This is a statement often expressed by eleven plus practice materials publishers as guidance to judge how your child is performing. The problematic part of them doing so is that eleven plus tests are not all the same and the practice materials are not always location specific. Where your child takes a test can have a major impact on a child’s chances of success.
For instance, in Kent, where there are many grammar schools, the chances of success are notably higher than in Birmingham. Gloucestershire lies between the two. Schools in different areas also have different rules regarding allowances made for siblings, pupil premium and whether places are allocated based on meeting a score threshold or overall ranking.
We have found that CEM style practice tests and mocks tend to need lower scores than GL style tests when predicting likelihood of admission, but still the key factor is ranking amongst the cohort. At Cotswold Education, we can provide reasonable predictions for Gloucestershire through the data we collect in our bespoke mock tests. We are able to compare how children perform in the mocks and then use this as our baseline when making predictions of the likelihood for success.
In short, there is no definitive pass rate that we would suggest your child should be achieving in practice papers. Some children also perform different in practice tests compared to the actual test. If you want to find out more about the liklihood of acceptance into Gloucestershire Grammar Schools feel free to get in touch, come along to one of our Parent/Carer Support Evenings or book an At Home or On Location Mock Test.
