Is everybody happy with their choice of a NON-selective secondary education over a selective one?

Great post, Tiggytape.

I went around many Preps and was struck how many children would be able to do 11 plus papers standing on their head. In some schools timed tests were routine from Y3 or even before. 11 plus targeted homework was given at least twice a week from Y3 etc. One near where we were in the UK was non selective and nearly everyone passed for the local, highly selective grammar.

I feel for the PP that talked about crawling through the test with their child. I know what they mean. Thing is if they are at a school where they prepare for so many years it's absolutely second nature, falling of a log and something to be enjoyed even.

I remember visiting a prep and a Y4 class were doing a timed test, one of many they did from time to time, the atmosphere in the room was absolutely calm and the children didn't appear under pressure. This was clearly absolutely normal for them, standard, fun even.

Our school offers a few sessions of VR etc and we are told that's all a bright child needs. I don't think many have any idea how advantaged those are at Prep schools. If it wasn't so unfair it would be side splittingly funny, they have absolutely no idea whatsoever. How many have routine, daily practice against the clock for literally years before the 11 plus? Timing is just one aspect but it trips so many up.

If he was saying with adult steely determination that he wanted to do the test then I would have no problem with entering him. Likewise if he said he wanted to just have a go It's the fact that he says he wants to do it in-between howling and crying and wailing 'I can't do it I'm rubbish I'm rubbish' in a very 10 year old manner that makes me undecided about the whole thing.

And he's not like this in other areas of his life. He is quite happy to pitch himself against hundreds for an audition and if he doesn't get something is able to reflect that not getting after, but getting to the final round or whatever is still good. He absolutely does not seem to be able to enter that mindset with this bloody test. I'm the product of a selective education and very competitive university and I HATE the bloody thing. And having crawled through yet another paper with him I have to say that anyone who thinks the 11 plus has anything to do with education has a warped idea of education.

But weirdly I seem to be the only one thinking like this (perhaps because I'm the one scraping him off the floor the whole time) - school and wider family seem to think he's a dead cert. All I can say is the to me it feels wrong. (in the way, at times, certain therapies have felt wrong for ds1 so I've stopped them - and never regretted it, nor felt 'what if'), had others agreeing with me then though.

Sometimes they just want to know of they could get in, rather than actually wanting to get in, if that makes sense.

DS sat the exam, did the visits but did not want to go and I don't think he ever did. Being naturally competitive he just wanted to know if he could go,

If any of my children were so set on taking the test, I'd say it wasn't my choice, but theirs. Hence no choice.

Of course we have a choice - we could choose not to put him in for it. It's deciding what's the correct choice that is hard.

saintly I don't think you have a choice until you see what the results dish out. Then see the school and both jointly decide.

Metabilis, given your alma mater, you must have seen that these sort of problems come with the territory. This stuff about stress is repeated over and over again with high achieving schools. People need to be more imaginative about the cause.

bunkum!!!! Blooming auttocorrect.

@yellow the heel had fallen off the last ones (which it transpires were a size too small) I think it's fair to say the shoe front has been a bit of a disaster recently.

While the rumors about how pressured the school is re, I think, mainly Bynum I am aware of a couple of kids in her year who have let stress majorly get to them. I don't want her to be like that. Luckily at the moment the seems to be no sign that she is.

No I don't see how he can be prevented from having a go either. But I know failing (which is a possibility certainly) will affect him, and I'm also not convinced if he does get in that it's the right school for him.

Hence my dilemma.

I honestly don't see how he can be prevented from having a go, not with his mindset. Surely it would just fester? He sounds quite old for his age. I bet it will turn out right.

I have, but he's not cool about failing. I've spent the last 20 years happy to have a go at something and not care if I don't get it, so that's second nature to me. I think it's far harder when you're ten and already struggling with your place in the pecking order at school.

saintly stick him in for the test and tell him you're cool, convincingly.

I'm not celebrating laxity, perhaps just a lack of oppression.

However, no-one can claim to be lax at the same time as buying new school shoes in mid-June.

Phone up school. Someone somewhere will help your DD to sing. They really will.

@yellow I did buy her some new school shoes today before catching my flight to Edinburgh (only an hour and a half late , it was, flybe excelling again). So today I am clearly über mother.

Being lax isn't always good though - I have no idea what is going on with the Olympiad thing and I'm quite concede she will end up Not Singing as I think there are clashing engagements with the younger kids.

Yes scummy I do as well. Especially as local comp is a performing arts specialist and this is an area in which he excels (he has already been child lead in a professional play touring from the west end, performed in front of over a 1000 people -which would have had be quaking but he loved, made it through the final round of a very competitive musical etc etc), but unfortunately I seem to be alone in that thought. I am going to ring local comp tomorrow to make an appointment to go and see it and drag dh along to try and make him see sense

The biggest problem is that ds2 seems to think he wants to go to the grammar. If he didn't I would happily back him up, but he is insisting. No idea whether that's because he thinks that is what we want though. I have told him repeatedly that I don't mind where he goes but he has still asked me twice whether I will be angry if he fails. :weeps:

The tiger mother thing was one of pooshtun's little fantasies. None on this thread to be sure.

Music to my ears . Metabilis, don't give up giving up (it's worked for me :)). Intense parental surveillance doesn't seem to me to be what it's about. Or am I the lazy exception which proves the rule? I'm not disinterested at all, but no way could I do what all these MN mothers do, it's just not in me.

@yellow I do sometimes feel like the most mumpy mother in the world for being so unconnected to how DD1 is doing at school. I see all those merit points or whatever they are called clocking up on the intranet but I have no real sense of what they are 'for' - except they are all academic based. I have no reali idea of how she is doing compared to her peers except in music, and sometimes I think maybe I should - but even as I think the thought a wave of apathy sweeps over me and I give up.

And as for 'Tiger Moms', give me strength. I'm at the point where I can look back and see just how many academically successful children in the cohorts I've watched succeed on merit without any 'Tiger Mom'. In fact I'd be prepared to strike out and do research on the premise that more UK children succeed academically without one of those than they do with. My gut feeling is that it's either pointless or counterproductive. Long live a laissez faire aproach to a child's education, as in the old days.

Agree. But think there's an unfair assumption that kids who pass, or used to pass, are arrogant, uppity little shits. Maybe more time should go, or have gone, into supporting the kids who didn't pass the test. Re-inforcing the idea that talents are different, not better.

Either way-the words pass and fail are fairly clear- and not something you should be doing to children of 11 years-or 10yrs for the youngest in the class.

Or those who didn't pass thought that those who did thought they were better.

I never had any views, I have to say. I'd have preferred not to have my hair ignited with an Embassy, but still.

Those who passed definitely thought they were better.

I failed and it was a huge deal for me-and I wasn't in Kent.