11+ scores and GL practice paper scores - anecdotal evidence

Comparing the 11+ papers to the GL Assessment Papers

 In my previous posting I dispelled the myth that a candidate needs to get a really high percentage score to pass the Kent Test - 11+. I now want to dip into the comparison between the Kent 11+ and the GL Assessment practice papers in 2014-15.

As noted previously, the experience and feedback from my two children in 2014 and 2015 is that the Kent Test closely mirrored the type of questions that are found within the GL Assessment Papers (found here at Amazon). I guess this shouldn't be too surprising-  as GL Assessment are also behind the creation of the Kent Test 11+ papers too.

I didn't use a tutor in my children's 11+ preparation, preferring to help them myself. Whilst I will spend a future posting going through the approach that I adopted for both children, the central element was to get them to sit GL Assessment practice papers under timed conditions- effectively mirroring the 11+ exam conditions itself. The rationale behind this was two-fold.

1. Get them used to the format of a multiple choice paper
2. Get them used to the time constraints of the exam- so that the exam itself didn't throw up any surprises.

For each GL practice paper they took I noted the marks- and I've included these below, together with the percentage that they scored within the Kent 11+ itself. This provides a couple of comparison points to note:

1. Not all test papers are equal in complexity. If there is one piece of advice that I can give, that is just because your child scores lower than in a previously taken paper doesn't mean that they have regressed- it maybe just a little trickier! Indeed, there were a few papers (and I'm primarily thinking of Paper 1 of the NVR) that I judged as too hard- and for the sake of my children's confidence I didn't make them sit those papers.
2. How, from my own children's experiences, the average % marks across the GL practice papers areas mapped to the 11+ results themselves. Obviously, I only have two sets of samples here, so any conclusions should be taken with caution.

Now, this is purely my own conjecture, but the 2014 11+ test was the first test under the current "tutor-proof" approach. I suspect that lessons were learnt from this test and applied to the 2015 paper. So, for example, the English test seemed a little too easy in 2015. In my eldest child's case,  getting 92% in 2014 only achieved a standardised score of 127. The English exam, from the results alone, seemed to have been toughened up in 2015. Conversely, the Maths paper was very tricky in 2014, with loads of children not getting the chance to complete the paper. It would seem that changes were made in 2015 to rectify this (for example: reducing the number of questions). Hence, I have placed the 2015 comparison first- as I suspect that they may be more pertinent.

Unless things have changed recently, GL Assessment produce 2 sets of practice papers for the following subjects: English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Each set contains 4 test papers- meaning that there are 8 papers per subject. The tables below detail which GL test paper was taken enabling you to compare in the future.

2015 GL Assessment Practice Paper scores and 11+ results - Results from youngest child

Reasoning Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
Non Verbal	Paper 2	24 June 2015	30	87%	60	30
Non Verbal	Paper 6	27 June 2015	36	68%	72	30
Non Verbal	Paper 7	23 August 2015	36	82%	72	30
Non Verbal	Paper 3	03 September 2015	30	73%	60	30
Non Verbal	Paper 4	04 September 2015	30	87%	60	30

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
Verbal	Paper 1	16 March 2015	50	72.0%	80	37.5
Verbal	Paper 3	1 April 2015	48	82.0%	80	36.0
Verbal	Paper 4	13 March 2015	42	88.0%	80	31.5
Verbal	Paper 5	3 June 2015	47	87.5%	80	35.3
Verbal	Paper 6	20 July 2015	38	75.0%	80	28.5
Verbal	Paper 2	14 August 2015	47	79.0%	85	33.2
Verbal	Paper 7	1 Sept 2015	50	81.0%	80	37.5

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Reasoning	67/80	138	83.75%	81%
				Verbal = 82%
				NVR = 80%

  

Summary: In terms of overall percentages the 11+ exam scores were very close to the GL paper scores. However, I would temper this with the fact that the 11+ Reasoning papers in 2014 and 2015 contained a spatial section- which were not covered in the GL practice papers. In 2015 the feedback from a lot of kids was that one of these sections (related to shape nets) was very hard and may have been behind the slight drop in the reasoning pass grade in 2015 (when compared to 2014).

English Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
English	Paper 1	11 July 2015	32	65.0%	49	39.2
English	Paper 4	12 July 2015	33	78.0%	49	40.4
English	Paper 3	15 July 2015	35	82.0%	49	42.9
English	Paper 2	17 August 2015	35	76.0%	49	42.9
English	Paper 6	21 August 2015	36	80.0%	50	43.2
English	Paper 7	29 August 2015	35	82.0%	50	42.0
English	Paper 8	30 August 2015	35	90.0%	50	42.0

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
English	19/24	121	79%	79%

 Summary: Here the scores between the exam and the practice papers exactly matches. However, there was a reasonable divergence in the results across all the GL Assessment papers. How much this is due to my child getting better at the paper, or whether some papers are harder than others can only be speculated. It should be noted that, to my children at least, the toughest section within the English practice papers was the "capital letters and punctuation" section. From feedback, neither the 2014 or 2015 papers contained this section.

Maths Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
Maths	Paper 8	29 April 2015	44	70.0%	50	52.8
Maths	Paper 1	6 May 2015	37	78.0%	50	44.4
Maths	Paper 5	1 July 2015	35	66.0%	50	42.0
Maths	Paper 6	4 July 2015	42	82.0%	50	50.4
Maths	Paper 7	23 August 2015	40	88.0%	50	48.0
Maths	Paper 8	25 August 2015	40	78.0%	50	48.0
Maths	Paper 4	26 August 2015	41	82.0%	49	50.2

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Maths	24/25	141	96%	78%

 Summary: The results here would suggest that the GL practice papers were tougher than the 11+ maths paper. I would temper this conclusion with the fact that the paper in 2014 was a lot tougher (see results below)- perhaps too hard (more questions in the same time)- and whether they have gone too far in the other way is open to debate.

2014 GL Assessment Practice Paper scores and 11+ results - Results from my eldest child

Reasoning Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
Verbal	Paper 5	04-Aug	77%
Verbal	Paper 6	05-Aug	81%
Verbal	Paper 7	06-Aug	83%
Verbal	Paper 8	31-Aug	93%

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
NVR	Paper 5	08-Aug	68%
NVR	Paper 6	09-Aug	65%
NVR	Paper 7	10-Aug	71%
NVR	Paper 8	14-Aug	67%
NVR	Paper 3	01-Sep	80%

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Reasoning	75/80	141	94.00%
				Verbal = 84%
				NVR = 70%

English Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
English	Paper 1	11-Aug	84%
English	Paper 2	26-Aug	76%
English	Paper 4	30-Aug	86%
English	Paper 5	31-Aug	82%

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
English	22/24	127	92%	82%

Maths Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
Maths	Paper 5	25 July 2016	70%
Maths	Paper 6	26 July 2016	84%
Maths	Paper 7	03 August 2016	82%
Maths	Paper 2	16 August 2016	90%
Maths	Paper 3	25 August 2016	86%
Maths	Paper 1	05 September 2016	90%

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Maths	23/30	132	77%	84%