Changes to ISEB and Consortium Exams – 2023/2024

Every year the exam system evolves and changes. This helps the system develop to meet the needs of learners, and also helps the exams keep pace with the expertise of tutors!

The ISEB Pretest and the Consortium exam both changed greatly in 2022. The ISEB Pretest changed from GL Assessment format to an online adaptive test offered by Century Tech. The Consortium changed from a written CEM test to an online adaptive test offered by Atom Learning.
In autumn 2023, elements of the exams changed again. The change was not radical, like in the preceding year, but it was nonetheless significant and made the exams more challenging and much more difficult to prepare for.

The ISEB changed to become much more adaptive. Previously, adaptation was tiered, with the changes being progressive and linear. This year, adaptation was rapid and aggressive. The English section of the ISEB Pretest was so adaptable a total of fifty texts were offered! This means any two students would almost certainly take a different path through the test, being assessed on very different texts.
The range of texts was so great – from a simple non-fiction text about racing cars, to a complex excerpt from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in verse form – that student attainment was linked to knowledge of the specific texts which came up. As an example, one significant adaptation offered students the Jabberwocky, a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll. Some students had studied this poem at school, and so found it easy. Others had never seen it before, and so found it much harder.  To illustrate this, I have set out the first two lines of the poem below:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

A difficult poem to face in exam conditions without prior knowledge! The Consortium exam also changed. Two sections which caused problems in previous years – the Creative Analysis paper and the Maths Puzzles section – were amended to make them more challenging. This year, the Creative Analysis paper included a total of seven sources, compared to three the previous year. This meant students had to process a lot more information, and also get used to a different skill set, processing information rapidly from different content versus deeper analysis of a more limited number of sources.

The Maths Puzzles section also asked for more, offering students more questions than in previous years and so introducing an element of time pressure, which meant many students did not finish this aspect of the exam. Although we had strong Consortium results this year, this is only because we spent significant time preparing source questions and maths puzzles – guessing, correctly, that these sections would be elaborated.
The changes to the exam system means preparation must also change. Simply working on repetition and volume of practice material does not work. The ISEB English paper and Consortium creative analysis section are good examples of this. If you do not read widely and work on guided reading with a one-to-one tutor, you will not develop the skillset required to break down a complex text or something presented in a new context. This is not a skill which can be learnt by attempting practice papers – it comes from discussion, context, and analysis. A focus on skills versus volume and practice is what is needed to tackle the new generation of entrance exams.

Written by Dr. Tom Parkinson