Support thread for parents of chilldren sitting the transfer test in 2011

dee1000

My head is pickled god knows how my daughter feels roll on the 3rd December

RikM

dee1000 wrote: »

Hi

The above quote has just seriously worried me
How on earth does a parent know how their child is doing. If my child is getting say between 45-50 on practice papers <out of 64> this means with the two best papers her mark could be between 90 and 100. If she does as good on the day her score may be totally different :mad: Does this mean her score may be greater or lower :eek:
This whole process is driving me nuts and if my child wasnt so keen to go to a certain school she wouldnt be doing it.

RANT OVER

Dee xxxx

Sorry, it's not intended to worry you. You should be able to get a reasonable idea of how your child should do in the tests from a comparison of there results with their peers (if that sort of information is available to you).
As a rule of thumb, if they are normally above average, that's not likely to change. But bear in mind that "average" for kids taking the exams is likely to be a bit higher than the overall average.

But we just can't go from the scores in practice, to the exam scores in any meaningful way. We don't know how.

Case in point was my son. Practice papers (in school, multiple times a week) were coming out between 88-100%. Final mark was 118 on the AQE. It wasn't a case of exam nerves (he didn't have any to speak of - he knows he's at the top end of the scale). And it was the highest mark in his school.
It wound him up quite a bit, however.
Even after we explained how marks get moderated and standardized, he was still muttering about it.

A number of his friends who we would have put in the "above average" category got 95-105 marks in the test. He was worried they wouldn't be going to the same school, for a while.

RikM

As an aside...
I'm not altogether convinced as to the merits of academic selection. Yes, it's the name of the game around here, but what when a non-selective secondary seems better than some selective schools?

Locally, we chose the school based mainly on attitude (the school's), then had to do the test to get in. But on that basis, the second choice would have been a secondary...

Unfortunately there's nothing like a "value added" league table for schools; academic results on the way in compared to actual results in exams. Just looking at results, without a starting point, doesn't give good grounds for comparison, when schools are selective.

one2escape

There is no perfect way of selecting schools. If we go the postcode route then the so called good schools will see the house prices increase and so will exclude the pupils attending the school who are not from that post code. For us if it was down to postcode my children would go to a pretty awful school which we dont want them to go too. Not to get political our education system has been messed up without a proper plan of action place. We still have the old system but its in a worse way in which we have 2 test system instead of 1 and that the kids could do up to 6 tests to get into the school they want. How is that progress?

dee1000

RikM


Thanks for your comments, I know what you mean, about the whole marks system and how the end result differs to their practice paper marks. I wonder sometimes are marks actually being deducted because of the age of the child. I have heard this idea before from some people but thought that there is no way marks could be deducted. Certainly younger children maybe should have marks added on but to deduct them is not right.

Just a thought

Dee

RikM

dee1000 wrote: »

RikM


Thanks for your comments, I know what you mean, about the whole marks system and how the end result differs to their practice paper marks. I wonder sometimes are marks actually being deducted because of the age of the child. I have heard this idea before from some people but thought that there is no way marks could be deducted. Certainly younger children maybe should have marks added on but to deduct them is not right.

Just a thought

Dee

That's the thing... Giving a score the way they do, without really explaining it gives the impression that it's a "mark". In reality I think it's more akin to an IQ score. The marks from the tests are just used to place the results on a scale averaged around 100.

It's not actually a very good system, IMO. If they are using the normal distribution, it's going to end up with most kids being sandwiched into the 95-105 range. That's exactly where the school selection borderline tends to fall.
So the AQE scores show the least difference between candidates, in exactly the range where schools are going to have to pick and choose.

Unless maybe that's the point? When they reach that point in the selection process, they have to fall back on criteria other than score...?

Clarity is lacking.

beccasmum

I have a DS going through this process this year and I already had a DD do it 2 years ago when no-one knew what was going on and I must say that second time around has been far less frustrating.Our primary is not really dedicated to preparing the kids but they do enough to pass themselves and that was the same for my DD, so I just had to get on with helping her myself and it paid off as she got into her choice of school without any problems. The marking does seem a bit strange but it is just the same as the standardised results the schools do with the kids through NFER Nelson in maths and english. The result merely tells you how much above average your child has scored, with the average being 100. The further breakdown into Quintiles does not really mean anything but just gives you an idea of how many children scored higher than your child. Each quintile consists of 20% of total children sitting test, so no section has less or more in it. The year my DD did it there were just over 7000 kids sitting the tests so each quintile consisted of approx 1400 kids, but even when you knew that you didn't know how many of those were in your area or how many had applied to the same schools. I have found that trying to work it all out just gives you a sore head and makes you even more frustrated so this time round I am taking a more relaxed approach and we have had good results and no tears at all. Hope this is of some.

EBB66

:(Hi so good to see that someone has started this thread ! My son is sitting the GL test in Nov but my main problem is that it seems no-one can tell me what we are to expect. So far we have bought the PTQ papers from Easons and hav worked thro many of them , some good some not so good! When my son went back to school in Sept the P7 teacher started an after school club one day a week for 45 mins, this is the only time that he will spend in school doing test practice . he gets a supply of one GL maths and one GL english test a week but these papers are soooo much harder than the Easons tests eg the english papers have 2 full pages of a story followed by 25 questions it . So it takes him ages to try and scan for the part of the story for the answer, I have found another supplier of test papers The tutoring co in finaghy , so decided to order some papers from them . Can anyone just start up a business and call em transfer tests:o:o:o?
I phoned to ask if their papers were same layout and difficulty as expect the real test to be but was told cant go into specifics....... I dont expect exact details but was confronted by an angry man who was completely rude to me :eek::eek:
Can anyone tell me what sort of lay out the english papers have since some are completely different than the others. Which level of difficulty are we to work towards ?? we havent got a tutor as i feel I am well able to do and teach my child for the tests but perhaps would have been better to get a tutor as the rescources etc are impossible to find!

dee1000

Hi EBB66

I dont blame you for being confused to be honest its a horrible time for us.

My daughter is going both tests and i have bought her the CEA tests for both they are the ones in easons i think and also the ones which would have been free in the belfast telegraph earlier in the year. I have just bought them from my local newsagent. The GL ones have two options either maths or english, with 65 questions in english and 45 questions in maths. This is how the exam papers are and the time is correct on them also 45 minutes for maths and 55 for english. I just assumed to be honest that these were very close to the real thing. The English one seems to be a lot harder than maths it is longer and more complex with lots of spelling, punc. errors and passages to follow.
Hope this helps, maybe someone else will come along who knows more than me.
p.s my daughter is also the same good days and bad days.


Dee

ella77

absoluteutopia wrote: »

Wouldnt entertain Kip McGrath, any muppet can set up a franchise. they are far to workbook focused as well, costs me nothing to give the kid a workbook and some lessons

My child is attending tuition for the AQE test at Kip McGrath and I have to disagree with this assessment of them. I did a lot of research into tuition before we signed up for Kip as i wanted to make sure I got it right. They are qualified teachers - you can't own a franchise unless you are and their transfer test tuition is not worksheet based at all. DD gets past paper practise, exam technique, as well as focus on her weak spots. I just couldn't do the teaching for this test myself and i don't feel the school is helping as much as they used to when my eldest sat the test. Her marks have improved since we started in May and I certainly can't complain as the stress factor of doing it all myself would not be good.