Is it too early to start a 2016 girls 11+ W/SW London thread?

Back to schools - has everyone finished Open Days? Last one for us was last Saturday - Latymer Upper. Now to decide which exams to sit.

Just been asked about the school placement person I used on another thread. Thought it might be of helpful! They do assessments, tutoring for the papers and interview prep and then helped us decide when we knew what places we had. Isobel Walters Schooling Consultants. Not at all pushy but great in terms of confidence and a bit of sanity! Good luck!

if she's up for it, go for it. just play it down!

TeddTess- thank you so much for this insight. Yes, I worry about less places available and lower chance of getting though the interview. She seems quite up for it as I told her it's for practice and we can try again next year but you know how kids are... Random VR- oh dear

also be aware with 10+ they interview 40 but only offer to 20. how will your DD/you cope if she isn't offered a place but is interviewed (so has done well in the exam). i think that's quite a hard one to take and the odds at 50-50 aren't great.

my DD did both and said the 11+ was much harder, particularly the maths. The 10+ VR was bond book like but the 11+ VR was "random" - her words! Don't know about pass rate, i think with 10+ they are just looking for something special, not necessarily top marks in all papers.

Hello! May I please join this discussion. Thinking of doing 10+ at KGS for my DD this January. Visited the school with her this year and both loved it. Could I please ask anyone with recent experience about this exam? The example papers on their website look almost identical for 10+ and 11+... Was that the case in real life? Also, are bond papers for VR a good basis for preparation? Any idea how high she should be scoring in these to get through- is 80 percent good at this stage? Thank you:)

Minimal work going on over the hols, but counting every piece as a small step towards the goal!

Just saw this link on another MNpost - looks like a great site for me in the next few months.

www.independentjunction.co.uk/specimen/11.html

Hi Orangina,

In respect of Consortium papers, I think I was told that 70-80 per cent is what we should be aiming for in the period immediately before the exam (I am taking this to mean the Christmas holidays....).

However, how do we obtain a final percentage score for the maths paper undertaken when, unlike the English paper, we don't have the mark scheme? (Annoyingly, the Consortium maths papers don't state the marks attributed to each question). How are you marking the paper? Are you simply awarding a mark to each question/part of a question answered correctly or are you awarding more marks to harder questions at the end?

They're bright but not off the scale gifted - I do think there's a lot of unnecessary panic around school admissions. But I realise that if everyone around you is getting infected with 11+ hysteria it's hard to keep your nerve ...

Noitisnot - have your kids always been unusually bright/academically able? Obviously they've done fantastically well but I wonder if it's because they are particularly gifted rather than the system not being difficult to navigate?

mumofthree if your dd is already in a prep school then you really should be able to leave it up to the school- after all, getting children prepared for senior school is their raison d'etre ....

Our experience has been one ds at local v ordinary state primary, no tutoring (and tbh v little preparation of any kind as he seemed to be allergic to practice papers ) - got scholarship to his preferred school and has been comfortably in the top sets all the way through. Dd went through this 2 years ago from a private primary (not a hot house) - she did practice papers etc at school, no extra tutoring at all, sat two exams, one v selective, one less so and got hefty scholarships to both. Unless your dd has particular difficulties in one area I'd not worry about tutoring - it's very easy to get caught up in the tutoring arms race but for the most part it's unnecessary

Not crucial at all unless your child is applying for scholarships.

So long as they can talk about the things that interest them, if asked at interview...whatever that/they may be!

how crucial are extracurricular activities? for example, grade exams on musical instruments, sports etc.

The applicant to offer ratio is a Black Art!

Firstly, one of the reasons some schools ask where else you're applying is because they are trying to get a feel of how many applications each candidate is making (and it has risen from 3/4 to 4/5/6).

Also, all the registrars talk to each other about their numbers, and views of number of applications per candidate. So they some idea of how many actual children there are behind the application number.

They then have to take to account their numbers in previous years and their own ratio of offer to acceptance; and whether they needed to use their waiting list at all, and if so how many.

Also they need to knock off the number of those expected to come from their junior school (if they have one) and siblings (depending on policy), leaving the number of places which they want to fill with newcomers.

And chuck it all in a cauldron, mutter incantations and come out with this year's target figures.

There does seem to be a rise in the number of candidates across London, and it's not been matched by expansion in number of private school places. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't apply. Some schools do go very much by exam score, others interview and at least claim to attach importance to those interviews.

Shirleycantbe You need to talk to the SENCO about your DD's exam difficulties and see what they can do. They may not be able to offer extra time if her EdPsych report does not recommend it, but if they have seen it they might be willing to take in into account if they do consider all (or borderline) candidates in the round. A Head's report which highlights actual (non-exam) levels of achievement would probably be helpful too.

That's actually really helpful thankgod.

We are in a slightly unfortunate position in that although DD is very high performing academically (96 - 99+ percentile in standardised tests) and her current prep school say she should aim for the most academic options, she has a significant processing speed issue which means she hardly ever completes the test papers. Especially English. But it's not quite bad enough to qualify her for extra time at most schools.

So we're being encouraged to apply for schools where she might only finish 60-70% or so of the English paper and I think knowing the ratios are a bit of a help in this situation.

If they really are only offering to 1 in 10 applicants I don't think it's worth putting DD through the stress - they will surely just bin every applicant who doesn't make the cut off mark.

It's hard to decide how to focus our applications without knowing how the schools might approach the issue. I don't want DD to come away feeling rejected all round.

thankgod, I suspect one thing that makes a big difference is how good state alternatives are. So some schools will regualary be used as fall backs for, say, Tiffin and Nonsuch and some of the better Richmond schools, and so look as if they are hugely competitive, but as long as you have a steady nerve and are willing to be on a wait list till after the state school allocations come out you should be OK. Lots of other variations too. It can't be easy for Registrars, as popularity will vary from year to year, and there are always a couple of schools which then add bulge classes or go through their wait lists faster than espected.

I don't think knowing the ratio would help. Better to understand where your DD fits academically, which can be quite hard if you are not in a school that regularly sends pupils to West London Indies.

Hi, been a lurker and posted a question on another ( more local) thread, but thought I'd ask here as this seems to be more active. We will be looking for DD soon, and wondered what the general feeling about CHS is. Croydon high. I have a DS in a boys school fairly local to it.

It varies Shirley, depending on the 'desirability' of the school. SPGS, for example, probably has a ratio of something like 1.3:1 offers:places (I am making these figures up btw, total guesswork).

Most of the schools are pretty opaque on this subject. However, somewhere on City Boys Governor's reports I remember reading that take up of offers was between 25 and 33% (in other words, they would have to offer 3 to 4 places per spot). So there are probably other schools that offer up to 10 places. It must be a nightmare to find the right balance and sometimes they get it wrong and have to put on an extra class.

Most people are applying for at least three schools and some as many as 10. Oh and they're also weighing up their state options. The odds are nowhere near as bad as they appear and everybody seems to end up with at least one offer they're happy with.

Does anyone have any inside info about the number of offers made vs applications for the West London day schools? Many of them seem to have 10 applications for every actual place - which seems impossible odds - but I'm assuming they must over offer since most girls are applying to a selection of schools. I just don't know to what extent - do they offer twice as many times as they have places for e.g.?

Well I've to PHS, WHS and Surbiton High in the last couple of weeks- all 'Highed Out'! I went without DD as she's not yet in Y6 and just wanted to suss them out a bit..Thought WHS was much more welcoming than PHS which was a bit corporate and didn't really try to sell the school- no real chances to ask questions, everyone toeing the party line and all very scripted...I know they don't really need to sell the school as they can fill their places many times over but it would have been nice to give an illusion of choice!
To be honest I think I and DD would be probably be happy with any of them and that's before I've even thought about co-ed...