Grammar schools / NWSSEE English (continuous writing) / Mock 8
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination · Second Stage
NWSSEE English Mock Paper 8
Preparation for the Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination, sat for admission to Nonsuch High School for Girls and Wallington High School for Girls. This is an original mock paper written by Revision Library. It is not a past paper and it is not an official specimen.
Print the paper (PDF)Paper and mark scheme (PDF)
- Time allowed
- 45 minutes
- Total marks
- 25
- Questions
- 1
- Level
- Hard
- You have 45 minutes for this paper. There is one task and it is worth 25 marks.
- Spend about five minutes planning and checking your work, and about forty minutes writing.
- Write your answer on the lined pages of this booklet. There is no rough paper, so make your plan in the space beneath the task.
- Read the whole task, including the planning box, before you start. Marks are given for covering everything you are asked to cover.
- Marks are given for how well your writing matches the form, the audience and the purpose you are given, and for your spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Continuous Writing
Answer this one task. Write in sentences and paragraphs.
- 125 marks
"Grant 114: repair sessions, Hollowmere village hall. A written report is required from the group before any further funding is considered."
A small charity gave your village five hundred pounds to start a repair session, where people bring broken things and volunteers try to mend them. You helped run all six evenings. Forty-one items were brought in and nineteen were mended. Two of the five volunteers stopped coming after the third evening. The sixth evening was the busiest of all.
Write a report for the trustees of the charity to analyse how the six evenings went and to comment on whether the money should be given again.
Planning: your report must cover all three of these points.
- what the numbers show, and what the numbers hide
- the most serious weakness in the way the evenings were run, described honestly
- a recommendation the trustees could act on, given that you want the funding to continue
A response that has been prepared beforehand, and that does not address the form or the task set out here, will be awarded no marks at all.
Spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Answers, mark scheme and worked explanations
- 125 marks
Gate: form and task (pass or fail)
- The answer is a report: impersonal in register, organised under a clear sequence of headings or clearly signposted sections, and written to inform a decision rather than to tell a story about the evenings.
- It is addressed to trustees who will decide about money, not to the volunteers and not to the village.
- It analyses and comments. A report that only recounts what happened, without judging it, fails this gate.
- All three planning points are covered, including the honest account of the most serious weakness. Concealing the weakness in order to protect the funding fails the task.
- A pre-learnt piece that does not address this form or this task receives no marks overall.
Content and audience (10 marks)
- 9-10: The figures are genuinely interrogated: nineteen from forty-one is read as a rate, its meaning is weighed, and the writer notices what the totals cannot show, such as which items were refused, who went away disappointed or why the sixth evening was the busiest. The weakness is named plainly and its cause is analysed rather than excused. The recommendation follows from the analysis and takes the trustees' interests seriously as well as the village's.
- 6-8: Sound analysis with some interrogation of the figures and an honest weakness. The recommendation is sensible but only loosely connected to the evidence above it.
- 3-5: The numbers are repeated rather than analysed. The weakness is softened until it disappears, or the report becomes an appeal for money.
- 0-2: A recount of six evenings, with no analysis and no recommendation.
Structure and style (8 marks)
- 7-8: Clearly sectioned so that a trustee could find any part of it quickly, moving from what happened, to what it means, to what should be done. The register is measured and impersonal throughout, precise rather than dry, and evidence is placed next to the judgement it supports.
- 5-6: Logically ordered with clear paragraphs. The register occasionally warms into ordinary storytelling.
- 3-4: Chronological rather than analytical, so the evidence and the judgements are scattered.
- 0-2: No sectioning or ordering that a reader could use.
Technical accuracy (7 marks)
- 6-7: Accurate sentence demarcation and punctuation in complex analytical sentences. Figures are quoted correctly and consistently. Spelling is secure in words such as volunteers, recommendation, sessions and evidence. Any headings are punctuated consistently.
- 4-5: Largely accurate, with a few slips in longer sentences.
- 2-3: Repeated errors in sentence demarcation, or figures that contradict the ones given in the task.
- 0-1: Errors frequent enough to undermine a report meant to be trusted.
This task is difficult because the three planning points pull against one another. You want the funding to continue, and you have been asked to state honestly what went wrong. Weak answers resolve that tension by hiding the weakness. Strong answers resolve it the way real reports do: they name the problem first, analyse why it happened, and then show that the recommendation exists precisely because the problem is understood. Honesty is what makes a recommendation believable.
Start with the numbers, because they are the only hard evidence you have. Nineteen mended out of forty-one is a little under half. Is that a success? It depends on what the other twenty-two were: things beyond mending, things needing a part nobody had, or things nobody present knew how to fix. Notice too what the totals cannot tell the trustees. They do not say how many people came back a second time, whether the mended items were still working a month later, or why the last evening was the busiest, which is the most interesting fact you have been given.
That last fact deserves a paragraph of its own. A project whose final session is its busiest is a project that was still growing when the money ran out. That is a genuine argument for further funding, and it is far stronger than saying everybody enjoyed it, because it is drawn from evidence rather than from feeling.
For the weakness, resist the temptation to blame the two volunteers who left. Ask why they left: five volunteers may have been too few for forty-one items, nobody may have been asked what they were willing to mend, or the evenings may have been run without any way of turning people away kindly. A cause you can name is a weakness a trustee can see being fixed.
Three mistakes cost marks here. Writing warmly and personally, which turns a report into a thank-you letter. Recommending more money without saying what it would buy. And forgetting to comment at all: the trustees asked whether the money should be given again, and a report that never answers that question has failed its purpose however elegant the rest of it is.
Use your five planning minutes to decide three things before you write: your reading of the figures, the weakness and its cause, and your recommendation in one sentence. Write for about thirty-three minutes, using short signposted sections. Keep the last five to check that every judgement has evidence next to it, that the figures match the ones you were given, and that your recommendation is stated plainly enough to be acted on.
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination, Second Stage, English (continuous writing). Written by Revision Library on 2026-08-28, independent check pending.
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