Transfer Test AQE 2014-2015

Mrs_mum

Hello cherryscone, u can get past papers from the AQE themselves but your son may not have covered everything in school yet so he might find these off putting. I used Bond books which my daughter really enjoyed doing, I got them from Waterstones. You could ask his teacher what they would recommend. There are loads of different papers available such as Windmill etc, ur son (and u, lol) will be busy. Good luck.

rolo1_2

mygirls -You will need some form of evidence for special circumstances (i.e. letter from school re: disruption, record of phone-calls, whom spoke to, dates/times etc etc)
Worth getting this info now in case you need to go down this route in the future (hopefully you wont

sca11ion

Hi All - just found the forum, in same position as everyone, dd practice tests varying. Lots of great info here.

Q re plural of tornado (only one she mentioned, we didn't want to press for further examples) - apparently can be either tornadoes or tornados. So what was the point in that question?

AQE_Mummy

Hi there. Have been reading these posts for a few months and thought I would sign up and share my experiences.

My first child did the AQE last year and was getting an average of 83% in tests from April - November, most test from October onwards where 90% or more. He is July Birthday and got 103 in AQE and when I got scores back from AQE, he had got an average of 80% in his top two papers. One was 76% and one was 84%. My son definately should have scored higher! Got to second place school and is doing exceptionally well, top 10% of class and loving it.

My daughter is doing it this year, she is scoring early to mid 70s, has had some very low papers, but all recent ones in the 70s. Have fingers crossed, sort of thinking she might score 95...would be delighted with this! January Birthday.

Mrs_mum

AQE mummy, can't believe your son scored 103 and didn't get into first choice but it just shows that some things happen for a reason, as u said how happy and well he is doing in his second choice. Can I ask, did u ask the AQE office then for his percentage scores?

Mrs_mum

Just read there that 7,285 children sat the test on Saturday, apparently more than any other year. I remember when my daughter was born it was mentioned there was a high birth rate that year and when my daughter was starting primary she didn't get into our first choice because it was over subscribed, something that hadn't happened for many years in the school apparently. I am just wandering if this will have an impact on the scores, either raising or lowering the scores?

AQE_Mummy

Practise Papers mostly 86-93%.

Actual Test Scores: The top two scores were 76% and 84%...cant remember what the third was, but lower than 76%.

Its the standarisation that makes the difference. I found the AQE office incredibly helpful and efficient and I do trust their system. You are only scored against those in your birth month. My son was one of the oldest children doing the AQE so that would have affected him getting into his first choice school. But, at the end of the day, we are very happy and hope that my daughters scores are ok to get her to where she wants to go this year even though they are only around 73% (January birthday though)

Here is the response from AQE to one of my emails explaining the system in February this year, just after the scores came out. I hope some of you find this helpful.

AGESTANDARDISATION: AN EXPLANATION


Each assessment is marked in the week following. Marking takes place in two centres, wherethere are 60 markers in each who work in groups of 3; in each centre there area manager and two deputies. Each scriptis marked and totalled three times; 20% of the scripts are marked again inQuality Control and a further 20% are added again.

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

In the age standardisationprocess 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 is aged 10years, 7 months and 10 days on the day of the first paper on Saturday 14thNovember 2009. By a simple conversion,Sarah’s age is considered to be 127.3 months on the day of the first paper.

When pupils are assigned togroups, Sarah will appear in the group of pupils aged 127 months (to thenearest month) who took the first paper. It is important to note that on the day of the second paper (Saturday 28thNovember 2009), Sarah will be 10 years, 7 months and 24 days. When this is converted into months, Sarah’sage becomes 127.8 months. It followsthat for the second assessment, the software switched Sarah to the group ofpupils aged 128 months (to the nearest month). In short, the standardisation algorithm takes account of the fact thatthe children age during the assessment period.

For each group the softwarecomputes the mean and standard deviation of raw scores for each of thepapers. These are then standardised toproduce so-called ‘z-scores’. Thez-score appropriate to any raw score is found by subtracting the group meanfrom the raw score and dividing the result by the standard deviation for thegroup. These scores are then convertedto generate a distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. This ensures that, for each paper, pupils areonly compared with pupils of the same age (to the nearest month). For instance, summer born pupils are notdisadvantaged 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 lieabove any given score.

A pupil who takes all theirtests will have three age-standardised scores (one for each paper). As pointed out earlier, pupils may switchgroups as their ages change during the assessment period. The average of the best two scores iscomputed for each pupil. These scoresare then reported on a distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation15. 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 forthat test.in
In a letter from which above was attached was the following:
When norm-referenced testscores are converted to standard scores, the children are competing with theother children in their age range and not with the test. The children with the weakest overall abilitycan often secure their highest standard score on the “most difficult” test.

Hope this is helpful.......I found it very useful. What is really means that you don't know until the end of the process, everyones child will do their best and most times it actually works out exactly as it should.N.I. Company No. NI070281

Mrs_mum

Thanks AQE mummy, really helpful. Good luck to your daughter for the next tests

flymetothemoon_2

Mygirls, really glad to hear things will be resolved before next test. Hopefully you wont need to rely on SC. If you do, I imagine aqe will support you no matter which school you apply to. How many kids were causing the disruption?
By the way, it's very generous of you to suggest 3 warnings before disruptive kids are removed, I would be reluctant to allow any more than 2 warnings.

flymetothemoon_2

sca11ion wrote: »

Hi All - just found the forum, in same position as everyone, dd practice tests varying. Lots of great info here.

Q re plural of tornado (only one she mentioned, we didn't want to press for further examples) - apparently can be either tornadoes or tornados. So what was the point in that question?

Sca11ion
Indeed, what was the point of that question. As far as I am aware it can be spelt both ways. My colleague at work mentioned this today as her son told her it was one of the questions, she also thinks it can be spelt both ways.


DOES ANYONE KNOW IF WE'RE RIGHT ?????