Could you pass the 11-plus? The test once given to 11 year olds
news.bbc.co.uk
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For reference I got 15/15 in under five minutes, but I've seen all these sorts of things before. What's clear is how important practice is for this type of test. Some questions require a trick, and if you haven't seen it you're in real trouble. If you have seen it then the question becomes a reasonable test of reasoning.
In this sense, perhaps, it's something like the trick interview questions people complain about. Perhaps we should assume people have now seen all the trick questions, and start to look at how they then reason beyond them.
And anyone who hasn't seen all the questions before clearly just hasn't done their homework.
Practice - lots of it. It is worth noting that the schools do not do any coaching for this - it is up to the parents to do it, or employ someone else.
I'm starting to prepare my son to take it this time next year. Some observations so far:
- It exercises some core problems solving skills.
- It is a good arena for learning how exams work, particularly the time keeping, without getting mixed up with learning a large body of knowledge.
- Having a performance metric would appear to affect the whole education system (for the better).
- By removing those pupils who (at this point in time) do well on the 11+ into seperate schools, it allows the secondary schools and their teachers to concentrate on the next stratum of kids who are no longer in the shade.
For the gory detail:
http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/assets/content/bcc/docs/schools/ad...
What if teachers of younger students only teach to this test and ignore other important topics?
They will need to cram vocab. - as are their English speaking peers.
> What if teachers of younger students only teach to this test and ignore other important topics?
The teachers explicitly don't teach to this test, and would be sanctioned if they did such that all the other areas of the syllabus were slipping. It is up to the parents to arrange preparation one way or another.
Having said that, the school work does overlap - they start to have time limits on tests, and as always there is a strong emphasis on reading, comprehension and vocabulary. However, the particular mechanics and mindset of the 11+ are not covered.
Also did not know gilt is a word.
Meanwhile, I'm proud to say that I got 15/15 at age 27 -- but I'm less proud to say that I had about 9 seconds to spare :)