02/01/2025
What's the first step when preparing your child to apply to an academically selective, fee-paying school?
Be honest about your child's current academic achievement.
If your child is attending a state primary school, re-read their last school report.
To successfully sit the exam, your child needs to have completed the curriculum for KS2. That usually means your child will be working 'above the expected standard' or they are working 'at greater depth'.
If your child's school report includes standardised scores then your child will score at least 110 or above (out of 135).
In mathematics this means that your child knows their multiplication and division facts fluently, can use the standard algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with whole numbers, fractions and decimals and have a simple grasp of percentages.
Click here (https://august-school.kit.com/4b9c4500ba) for a free sample mathematics test from GL Assessment.
Follow the instructions and help your child to complete the test under test conditions:
-stick to the time limit
-let them read and complete questions independently
-don't read the questions to your child if they are stuck/confused
Mark the test. Do not award any half-marks (every answer is either correct or wrong).
Talk with your child about questions which they answered incorrectly. Find out whether your child did not read the question properly, did not understand the question or was careless.
If your child gets any questions between Q1 and Q25 wrong (particularly if they get the question wrong because they don't understand the question, rather than because they were careless) - they will struggle to do well enough on the autumn exams to be admitted to an academically selective school.
If your child can answer most of Q26 to Q50 correctly then it is likely your child will succeed in the mathematics portion of the autumn exams.
If your child gets some questions between Q26 and Q50 correct but does not understand how to find the answers for some of the questions between Q26 to Q50 then it is likely that with some extra help, your child can still succeed in the autumn exams.
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