Transfer Test AQE 2014-2015

flymetothemoon_2

AQE_Mummy wrote: »

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.

Welcome to the group AQE mummy

I'd have thought that 80% would have given an AQE score higher than 103. Im sure that was disappointing for you at the time especially when practice tests were so high. My DD did aqe in 2010 and her aqe score was lower than expected too. She has an august birthday, I genuinely believed that had worked against her. She went to gramnar and is doing way better than many kids who scored much higher than her at aqe. Despite the numerous explanations I have now heard and read about how aqe scores are worked out it remains impossible to work out or predict & that is frustrating. My DS is doing aqe this year and although his practice papers have been in 80s and 90s and i know he is extremely capable and well prepared, I really do not know what sort of score to expect!

Best of luck to your daughter.

Veggie_Northern_Ireland

Thanks for the info from AQE Office AQEMum, I'd read before how they work out the average and the average is then score 100 etc but I hadn't realised that they split it per month and only compare scores with children in the same month. It's a bit of a relief seeing that 80% gave your son a score of 103, we're averaging 81-89% here and i was worried 80% might not get 100. Now just fingers crossed that she doesn't make silly mistakes and stays above 80% as her first choice usually takes 99 as their minimum score. She is a September birthday so she would be compared with some of the oldest children.

Mrs Mum I read that too about 7285 sitting the first test last Saturday. It's scary to think that they will be compared against such a large number of children, although at least we now know that they are only compared again children born in the same month as them. I think maybe with so many children doing the test this year, it might bring the average score higher? Let's hope not.

We haven't done any more practice work from Saturdays test, I'm planning on doing some maths work sheets on perimeter etc over the next few nights and a paper at the weekend, she'll be re-doing a paper she's done in the past because we've ran out.

Thanks for the reply Flymetothemoon, the past papers from aqe and papers from thetransfertest.com are the ones we've been using, I thought their papers were very good and realistic, well just have to re-use some.

mygirls

Flymetothemoon my daughter said 2-3 kids causing main disruption. School have identified 2 boys as the teacher had spoken to them after the test.

Workingmumof2

Flymetothemoon my daughter had asked me about tornado also after the test. She put oes as the plural which I thought was correct though when I looked it up it does give both so who knows what aqe will mark as the right answer. The more info I read the more I believe we won't have a clue what score our kids will get!!! Very frustrating as my daughters average is around 80% so I think she will b lucky to get into her 1st choice which took over 104 last year. Does anyone know what sort of mark in the GL test is needed for an A as she is sitting it this sat 😞

sca11ion

Workingmumof2 wrote: »

Does anyone know what sort of mark in the GL test is needed for an A as she is sitting it this sat 😞

We're doing GL as well this Saturday. Would even be handy to know what percentage of candidates get each grade, but I don't think that information gets released (unless someone knows different?)

Workingmumof2

Good to hear from someone else doing the GL on Saturday. I don't know what percentage get what grade. I read on forum previously that one child got a raw score of 73 and got an A and another child had a raw score of 77 and got a B1. The child who got the A was a June bday which must have made quite a difference. At least with the GL results you get the raw scores of how they did in the tests as well as their standardised score and grade. Good luck for Sat x

Cherryscone

Great Info on here my sons birthday is the end of June he is the youngest

flymetothemoon_2

Workingmumof2

My sons tutor was here tonight and I asked his opinion on the plural of tornado and he said it is tornadoes (in the English language) whilst the Americans spell it tornados - so tornadoes will definitely be marked right but he wasn't sure if they would mark tornados wrong or not! So there's more confusion for us all !

Cherryscone - I previously asked the tutor if my son would get any extra marks as his birthday is end of January but he told me that he wouldn't because the extra marks are only given for May and June birthdays (& possibly April).
As my son is much younger than most of his class, I feel that is a little unfair. I have always noticed the gap in maturity and everything between my son & most of his class who are 6 & 7 months older than him.

However, apparently your son should get about 3 extra marks.

sca11ion

Cherryscone wrote: »

Great Info on here my sons birthday is the end of June he is the youngest

Good luck to your DS Cherryscone, it's great that the younger ones have an equal playing field and probably rightly so. My DD is August, and smarter than me. We are not even thinking about first choice or second choice at this stage, will see what she gets and then discuss with her. Unfortunately we are in an area (Lisburn) where the best grammars are the hardest in NI to get into, be it AQE or GL.

MaggieMc

You need a total score of 234+ to get an A in GL. There is not much difference between each grade;

A 234 and over, B1 229-233, B2 224-228, C1 219-223, C2 213-218

As usual with standardised scores, 100 is the average. As GL is the same as NFER scoring, I believe 141 is the highest score you can get in each paper.