Thank you Helen once again you are answering all my worries! Most grateful it gives us hope

Thanks Helen!

I second everything you've said.

I think the Shirley mocks are helpful but not necessarily accurate predictions. Ds scored about 68 and 76 in the two he took and was apparently 'on track' but only just. I don't know how they make their predictions or where they get their data on school placements. My impression is that their maths and nvr is quite difficult and that the english is a bit easier than the real thing - though that is just my feeling - I have no evidence for this!

I don't think standardisation by age makes a huge difference - maybe a few points between a September and August born child with the same raw scores. There's more discussion on here somewhere about age standardisation but I can't find it now.

Thanks Candel this is what I think too about their tests, did your Ds get through and if so what did he score?

Thanks for mentioning the above scores because my DD found the Shirley mock hard to complete more than about 75% of the test in the time, so she only scored 50%. Somehow we need to get her speed up within a month and my husband is very against her doing much over the holidays, argh!

My DD has done 3 mocks with 3 different companies (no reason, it’s just when she could do the various dates. The first one she got 59% but only answered 190 questions out of 250 but got 75% of the questions she answered correct. For the second one I had told her if she was running out of time then just guess. Unfortunately this backfired as when they were told that she had 5 mins to go in that mock she just guessed... and then she said she realised that 5 mins was quite a long time but didn’t go back and check (she hates that part... laziness I think!). Oh and only got 56%.

She then did the Shirley mock last week and got 69%. She answered all the questions and did do some checking so we’ve got the next month to work on her weak areas.

My DDs problem is she panics. You can tell when she’s panicking even in the mocks she does at home as she’ll suddenly get a few pages of questions wrong even if it’s not a new section. Hard to know how to help with that except reassurance...

It’s so hard isn’t it!!

We tried to say to DS2 that if the question was going to take a lot of working out guess the answer and move on to the next one, marking on the paper which one was guessed in case there was time to go back to it at the end. The thinking behind this was that instead of ‘wasting time’ on a long winded question he may be able to answer 3 shorter questions in the same timeframe. Not sure if this theory worked though!!

Thanks Helen, yes I'm trying to encourage her to do this, but she thinks she knows best gah!

Hi KH and welcome to the 2018 worriers!

My dd is a panicker too & she really hates missing questions and moving on, however much I try and persuade her it's just for exam technique practice. She says 'I'll do it in the real thing but I don't want to now because I know I can work it out'. Kind of frustrating!

I'm sure you're right about the reassurance, I think that confidence is a key thing - especially with worriers, panickers and perfectionists!

Thank you for the welcome! I’ve looked intermittently at this board over the last year or so but it makes me panic about how little we push DD or that we are doing the wrong thing etc etc! See where she gets it from?! DD is a perfectionist, she does have a tutor who picked up on that in a 15 minute assessment!!

My DD hates the checking aspect... she says she did do it in the last mock but has always said in the real exam she’ll do it but I’m not sure she will as she not used to doing it, if you know what I mean! Anyway just trying to encourage her.

Also her maths is a definite weak point, so I thought we’d mainly work on that, but interestingly her tutor said she’ll still work on everything as then it’ll make her stronger areas stronger to make up for that weakness, if that makes sense?

To the lady who’s daughter got 50% in the mock, I think with my DD, timing was a real problem but we only had about 6 weeks between the mocks and that definitely improved just by her knowing more what to expect, time wise. Obv as I said it went the other way in the second mock but a lesson to us was to make sure she had a watch!! Also if that’s the only mock for your DD, then the whole experience will have been new but I think mocks do help in the whole experience thing. I did say I wouldn’t obsess about the results but of course have! Apparently the 10 min tests are good for timing?

Anyway, waffling now so will stop!

Thanks KH1970, yes we aren't watch wearers in our family and there was no clock in the mocks, so I had thought yesterday to make sure she has a watch with her. Yes it was her first mock, so it was all new and we hadn't got her to sit any practise tests beforehand, apart from a couple of verbal 10 minute ones. Her teacher seems to have taught her this new way of doing comprehension tests which is making her get about 25%, rather than her normal 80%+ Its soo annoying, she has been taught to read the questions first now, rather than the text and she's now not comprehending the subtleties in the text.