Tutors please - need a tutor to help prep DS for QE Boys entrance exams

Google Emily-Jane Swanson.

10 sessions worked for us.

Mileage may vary.

SOD OFF Stephanie Williams!

^^ Reported for spam, along with all the other posts by the same poster.

Stephanie Williams - this is not how mumsnet works, you have to pay to advertise on here.

The grammar school I want to get DS1 into, every child who goes there is tutored. Fact. DS1 aparrently has an IQ of 132 when he was tested at just under 8yo. Doesn't mean he'll get into the only grammar school within our area, when the demand is one place for every 60 applicants. I cannot afford to pay for a tutor, but I already do the bond books with him for verbal and non-verbal reasoning at 8 and a half. Next year I will be bankrupting myself paying for a tutor for him, throughout Y5, and until the November of Y6, and my Grandad is going to help me with the costs. There really is no other way, ALL the children sitting the exam will probably have had waaaaay more tutoring than DS1 anyway, as they will have been to Kumon maths and English, and had tutors since Y3. I can only afford just over one year of it, so he will already be at a disadvantage.

The first time DD saw a NVR test she was in a total panic, after a few test papers she was managing 100% everytime. Tutoring does work but there is no need to overly stress about it.

Timbachick,

Do remember that he will have to do well in the reasoning tests in order to even sit the maths and english.

Singersgirl -agree completely. A friend of mine teaches in one of the "super selectives" up here in Norf London. She has a very bright child - one of the brightest in a school of bright children! Even she has said that she wouldn't dream of entering her DC for the 11+ unless she was intensively tutored. This is not because her daughter would not be able to cope with the syllabus at the grammar, it is because every other bright child who will be sitting the exam will have been tutored up to the eyeballs. This places untutored children - however bright - at a huge disadvantage.

I think what is sometimes forgotten on MN is that not all grammar schools face the same competition. A child in this part of London stands a 1 in 12 chance of getting a place whereas in other areas of the country it can be as low as 1 in 3.

The argument for not tutoring children to take 11+ exams only works if no children are being tutored. If virtually all of the child's peer group are being tutored (as is the case here in SW London with children applying for private or grammar schools at 11 from state primary), then it no longer holds that all those who are bright enough will get a place without tutoring.

I suspect people who say, "Don't tutor. If a child needs tutoring to get in they'll struggle," mostly don't live in the areas in which tutoring is the norm. By those standards, there would probably only be a handful of children (10 out of 100) who 'deserved' to get into any of the selective schools round here.

I don't think it's very helpful comparing the preparation necessary for a (presumably?) state educated child to sit a state school 11+ with a prep educated child sitting a 13+ indie exam.

Face it Pixie, it's just not the same thing.
I don't pretend to know anything about your child's school, but I do know quite a lot about north london selective state schools and what it is like for a state school child to try to gain entry to them.

You could argue that sending a child to a prep school is giving them 25 hours a week of tutoring. It begs the question - what is tutoring and what is teaching. Children's educational experiences are different according to where they are taught and sometimes parents need to compensate for that.

Sorry OP the only north london tutor I have direct experience of I couldn't whole heartedly recommend.

Post on elevenplusexams.Co.UK instead of mumsnet and you'll have more success and a better reception.
Good luck to your DS. Mine did it jlast year so I know what its like.

Timbachick - no advice re. tutor-name. Rather more generally, I would suggest making sure your ds has covered all the maths syllabus for national curriculum level 5 before the exam.

(I think the scare stories about post-level 5 stuff coming up are just scare stories. Though there should be some lateral questions.)

Obviously, I don't know anything about your ds' school, but many, many state schools don't cover all the maths covered in these exams by the end of year 6, never mind before the start. Standards of tuition in schools vary widely.

I changed my dc's schools and was ... surprised to discover that my ds was about two years ahead of his new class. He's no prodigy, it was just that his new school was ... very different to the one he'd attended previously.

Our do 11 plus, but the BR and NCR lessons are seen as a useful skill full stop regardless of whether the kids sit the exam. The Junior & Senior schools are linked though, there are no state grammars (apart from Catholic) in our area so not many sit any other exams.

Pixie if I understand correctly your children attend independent schools. They weill have had regular verbal and non verbal reasoning lessons as part of the normal curriculum. My childrne certainly do.

Children in a state primary will not have had this advantage. They will be unused to the format of the paper and exam technique strategies.

A tutor will help with that, not hothouse them into passing for a school they are not capable of.