1) Are you keen for your child getting into Dame Alice Owen’s School?
Dame Alice Owen's School is one of the UK's highest-performing schools and is one of the top 10 comprehensive schools for GCSE results as per the Telegraph, and it is a partially selective secondary school with academy status located in Hertfordshire. It is not surprising that the competition for Dame Alice Owens School for Year 7, 11 Plus entrance exam is fierce.
Our advice for the parents to always start preparing their child from Year 3. Parents can design the plan for their child and consistency in following the plan is of utmost essential. The structured study plan for all subjects is the key to win a place in DAO school.
In my many years of experience, I have seen parents who start early from year 3 but the student's foundation is weak. It’s not about starting early but the most important thing is planning the study correctly. We as a tutor have time tested plans from Year 3 and that is the key to our success.
This article focuses on information about the 11 Plus entrance test, the selection process, the competition for the 11 Plus entrance test for DAO, how to prepare your child for Dame Alice Owen's School tips and tricks, identifying correct resources.
Currently, Dame Alice Owens School, sample papers aren't available on the school website but here are a few free 11 plus past papers with solutions that will help your child to get ready for Dame Alice Owens School.
Read more about school information: Dame Alice Owens School 11 Plus (11+) Exam Complete Guide 2020.
2) What is the exam format used by Dame Alice Owen's School (DAO) for 11 plus (11+) Entrance Exam
In every academic year, the 11 plus entrance examination takes place in September before admission. The test is divided into two parts, carried on two different dates in September.
Academic 11 Plus Entrance Examination for DAO
Part 1:
Verbal Reasoning - A verbal reasoning test is an hour test set up by GL Assessment.
English -An English test is an hour test that Includes comprehension and an extended writing piece. This test is set by the school
Part 2:
Mathematics - The test is for 1 hour and is set up by the DAO school internally.
11 Plus Entrance Exam Results 2018:
In 2018, the school ranked the top 325 candidates who scored high in the first round of the Verbal Reasoning Test. As per the DAO school's published rules, the school marks the Maths and English papers of the students who were ranked in the top 325 candidates in the test that took place in Sept 2018.
The school then age-standardised the results of three tests (Verbal Reasoning, English and Maths) and produce a total mark.
The school then send the letters to parents with marks obtained in each subject as mentioned below:
- Verbal reasoning
- English
- Mathematics
- Total Marks
- Ranked Position
The letter also indicates the 'Lowest ranked position offered to the previous year by the end of the summer term'
For example :
- 2018: Ranked Position 121
- 2017: Ranked Position 156
- 2016: Ranked Position 143
- 2015: Ranked Position 120
Last year (2018) many of our students are ranked above 180, and hoping to get a place for entry in Sept 2019. We are very proud of our tutors, and their teaching methods who worked hard with students to have these excellent results.
Musical Aptitude Tests:
First-round Musical Aptitude Tests will be held on Wednesday 1st September 2021.
Musical Aptitude Test 1:
This is a written test of half an hour and is conducted with other children. The entire test will be based on aural responses.
In DAO musical aptitude test one there will be 60 questions asked from four types: Pitch, Melody, Texture, and Rhythm.
It is expected that the student should score 47 marks and above to qualify for the second round of the musical aptitude test.
Musical Aptitude Test 2 :
To qualify for the second round, the student must score 47 or more than that in the first musical aptitude test. In the second round, there are 5 minutes for the students to perform their choice of instrument with voice.
Musical Aptitude Test Results
The parents are informed with the musical aptitude test results along with the ranking on Wednesday 15th September 2021.
2) How much competition is there for Dame Alice Owens School?
Approximately 821 applicants apply for 200 places in Dame Alice Owens School for Year 7. This shows that Dame Alice Owens School receives four applications for a single place resulting in a ratio of 4:1. Out of 200 places about 20 seats, a year are reserved for children residing in Islington. There are 65 places allocated on the basis of academic performance. There are ten places allocated on the basis of performance in musical aptitude.
After taking a look at all statistical information, Dame Alice Owens School is accepting only top 24 to 25% of students who've applied for 11 plus entrance test.
Additional information about the entrance test / Dame Alice Owens School 11 plus entrance test format is available in a previous part of this article.
For all updated information about 11 plus exam dates and exam format, we recommend parents to visit the school website: Dame Alice Owens School Admission Section on school website.
We advise parents, a strict preparation on a number of Maths questions, Verbal Reasoning, comprehension and creative writing is utmost essential.
The following section focuses on how to prepare your child to get into Dame Alice Owens (DAO) School, how to prepare for 11 Plus (11+) entrance examination for DAO and provides you with more insights about preparation.
You will find 3500+ questions in our 11 plus past paper section which includes detail stepwise answers and every question is segregated as per the topic. The link to access these papers is given here: 11 plus past papers with solutions.
3) How to prepare for the 11 Plus entrance exam for Dame Alice Owens School?
As discussed in the earlier section about the competition for getting a place in Dame Alice Owens School, this section will now give more insights about the preparation for Dame Alice Owens School.
Every parent in Hertfordshire and outside Hertfordshire make sure that their child is practising many resources and various practice books available in the market. These resources are very good for practice. But, these are not enough and do not reflect the difficulty level of what Dame Alice Owens School entrance exam are expecting.
Most of the students in Hertfordshire has practised many resources available in the market. But Dame Alice Owens School is looking at an exceptional child, as said before only top 24 to 25 % of the top students. Therefore the school while designing the papers more likely to avoid the similar language of questions or style of questions appearing in various 11 plus resources available in the market.
Furthermore, these resources do not reflect the complexity of the Dame Alice Owens School exam paper.
We strongly recommend parents that the children who are appearing for Dame Alice Owens School 11 Plus exam must be exposed to different 11 Plus Past Papers, which contains the more logical, problem-solving type of questions and the language of the mathematical problems must be unique.
This year our students secured 140/140 in the QE boys exam and Band A in HBS. Our tutors worked hard. We never practised the resources which are commonly present in the market in our tutoring classes. Our Tutors always challenged our students on more on logical problem-solving questions, lots of word problems and every question in our tutoring session was different.
Our tutors used to set up a structured homework on the 11 plus practice books and 11 plus past papers as homework for the student.
Every question the student needs to solve in less than 40 sec and the time management was on the priority.
Our success formula shows that students who practiced a variety of Mathematical questions not just from typical 11 plus resource provider but from other independent school’s past papers succeed to get an entry into the Dame Alice Owens School.
To give an example, if you look at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School Papers, the questions are tough. Also, the language of the problems is very tricky to understand even for an adult. Our students when they appeared for Dame Alice Owens School 11 plus exam last year told us that practising past paper questions helped them to crack the Dame Alice Owens School entrance exam and managed the time accurately to complete the paper in a given time, by writing stepwise answers and showing nice and clean workout for each question.
The question above is from Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School. The problem clearly shows a difficult language where many children struggle. Our stepwise solution will be helpful and develop the confidence of a child. There is time guidance so the parent can monitor the child is solving question under time pressure.
For the Dame Alice Owens School entrance exam, they look at the approach of a student to solve the question. Hence writing steps are extremely important. That shows the examiner the thought process of the child and the method to answer the questions.
We strongly recommend the parents must practice scholarship questions. The parents can find the scholarship type of questions in 11 Plus Independent school Past papers. The parents can browse at the end of each 11 plus exam paper, the difficulty level of scholarship problems is very high. Practicing these scholarship questions we have noticed that it gives a boost to a child’s independent thinking and logical approach to tackle any question. The students are not scared to see the language of the exam question when it appears in the actual exam 11 plus entrance exam in Dame Alice Owens School.
Also, there are many past papers along with solutions on our website. Top mathematicians write these solutions. We recommend that students use 11 Plus Past Papers with solutions to have more practice for a variety of questions which may come in their examination.
Parents are advised to print the papers from our recommended practice paper links and can give it to the student ensuring the student complete the paper under timed and exam conditions.
The parents can come back to the website to mark the answers.
Solving a variety of papers helps students to learn time management.
Please see the below links for our highly recommended resources.
Our top mathematician tutor team has put enormous efforts to write detailed solutions to each question.
If you as a parent know what your child’s weak area is our system will show you all question segregated by topic, and you can practice them.
- 11+ Maths Papers with Detailed Answers
- 11+ Maths Topic Wise Questions
- 11+ English Practice Papers
- 11+ Verbal Reasoning Practice Papers
- 11+ Non-Verbal Reasoning Practice Papers
- 11+ GL style practice Papers
- 11+ Online Mock Exams
4) How to revise for Dame Alice Owens School?
Here we would like to give an expert tip:
For students who are preparing for multiple schools including Dame Alice Owen's School, the core subjects for 11 plus entrance test are Maths, English and Verbal Reasoning.
For Dame Alice Owens School 11 plus entrance exam the below revision schedule of 11 plus past papers is very helpful to clear the Dame Alice Owens School 11+ entrance exam.
All students in PiAcademy used this schedule and secured a place in DAO.
Below is a schedule we usually follow in our mathematics tutoring sessions to practise and revise the 11 plus past papers:
Please download this spreadsheet to your desktop and update the fields provided in this spreadsheet. This will help you to track your child's progress.
You can now access our subscription of 11 Plus Past Papers with Detailed Answers.
Parents can go through the wrong questions with their child. As our system also shows topic wise segregated questions, it is beneficial for parents to practice more questions on the same topic and revise them frequently. In our 11 plus past paper subscription, the time guidance is given for each problem which helps parents to revise the topic questions with their children under time pressure.
