January Entrance Exams

Hello all. I normally live only on the music thread but decided to pop in as DS has done one and is doing another very soon. Then that'll be the end of 11+ papers for us as we applied for only two. If he is lucky enough, then he'll be called for scholarship auditions and an interview but I try not to think of them for now.

Warning on Frixion pens - writing with them is prone to 'disappearing' with time, or on any pressure.

So, for example, if i laminate work written in them or in any other 'erasable' pen, it completely disappears.

It can also at least partially disappear on work that is e.g stacked together for a period of time, and in longer exercise books that are frequently used, taken out and put back again etc.

Neighbouring secondary has banned them for exams - I don't know if that is universal - because most papers are now scanned in for marking, and the scanning process can render the ink invisible because of the rubbing of sheets against each other in the scanner.

Just worth bearing in mind.

3 down, 3 to go- heartily sick of it all. From DDs perspective 2 were 'ok' and one most definitely wasn't! Just want it all over now!

I saw a little girl in tears on her way out of an exam today. It broke my heart!

Thanks all. I appreciate all the support!

wanda i am out the other side of the 11+ process and i remember before the first exam was the hardest time. Once they start and have one under their belt and the process is under way, it does get better.
Hang in there.
Plenty of love and treats for her. Wine for you - dry january can wait another year!

Just to make you feel worse Wanda, I met someone once who took a sabbatical from work to do 7/8+ exams - she had a housekeeper and a nanny so she was just there to crack whip/support her children. I know, I know...

It is very time consuming. I remember with DS, we applied for three. Husband dropped him, but I picked him up and he’d have the afternoon of school. Then three interviews was another three days knocked off my work. I’m self-employed so it wasn’t like I had to take holiday but it felt like it really blasted a whole in my January productivity.

Thank you! I think its a combination of all you say & being at work too much to support her as much as she needs. She's normally very chilled & laid back so I feel even worse!

Oh Wanda don't be hard on yourself. I think the whole process makes it hard to be the sort of parent we'd ideally like to be.

It's an almost impossible balance to strike between trying to motivate them to work hard and do the best they can and at the same time reassure them that it's not the end of the world if they don't get into these schools (which it isn't). Neither time have I got this balance right and in addition I make the cardinal parenting error of being inconsistent - cajoling on day, indifferent, nagging etc.

My son, ultimately, did well, but I still felt a bit bitter about the whole experience and still sceptical as to whether these schools are the 'best' or are just good at selecting the children who will do best.

My daughter doesn't seem to give a monkey's. 'Why on earth would I be nervous?'. She did, however, say the other day, 'if I end up going to x [local perfectly good comprehensive] then all this will have been a waste of time'. I'm trying to persuade her that it's been learning for its own sake, but there's far better things we could have done with the time.

Malbec I think the cold thing is classic displacement anxiety - like obsessing over weather forecasts for your wedding day.

First exam on Saturday here. Tearful daughter. I am not winning at parenting today:-(

Nothing of great note to add, I'm just bumping as all the 11+ talk on the board seems to be about Trinity and Whitgift which are a) boys' schools and b) miles from where I live.

They always seem to generate a lot of talk.

Anyway, we're London but north of the river. Child doing first exam on Friday. Tutor suggested she do a timed paper a day until then. We politely declined this instruction (as if we'd manage that even if we wanted to!) though of course panicked that's what others were doing. Just keeping things completely normal but with added vitamin C.

nocampinghere, no I haven't! I will seek them out, DS would love to be able to write in pen without a terrible smudge...

(His writing is pretty terrible at the best of times, add the smudges into the mix and it becomes nearly illegible....)

First exam/interview was on Wednesday, next one tomorrow....

orangina Dd is also a left to right smugdemeister
have you tried frixion pens? They're the only pens that don't smudge for her.

hope everyone is holding up, i found that when the exams actually started the stress levels eased up considerably.

We are in the middle of 11+ chaos with DS.... 6 sets of exams! I am feeling less stressed than 2 years ago when I did it all with DD for some reason.... How are everyone's sons coping with stress? DS is v laid back to the point of horizontal, which is great from one pot, but on the other hand there is no sense of urgency in getting him to try and finish a paper....

(sigh)

And he is a left handed pencil user, otherwise any kind of pen results in huge left to right smudges.....

This pencil thing is a red herring.
Honestly, their papers will be marked whatever they write in.

It is usual to write English in pen and it's not uncommon and often encouraged to do maths in pencil.

Stop fretting about this non-issue.

Writing legibly and particularly in maths, making sure the answers are clear amongst any workings is more important. Often in maths it helps to underline or circle the final answer, especially if the answer isn't at the bottom of the box or any workings, but usually a line is provided to write the actual answer.

Top tips;

• read the question and check it is fully answered (in maths sometimes there are several steps and children carry out part and forget where they need to finish up)
• don't forget the units in maths, or labels on axis
• don't spend too long on a hard maths question or one worth few marks if the paper is likely to be hard to finish.
• remember that lots of computerised VR/NVR don't allow you to return to previous questions so all need a good go, even if it's a guess, at the point of working on them.
• In Comprehension, check if 2, 3 or how many examples are asked for and make sure enough are given.
• In Comprehension, underline the exact part of the text where an answer is given and if asked for more than one, underline all of the possibilities before writing answer - the first might not the be the best.
• Check over at the end if time, reading questions as well as answers carefully - it's surprising how many children will just sit there and not do any checking.

Good luck to everyone.

What kind of pen is it normal to use?

DC did an exam this morning- they were told to do the maths in pencil...

"It’s just babyish" - no it isn't. I am a senior person in a company and often write in pencil!

Trinity - " a bit backward..."

How prejudiced...(and insulting).

Good luck to everyone - we went through all this last year. It’s easy to say now but (in the vast majority of cases) the schools are pretty good at finding the right fit. The best you can do at this point is make sure they get good sleep, eat well, ideally avoid bad sickness and not get too stressed.

We applied (from state primary with the luxury of a great state secondary option) to three private schools last year for DD of which she eventually got two offers. While not having any support at all or help with prep from our primary school I thought it was less stressful as only a minority of DD’s classmates were going through exams and the playground and school run chatter about it was minimal.

The most painful part for us was the waitlist as she had to wait until literally the last day before getting an offer from her first choice.

We were quite nervous that as she just scraped in that she would be bottom of the pack there but that has proved not to be the case. She is thriving and even managed to get the second highest mark in one of her end of term exams. It doesn’t feel like having gone the state school route for primary was any disadvantage to her.

Good luck.

Hermanmerman - that's reassuring to know that it was harder from a prep. I found the first time round so angsty that I possibly imaged that applying from a prep school was an idyll of laughter and happiness.

Two advantages I have thought of about applying from state. Firstly, I don't think you get scared into applying to lots of different schools - I wonder whether sometimes kids apply to many so as to bump up the offer numbers that their school can put on their websites.

Secondly, for us going to a state secondary held no fear. Both times we've only applied to three schools that we think offer something demonstrably better than the state schools we've applied to. We haven't applied to 'bankers' just for the sake of having some private school offers since we'd rather go state (and I'm not entirely convinced that's what we shouldn't be doing anyway).

But then when I was talking to a boy the other day who said they'd do an English paper and a maths paper every week as preparation at school, I did think that sounded a lot less onerous than what we're going through. My god the battles...

my ds still uses the pencils two of the leading west London independents handed out to children doing their entrance exams so obviously those schools don't have quite the same prejudices

Pencils are used for multiple choice answers and diagrams of course (difficult to change your mind and rub out pen on a multiple choice answer sheet) - otherwise I would expect a 10/11 year old to use a pen.