Admissions Process: Year 7, 8, 9 and 10

Candidates will be invited for assessment at the school or at a venue in their region: please contact us and we will do our best to help with the test location.

The School assesses candidates for entry to ensure that the curriculum and pace of learning are appropriate for them and that they have the potential to be happy and thrive in the School, contributing co-operatively towards its community. The ability to understand and communicate effectively in English is fundamental to this.

Assessment of Junior Candidates (11-16)
Total Assessment time, including breaks: 2 hours(or 1 hour 40 minutes if the interview has been done previously).

1. Written Entrance Examinations in
   English (45 minutes): This will include a comprehension exercise, a punctuation and word exercise, and a piece of free writing on a specified topic.
   Mathematics (45 minutes): The test will consist of graded questions, appropriate for age, testing arithmetic, understanding of numbers, shape (elementary geometry) and elementary graphs. Some questions will involve problem solving.
   


2. Previous school reports, , including achieved examination grades and predicted grades. Candidates are also invited to provide a simple Record of Achievement or CV giving a list of achievements and interests. When possible, a confidential report from the candidate's current school will be used, otherwise parents will be asked to provide a copy of the most recent school report.


3. An informal interview (10 minutes), conducted in English. It is intended that this should be a friendly, two-way experience, enabling the School to get to know the candidate and allowing the candidate to ask questions about the School. It is often easier for candidates if their parents are not involved in this conversation.

The assessment is designed to need no special preparation and it is much preferred that candidates do not receive coaching or tuition in advance. It is intended to be a positive experience of benefit in itself and it should certainly not disrupt ordinary school work. It is understood that candidates will have different school backgrounds and different levels of English; the assessment attempts to measure a candidate's potential to learn and develop.

Out of courtesy, parents should inform the candidate's current school before assessment for the Prince of Wales Island International School. It is particularly important that a current school is aware of intentions before we ask for a confidential report. Ideally current schools, teachers and headteachers should be involved in the discussions so that they can offer advice about future schooling. They will know their pupils well and so their advice is to be valued.

All candidates will be assessed in a similar way so that decisions about class groupings and setting can be made. Some schools, particularly British curriculum schools, are able to provide fuller and more focused information on candidates. This is important and useful to us, but no candidate will be at either an advantage or disadvantage because of the school from which they apply. Similarly, the admissions process will be devoid of other forms of discrimination and the application of quotas, except that, by law, international schools may not admit more than 40% local students. Parents are asked to let us know in advance of any special needs so that arrangements can be made.