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

travellinglight_2

This came from the AQE office today when I asked how they work out scores.....good luck with it!!!
Each assessment is marked in the week following. Marking takes place in two centres, where there are 60 markers in each who work in groups of 3; in each centre there are a manager and two deputies. Each script is marked and totalled three times; 20% of the scripts are marked again in Quality Control and a further 20% are added again.

When boxes of scripts are marked, they are taken to the AQE Office. Each script is added up again. The raw score for each assessment is entered on the system, with the team working in pairs to ensure accuracy. As soon as all the marking and entering are completed, the master computer is passed on to the Computer Experts for the age-standardisation process.

In the age-standardisation process each pupil’s age as a real number of months is computed; for each test, pupils are assigned to groups according to the nearest month. For example, consider Sarah who was aged 10 years, 7 months and 10 days on the day of the first paper on Saturday 14th November 2009. By a simple conversion, Sarah’s age was considered to be 127.3 months on the day of the first paper.

When pupils are assigned to groups, Sarah appeared in the group of pupils aged 127 months (to the nearest month) who took the first paper. It is important to note that on the day of the second paper (Saturday 28th November 2009), Sarah was 10 years, 7 months and 24 days. When this is converted into months, Sarah’s age became 127.8 months. It follows that for the second assessment, the software switched Sarah to the group of pupils aged 128 months (to the nearest month). In short, the standardisation algorithm takes account of the fact that the children age during the assessment period.

For each group the software computes the mean and standard deviation of raw scores for each of the papers. These are then standardised to produce so-called ‘z-scores’. The z-score appropriate to any raw score is found by subtracting the group mean from the raw score and dividing the result by the standard deviation for the group. These scores are then converted to generate a distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. This ensures that, for each paper, pupils are only compared with pupils of the same age (to the nearest month). For instance, summer-born pupils are not disadvantaged by being compared to pupils born in the previous autumn. The effect of standardisation is that, irrespective of date of birth, the same proportion of pupils in each group lie above any given score.

A pupil who takes all there tests will have three age-standardised scores (one for each paper). As pointed out earlier, pupils may switch groups as their ages change during the assessment period. The average of the best two scores is computed for each pupil. These scores are then reported on a distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. For pupils who only take two papers, the average of two scores is computed. If a pupil does just one test, he/she will be sent out the raw score for that test.

Third_Time_Mum

confused_mummy wrote: »

I just received by sons aqe test raw marks that he got in his actual tests not standardised. The scores this year must of been extremely high. I cannot imagine that an october birthday would disadvantage as child that much. As a percentage of the two highest marked tests he got 86% with an standardised score of 102.

Back in February Confused mummy told us that her son's raw score (averaged out) was 86%, which translated to a standardised score of 102. But Travellinglight's son's raw score was 83.5%, which translated to a standardised score of 103. So 2.5% less in the test gave Travellinglight's son one AQE mark more??This age standardisation is so confusing. Does anyone else understand the convoluted explanation given by AQE to Travellinglight?!

travellinglight_2

Third_Time_Mum wrote: »

Back in February Confused mummy told us that her son's raw score (averaged out) was 86%, which translated to a standardised score of 102. But Travellinglight's son's raw score was 83.5%, which translated to a standardised score of 103. So 2.5% less in the test gave Travellinglight's son one AQE mark more??This age standardisation is so confusing. Does anyone else understand the convoluted explanation given by AQE to Travellinglight?!

wee sons birthday is 10/01...???

Pmum

Did both those kids sit the test the same year?

Third_Time_Mum

Pmum wrote: »

Did both those kids sit the test the same year?

I believe so!

Pmum

Or it could be that the kids with October birthdays were scoring better thna those with January birthdays so 83.5% was higher up the curve in the age related scores than an October 86%.

Guessing here!

Third_Time_Mum

Pmum wrote: »

Or it could be that the kids with October birthdays were scoring better thna those with January birthdays so 83.5% was higher up the curve in the age related scores than an October 86%.

Guessing here!

That must be it but I think I remember someone on the thread a while back saying that their child, whose birthday was in May, also got 102 with 86%. So a younger child doesn't necessarily get more marks than an older one; it seems to depend on the standard within that age band.

Third_Time_Mum

Can you imagine a P7 teacher or primary school principal trying to explain the process of age-standardisation as given to Travellinglight by AQE? My husband is a P6 teacher and I keep telling him he should know something about it in case parents ask. (Our son's primary school had no idea how it works - when someone asked at the P7 meeting last September, the principal simply said he thought it didn't make much difference, perhaps only a mark or two.) Anyway I started to read out the information from AQE posted by Travellinglight and after a couple of minutes my dh cried, "Stop, I can't take any more - I'm going to bed!" Oh well, it's the end of a long school year..

RikM

Yes, well, it would be easier to explain, if the process they used made sense...

travellinglight_2

appeal date just in ... Mid August. SO much for before the end of July! ANyone else her appealing?