages are causing problems. Mind I am not helping matters as I think (know) I am stressing her out so I am stepping back a bit and letting dad do some! My problem is expecting too much from her so I need to relax a bit more about it. I like the idea of a trial run where is this then?

Yep we can put a bit too much pressure on our kids, but we only want the best for them, so its hard to get a happy medium:o My OH stresses a lot over it but I am more in the line of if he is capable he should do OK, if not then Grammer School is probably not the route for him anyway:o Having said that I would really like him to have a good Grammer School education.

Foyle and Londonderry College do the trial run thing for the parents and the kids before the exams to familiarise the kids with the surroundings and give the parents a rough idea of travel time from home to the school:T

steveymp

Quick update of this thread from a meeting I had in my sons primary school last week. The meeting was for all parents of children sitting the tests either AQE or GL, the majority of the school are doing AQE although some parents have choose to do both.

This meeting was the most secretive, clandestine affair I have ever attended, the primary schools in our wonderful wee country are not allowed to support or encourage our children through this process, they are also prohibited from giving our children practice tests for the AQE or GL tests:o It may be worth noting this next time it comes to voting these muppets into power:o

Anyway the meeting and presentation was very informative as was the Q&A session afterwards. The wonderful education minister had last year warned and threatened numerous schools in hand written letters about aiding pupils through this process :eek: the headmaster has specifically told us the school cannot actively help or encourage our children with the tests :eek: (this caused a bit of an uproar in the hall) He went on however to say that the school has created specific "Worksheets" for the test pupils, the pupils will do a "Worksheet" in class on a Wednesday which will be composed of 75 questions relating to English and Mathematics, this will be marked by the teacher and sent home with the pupil. Thursday evenings homework will be another "Worksheet" much the same as the class one for a 1hr homework;) This will be marked on Friday and both "Worksheets" returned to the pupils with answer sheets for the weekend:)

I'm sure other Schools are doing the same, but I find it hard to stomach that this must be done the way it is:o

Oh and we got the best explaination of the AQE scoring system that I have heard yet:T

The score your child will get in February will not acyually be an addition of his/her 2 test scores:o the children are competing against each other in NI, the score they get is a rating in comparison with all the other children's scores, clear as mud eh:rotfl:

Basically if you picture an upside down U on a graph with the centre point of the U being 100 is what we were told, the highest score that can be achieved is 141+ the lowest is 69-.

Ex-Spendaholic

Steveymp, we were told the same thing last year about not being allowed to do preparation etc. As a result our school did very little whereas other schools in the area put in 100% effort. :T:T to those schools who have the balls to do it.


Thats a weird explanation of the scoring.

steveymp

Ex-Spendaholic wrote: »

Steveymp, we were told the same thing last year about not being allowed to do preparation etc. As a result our school did very little whereas other schools in the area put in 100% effort. :T:T to those schools who have the balls to do it.


Thats a weird explanation of the scoring.

I totally agree, our school seems to have the balls and for that I am grateful:T

As I said the scoring explaination was clear as mud:rotfl: but better than anything I got from AQE:eek: Basically all the kids are competing against each other and are then ranked from less than 69 to 141+:o A score of 50 in each marked test would equate to 141+ if other children all scored less, the score of 100 would be the highest score and hence forth the highest ranked, I think that makes sense:o

Freefromdebt_2

Hi
I am new here. My daughter will be doing the GL Assessment (2 local grammars agreed on this) in November 2010 and whilst I know the AQE papers differ from GL it is reassuring for me as a parent to read all your thoughts. She is my eldest child and we didnt really have a summer to speak of. It was filled with worksheets and practice papers. There are only 7 kids (out of 25) in her class sitting the exam. At the moment she is scoring just under the class average and both her dad and I are wracked with guilt. Will her score improve ? Should we put her through all this ? Is it good for her ? The principal of the local grammar that she has her wee heart set on going to informed us that last year the lowest score they admitted was 228. I think I have aged about 15 years since the end of June. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.