Admissions : 11+ Entrance Examinations

Saturday 14 January 2012 - 11+ Entrance Examination
Sunday 15 January 2012 - Music/Sports/Art Scholarship assessments
Friday 27 January 2012 - Results posted to parents
Friday 10 February 2012 - School notified of acceptance of place

Registration for 11+ Entrance Tests
If possible, please contact Mrs Ellison (Registrar) on 01872 272830 prior to 14 January 2012 if you would like your daughter to sit the 11+ Entrance Tests.

If it's a last minute decision please just come along to the main foyer outside the school hall at 8.30am on 14 January where you will be met by Mrs Matthew (Deputy Head) who will ask you to register your daughter (and pay a £50 registration fee) there and then. Your daughter will then be able to sit the papers alongside the other candidates.

11+ Entrance Tests - The Big Day!
On 14 January please bring your daughter to the school at 8.30am. She should report to either the main school reception or the foyer outside the main school hall. Your daughter should wear home clothes.

Your daughter will be greeted by the Deputy Head, Mrs Fiona Matthew on arrival and we would then be grateful if parents could leave the school returning at 1.00pm.

The Examination
All girls sit the same papers. All 3 papers include questions covering a range of difficulty: the most taxing elements are designed to enable us to choose the girls to whom academic scholarships may be offered. We do not provide past papers as we are keen to see what the girls know rather than what they have been coached to know!

Your daughter will need to bring a pencil, pen, ruler, eraser, protractor and a pair of compasses.

There are three parts to the Examination:

1. Verbal Reasoning - 45 minutes
This test, which is designed by the National Foundation for Educational Research is designed to test intellectual potential. It is similar to the old County 11+ examination and is a combination of mathematical and reasoning questions.

2. English Examination - One hour
The entrance examination for English is designed to assess the candidate's ability in attainment targets as designated by the National Curriculum, i.e. reading, writing, spelling, punctuation and presentation.

The examination consists of a comprehension piece and an essay. Candidates will be required to read a passage and answer questions on it to test their understanding. Specific questions on vocabulary may be included. Girls will then be asked to choose an essay from a list of topics and write as much as they can in the time available. Although there are no formal questions on grammar, spelling or punctuation included in the examination, all these aspects are taken into account when marking the work, in order to determine the candidate's overall level of achievement.

3. Mathematics Examination - One hour
Candidates will be asked to sit a single paper. All the questions will conform with the National Curriculum in Mathematics. Calculators will not be permitted. While it is not possible to examine all aspects of the National Curriculum, questions will be chosen from the following:

addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of numbers up to 1000
understanding remainders - rounding up and down - and making estimates
units of length, capacity and weight
monetary calculations
explaining number patterns and predicting subsequent numbers
the use of a symbol to stand for an unknown number
inverse operations
sorting and classifying 2D and 3D shapes
building 3D shapes. Volumes by counting cubes
drawing 2D shapes. Area by counting squares
comparing and ordering objects
recognition of squares, rectangles, circles, triangles, hexagons, pentagons, cubes, cuboids, cylinders, spheres
recognition of right angles
types of movement - translation, rotation and reflection
angle as a measurement of turning
symmetry in a variety of shapes in 2D and 3D
the eight points of the compass
appreciation of the terms "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise"
selecting criteria for sorting data
ordering data in accordance with criteria
interpreting and representing data using bar charts and pictograms
recognition of degrees of uncertainty about the outcome of some events
understanding of the terms "certain", "uncertain", "impossible"