Super bright kids

In your post earlier:

As for your questions OP I think the handful of posters you see on here - how many are there in total really? About 10? They are pushy parents. There'll be all sorts of protesting that they're not

my kids are bright.
They did the 11+ and passed easily. I tutored them myself and they resisited the process! (but are glad now that we we did it.)
They are at a superselctive grammar.
BUT at that school they are middling. There are super intelligent kids above them who walk off with 10 or 11 top grades at GCSE.

Those kids are inately clever, and then well prepared, but the intelligence has to be there to start with

If you can’t deal with not being the best in every situation in life you’ll avoid challenge and are unlikely to reach your full potential for fear that won’t be the best if you go outside your comfort zone. That’s incredibly sad way to live.

No one is top at everything in life. It’s a good lesson to learn that you are in a race against yourself not others. That’s true psychological well-being IMO

Don't understand

@Atomic who are you implying is a pushy parent but is implying they’re not?

Grit/resilience is a life skill. Agreed.

It depends on the child. Some kids don't need to shine. Others do. If you're happy being middle/bottom that's cool. It may start to get to you after a while though, like 5 years of never being good enough, never getting the lime-light like the boys i mentioned above.

Neither of these boys were 'failing'. It's not about grit. It's about being bottom of the pile constantly. Or middle of the pile constantly.

Some would rather choose to be top of somewhere less academic and feel better about themselves.

Others will take the prestigious school instead. It all depends...

Human psyche will usually choose to feel good. Parents may disagree though!

Already seeing this with DF's daughter at SW London super-selective. Been a huge shock to no longer be top of class in everything. Heavily tutored. Averagely bright. Not in any A or B teams for sports. Another big shock and lots of tears. I'm sure she will adjust. She's a sweet kid but has a very competitive mother who is equally hurt on her behalf.

” it's better to be a big fish in a small pond.”

True, to a fair extent. However, learning to manage challenging situations, having a minimum amount of discipline/work ethnic and getting yourself back on the horse in the face of some failure is also important to develop resilience and pure, simple GRIT.

Regina - a few decades out of touch.

As for your questions OP I think the handful of posters you see on here - how many are there in total really? About 10? They are pushy parents. There'll be all sorts of protesting that they're not but if you look up a St Paul's 11+ paper you'll see that it really does require a very switched on child to plough through all of that and come up with some decent answers. I have no doubt they are all naturally inquisitive but the nature of the papers means you have to practice.

There's no way any one of them has breezed in and aced the entire thing without doing at least some prep/tutoring.

Yes some kids certainly naturally brighter than others but I do appreciate the honesty of @leeloo1 who demonstrates that natural intelligence alone is not enough to pass these papers with flying colours.

Our experience: DS1 is 99th centile for maths in his age group nationally according to one test he recently did at his secondary - some sort of midyears thing - but without a phase of tutoring when he was 10 to help him understand the way some of those 11+ questions are structured, he wouldn't have got a scholarship. He may well have passed and got a place but he wouldn't have got an award. (He was at state school before).

So I think for naturally bright kids it may well help them get a scholarship. And for the next tranche of bright kids below that it helps them secure a place vs the ones who did less tutoring.

However you have to be careful with over-tutoring as some kids tutored to within an inch of their lives get a place but then can't sustain the pace of secondary school if it's very academic. They are then tutored all the way through. Psychologically it's better to be a big fish in a small pond. So it's better to be at a slightly lesser academic school and be top, than a super-selective and be middling.

Have heard of a boy at Kings for example who 'only' got approx 5 A*s and the rest As at GCSE couple of years ago and this was deemed horrifyingly poor performance. Which really is ridiculous when you consider it. Very bad for mental health. Another boy at Hampton kept saying to his DM that he was stupid because he got a couple of Bs in his mocks. You have to be careful about these environments....

Confidence shot to pieces with both of these poor souls.

My DC was at a prep school that had Yr8 as it’s top year. The grammar schools here are also all independent schools with Yr7 as the predominant year of entry and a further small 13+ exam entry. The prep school did zero exam prep or help for anyone wanting to go for 11+ entry.

My DC left his prep school in Yr5, mostly because Yrs3 and 4 were not academic enough for him and the pastoral care was rubbish. In Yr6 he got offers from both of the independent grammars he did the 11+ at. We did some of the papers from their websites with him.
We’d been doing extra work since Yr5 because maths at the prep just wasn’t SATs ready.

One of the independent grammars specifically told us that his test results were good but that it was how he interviewed and showed independent thinking that got him the offer. Frankly, independent thinking did not come via the prep school where sporty, compliant kids who didn’t ask ‘why’ or do more research into a topic were the favourites.

In the end our DC went to his state secondary of choice. It’s been great.

Reginabambina but if they turned down the scholarship it would just go to the next person down the list and so on until someone accepted

As already noted, this doesn't happen in the majority of schools. Some put the excess funds into bursary pools, most just disappear. Because of this I know some schools now offer small scholarships to existing outstanding students at key points in their school journey. This is an acknowledgement of good work done, and of support of the school. I like that approach.

Ratrace123 I know someone who did this as well. Three deposits at several hundred pounds, in order to hold the places. In the meantime the rest of the wait list who could not afford to hold places at other schools, had to make their minds up without the luxury of not worrying about a few hundred pounds down the sink.

Not sure what the norm is re #schools entrance exams. Most parents will probably select 2-3 schools which they think their DC will thrive in, genuinely not knowing what will convert to offers/scholarships and will do the decent thing in returning offers ASAP.

‘Scholarship shoppers’ are in the minority but there is a ripple effect. The worst case - I saw was where one child was made to sit 7 Indy schools plus the grammars as parents didn’t have time to look at schools properly to narrow the list. She was naturally bright but had a year of tutoring for ‘extra edge’ - swept all the prizes and the mum would gleefully boast about playing schools off each other.

In another case a family with the resources at their disposable had a child with multiple offers (not all scholarships) and paid deposit for three schools so DC could have the summer to choose and make up mind.

My DSs both got offers from all the schools they sat for 11+ which included super selective London schools. Both had high CAT scores (in the top stanine though not at the very top) and both were always in the top sets at school. However, I did have to spend time with both of them prior to the exams finessing their exam techniques...for example, showing your working, managing your time, familiarisation with the types of questions that might come up etc. They did some of this as their prep school but I don’t think it was enough. But this was done over the half term and Christmas holidays prior to exams....not for a year prior!

Hi Ratrace123! Thank you for your words, darling. I will tell you what happened: on Thursday, when my DS had his first offer, he was felt so happy, he felt so relieved, he felt so proud of himself and his ability to reach for the stars... And I just thought to myself: “You know, I wished that all children could feel the same way my son is feeling right now. There will be many children feeling sad tonight who deserve to feel the joy, pride and relief of being selected in a potential school’s main/first list. And we can do our tiny little bit... We can play our tiny little part here... And I can try to convey to my son the importance of doing this...”. It unfortunately never occurred to me until I saw my son’s face. And then it was just obvious...

No that’s not how it works @Regina - Most schools do not repurpose their scholarship prizes. They are determined at offer stage against all children who sat the exam.
That’s precisely the point of my posts.

@Baaaahhhhh but if they turned down the scholarship it would just go to the next person down the list and so on until someone accepted.

Wow @Tiredofelevenplus - that is a very unusual thing to do. To be mindful of the impact that withdrawing mid process would have on overall offers will no doubt have a material impact on some kids' offers. Hats off to you.

I received every scholarship I applied for in my day. No tutoring, no pressure, I just decided to sit for scholarships and my parents paid for it. Tbh I don’t even think I was super bright, just relatively bright. Every year there will be a group of children that get first pickings because it’s the most able that get offered everything first. But of course they can only accept one place so then the next tier of kids will also get multiple offers, and possibly the next tier too. Suddenly you have a large proportion of children with multiple offers but they aren’t all the best ones, a lot of them were second, third or fourth on the list.

Autumnnightsaredrawingin, fully agree with your approach. Also had a talk with my son and the joint decision was to write to three schools and withdraw his applications altogether, mid-process, before we have the results (as offers that came in this week means that we would no longer consider these particular schools, for a set of reasons including geographical location). We don’t know at all if my son would have had offers from these schools, of course. But he might, and we don’t need them.

My daughter is bright, but not exceptionally so. She has always been in the top few children at her state primary, but as plenty of people told me, that doesn’t mean an awful lot!

I think we were lucky that she peaked at the right time. She suddenly started being interested in practice maths papers, and would challenge herself to beat her dad etc. She got offers at 5/6 of her schools, but no scholarships, academic or otherwise. She had a very small amount of tutoring as she is at a state primary who obviously don’t prep.

We applied to a range of schools in terms of academic reputation, because we honestly had no idea where she sat in terms of other girls sitting for similar schools. We were genuinely surprised that she got the range of offers. I think where she was at an advantage was she has a high level of ‘extras’ to offer, in terms of high level sport and drama, and I am sure this carried some weight in her interviews.

We feel genuinely lucky to have such a great choice, and because we have friends on WL and because I don’t believe it’s fair to hold places at schools you know you definitely won’t take, we have already declined several of our places.

That’s fantastic news @Baaaahhhhh
I know of some too, in the minority but great that the 11+ system can still identify and serve them too.

Contrary to Ratrace123 the girls I knew who got fist-fulls of offers and scholarships were not tutored, but just naturally bright. Many of them achieved sports and or music and or art as well as academic. I must admit it did annoy me a bit when it was obvious that some of them were "scholarship shopping", doing several entrance exams at many schools of which they had no intention of going to, thereby depriving other of the chance.

Sorry - meant let their kids down - not just themselves.

What I’m seeing more and more are mums who felt that they had let themselves down by not getting formal tutoring for their child, which is sad especially at 11+. Another stick for mums to beat themselves up over.

Surely it's no surprise that the brightest children are getting multiple offers if they are sitting multiple exams? I'd be much more surprised if that wasn't the case.

Similarly, the brightest children 7 years later are getting 5 offers from top universities, though obviously some of them may get a knock back from one or two, especially if applying to the most prestigious universities and/or the most competitive courses like medicine.

My older daughter is extremely bright. She stood out at primary school, got into the most selective school in our area and from there went to Oxford. I have no idea what her CAT scores were and she never had any tutoring but it was obvious to me even when she was a toddler that she was very bright.