To NOT arrange for my child to be tutored for 11+?

We didn’t pay for tutoring but we know several parents who did. We got some past papers and DH got DS to do them timed then go through the marking together. But this started only say three months before the 11 plus. Its more about knowing the way to tackle the questions and going through that as it is unlike ordinary school work. But I totally agree with you expensive tutoring is a waste they are either capable of passing and studying at GS level only with working on a small amount of past papers at home and without the tutoring or they aren’t. Our DS absolutely thrived at GS.

What schools are these? No one else on the thread has experienced them 😂

10 yrs ago a friend of a friend sent her bright son totally unprepared. He freaked out at the exam paper - multiple choice you needed to mark with a line in a specific way which he’d never seen then started crying at verbal reasoning which he’d never encountered and was removed from hall.
Failed and got allocated a school in special measures that has since closed. I think they went private in end.
I think mum wanted to brag how he’d not needed tutoring. It was cruel. You wouldn’t expect an adult to sit an exam in full exam conditions without being familiar with content and format.

Grammar schools don't want raw ability. They want children who are bright and whose parents are invested enough to pay for tutoring not to mention kids who are willing to engage with tutoring.

It's no secret that the kids who get in are the ones who have been tutored. Grammar schools have identified the types of families that they want and organise the selection process accordingly.

If your child is bright enough then they will pass without tutoring. My daughter only had a few past papers to have a go at and passed without tutoring. The head teacher at her grammar school was against children being tutored through the exam and many of the ‘borderline’ pupils struggled to keep up with the work in the first year and left.

That's fine. I'll bet such children do see a benefit from focusing on improving their maths and English and exam taking skills. That in and of itself can't hurt. But if the result isn't what you want, then that's OK too.

BTW My son vehemently, vehemently hates grammar schools, because they are pressure cookers. He didn't pay any attention to his teachers obsessing over the amount of revision they wanted him to do and when, but he saw friends who did, and whose mental health suffered as a consequence of the pressure cooker atmosphere.

I’ve spent a fortune. I’m well aware my DC may not get a space and wouldn’t have invested if it hadn’t accepted that as an outcome. It’ll still be beneficial to her

I agree with this. I don’t think it’s fair on a child to expect them to sit exam without ever having seen the type of question before. However clever they are, most would struggle in this situation. There will always be exceptions of course.

You're doing exactly what I did with my kids (now 21 and 19). They were not tutored beyond what I was willing to do myself personally to support getting them used to the exams. My ADHD son spent most of his 11+ prep time playing on a app called freerice that taught words (since he mostly read science books and little fiction) and playing internet maths games. He simply was not interested in more formal learning at the end of the school day and I'm glad I didn't have him to be privately tutored as learning should be enjoyable. One of my daughter's closest friends used vouchers to take one of those 11+ prep classes they have in Explore Learning concessions in Sainsburys supermarkets as she grew up on a council estate and was a young carer. The friend got in just fine as did my children. Son is now an MRes student with intentions to follow his parents into doing a PhD and then go into academia.

I hate to say it but there were plenty of patents I knew to be spending an absolute fortune and their children didn't pass. Tutoring isn't a guarantee. The children who failed often go on to do well at school and get good jobs. Arguably in better paid, more reliable careers than my son is aspiring towards, given how tough academia is.

In my and my children's experience (as a product of one many years ago), grammar schools are a pressure cooker, with a lot of intense children many of whom are neurodivergent all vying to get straight As. I really wouldn't advise parents to force their children to go to one (and neither would my children). BTW we're in Bucks.

There’s tutoring and tutoring.
The 11+ near us they need to know all yr6 maths 3 weeks into yr6. Either tutor or parent needs to teach them it.
Plus doing past papers to familiarise and explaining basic exam technique.
Main thing is practice to get speed up.
But those needing extensive tutoring for years/hours a week will either not pass or struggle there.

We’re on the Bexley - Kent borders and the general consensus is that the Kent test is the easier of the two. More of our Y6s pass the Kent than the Bexley test.

It sounds like you and your child are both ambivalent. I’m a teacher and highly tutored students tend to struggle later on. I think, given your alternative is fine and your child is bright then it’ll be fine either way.

No, I’m not. I’m taking about the parents I have met.

My mother was also an immigrant, and a consultant obstetrician, for what it’s worth. I know we are not all the same, or poor.

I live across the road from one of the most notorious council estates in the Black Country right now - I know ”poor” (and they are mainly white British who wouldn’t think about the grammars we have access to).

I get it. We are in Kent and although we are lucky we have some decent choice in comprehensive I know full well that had we been 40 minutes further down the M20 we would in the same situation.

It depends how desperate you are.

We had to move to a real shithole, 150 miles from where we are from due to some really bad luck and health related matters. We will be stuck here for a while. That wasn’t my dds fault.

It was the grammar half an hour away, (or ones fitter afield in the closest city),or a choice of really shit schools which really are just dire (not due of the one single sex grammar, 30 mins away, but because it’s an awful area).

So we sacrificed a lot (well, dh did, thankfully).

Yes "my" immigrant family consisted of a medical consultant and a banker! Technically I am an immigrant too - and a lawyer ;)

whilst I agree with you broadly, I get the impression you’re using “immigrant family” to indicate some over coming of the odds of poor finances and education/ language to get to GS, as an example for poor people.

whilst there is no doubt (in my area) that Indian, Chinese and Nigerian families dominate selective education, their results are not, I would suggest, replicable by your average family on FSM. They are often highly educated and well funded, lazer focused, and often apply high levels of pressure to their children.

the immigrant work ethic is well documented. Why move here if you don’t take advantage of those privileges?

DD has a girl in her class who is from an asian immigrant family. She's been tutored since she was in year 2. She has also been encouraged to prioritise 11+ work over actual school work just to pass. She was expected to do about 8 hrs a day of study over the summer holiday. They were set on an ultraselective. She did pass but didn't make it into the ultraselective.

I guess we all have different ideas of what level of sacrifice we want for our children.

Yeah this is how our grammars work.

Reality rarely conforms to idealistic principles. Even in countries where education has been/is entirely state run there are better schools and worse schools, with the better schools invariably containing children whose parents have greater means than the parents of those in the worse schools.

My parents grew up in different Communist countries, and in both there were elite schools where admittance depended on parental connections, and/or bribes.

If tutoring would give your child an advantage, then do it.

Yes, I do get that.

You have to remember as well though that a huge portion of grammar school children come from immigrant families - many of them have lots of children, parents working lots of hours. They somehow make it work. English isn’t the parents first language for many of the children my daughter will be attending school with.

We did, I was extremely ill over the last couple of years, my husband had it all on his plate, the house, the children, finances, work, I was useless.

You just sacrifice and do what you have to do if you really want something.

Think Essex is around 3 or 4 %

“Leveller” (hollow laugh)

It’s about accessibility too though.

I can’t tutor my children for 11+. Much of it i don’t understand myself.

i have struggled massively to help my children with their practise and homework. I have to preprepare by finding out how to do the questions myself first. I have to work out the marking scheme to assess whether their answers are any good. I am still well out of my depth.i

i have a high pressure full time job and it takes up a massive amount of my time- and they are tutored. I am not doing the actual teaching!

imagine a large family with all ages, less financial means, less flexible work arrangements, maybe no laptops, car etc to facilitate tutoring- it’s not that simple. You don’t generally just rock up to after school clubs and that’s all you need.

plus, if I remember rightly FSm is a income of <£7k per annum- that’s not a big group and there are a lot of children falling outside of that.

Yes another one here who thinks you’ve dropped the ball OP. I don’t like the system and am anti grammar school system but to have a chance you do need to tutor and I think if your son is bright you should enable him to access the best school.