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11+ Exam Changes: What's New in 2024 and How to Prepare





England has over 163 grammar schools 155 of which control their own admissions including the choice of test. Over 95% of grammar schools now determine their own admissions policies, choosing what tests to set and how to weight each component. Although some form consortia with nearby schools to agree on a common test, there may be as many as 70 different 11+ tests set across the country, meaning it is not possible to refer to the eleven plus test as a single entity.

 

According to the latest changes, the CEM format for 11+ admissions is being halted for admissions to Grammar schools. The reason is CEM has moved online from Sep 2023. This impacts nearly 50 Grammar schools across the country.

 

This implies that preparing your child for 11+ based on the GL exam format is the best way forward for all parents seeking to secure Grammar school spaces from 2023.

 

EL Bucks is based on the GL format of exam. This allows your child the best chance of preparing for the appropriate exam, specialising in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire exam formats.

 

Marking for the GL exam (also called the Secondary Transfer Test in Buckinghamshire) are standardized. standardization refers to the process of ensuring that the exam results are fair and comparable across different test administrations and cohorts of students. Standardization helps account for variations in the difficulty level of different exam papers and ensures that the scores accurately reflect a student's abilities relative to their peers. Here's how standardization is typically done in the GL 11+ exam:

 

·       Preparation of Test Papers: GL Assessment, the organization responsible for developing the 11+ exam, prepares multiple versions of test papers for each subject (e.g., Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, Mathematics, English). These test papers are carefully designed to cover a range of difficulty levels and to assess the full spectrum of abilities among students.

 

·       Trialing and Norming: Before the official administration of the exam, the test papers are trialled with a representative sample of students from diverse backgrounds. This allows GL Assessment to evaluate the performance of the test questions and to establish the difficulty level of each question relative to the overall cohort.

 

·       Scoring and Scaling: After the exam is administered, the raw scores (i.e., the number of correct answers) for each student are collected and recorded. These raw scores are then converted into scaled scores using a statistical process called scaling. Scaling ensures that the scores have the same meaning and interpretation across different test papers and administrations.

 

·       Equating: Equating is a specific type of scaling used to adjust for differences in the difficulty level of different test papers. Through equating, the scores from different test papers are calibrated to a common scale, allowing for fair comparison of scores across different papers. Equating ensures that a student who takes a more difficult test paper is not disadvantaged compared to a student who takes an easier paper.

 

·       Calculation of Percentiles and Stanines: Once the scores have been scaled and equated, GL Assessment calculates percentiles and stanines to rank students relative to their peers. Percentiles indicate the percentage of students in the norm group who scored below a particular student, while stanines divide the distribution of scores into nine equally sized groups, ranging from stanine 1 (lowest) to stanine 9 (highest).

 

By following these standardization procedures, GL Assessment aims to ensure that the 11+ exam results are fair, reliable, and comparable across different test administrations and cohorts of students. This helps schools make informed decisions about admissions and provides a consistent and objective measure of students' abilities.

A child's ‘standardised score' will be between 0 and 180+.

 

Your child's standardised scores from the two Secondary Transfer Test papers (for Buckinghamshire) are added together. This gives their standardised Secondary Transfer Test Score (STTS). The STTS will be the sum of the following:

 

·       50% of the standardised score for verbal skills

·       25% of the standardised score for mathematical skills

·       25% of the standardised score for non-verbal skills.

 

In Buckinghamshire, if your child scores 121 or above, they qualify for Grammar schools in the region.

 

At EL Bucks, we train students from Amersham, Chesham, Watford, Rickmansworth, Croxley Green, Little Chalfont, Chalfont St Giles, Chalfont St Peter, The Missendens, Holmer Green, and Seer Green. If you’re based in these areas, call us now to discuss how to secure your child a place for the 11+ preparation. Our courses include study material which will handed to the child over the course of the term, Mock tests to gauge their performance over the year, and in person classes to ensure we’re able to cater to your child’s individual needs. Our classes are composed of 6-8 students, and are conducted in Amersham during the week.

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