Atom Learning, useful? When to start?

My daughter used it for about 6 months and got through Henrietta Barnett round 1 and has a guaranteed place at Latymer. She didn't have any other tutoring except 4 sessions in English. So I'd recommend it, but my daughter was quite self motivated. She used it about 4 times a week plus watched some of the live streams and pre recorded lessons, so I think we got our money's worth but it is expensive. Mind you all of this 11+ stuff is. The books cost a fortune as do the downloadable paper tests.

For those who would like to try atom learning here is a referral code worth £30

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I agree Atom has its flaws, including some wrongly formulated questions in maths and the fact they include the Y6 curriculum in Iseb pretest mocks. However on balance it's been useful for us, teaching DD to work within the allocated time, work on a screen, expose her to a variety of more challenging questions and not to panic. However, we obviously haven't been solely relying on Atom and most of the work has been done on paper.
The thing is the other well known 11+ online platform Bofa is way too easy and can give DC a false sense of security so I felt we didn't have much choice but use Atom (we bought a set of papers just to try but it was a complete waste of money as she didn't learn anything new).

Atom is awful in my viewl. I wouldn’t recommend it. Starts off well until you start having technical issues and I find the agents are really young and inexperienced. Sometimes areas don’t calibrate properly. It is clunky and somethings just don’t make sense and find my child often questions the process and methods as they don’t make it child friendly enough in helping them understand the scoring algorithm.

Why do they also have such a tiny screen of the tutor talking in their live lessons?

They don’t respond to emails in a timely manner if at all and they don’t call you back when they schedule. I have found myself chasing constantly and whilst you can reach them on chat, they are often evasive and robotic in response with little customer service skills and you just get more frustrated and no resolution with the bigger picture. They also seem to have no senior management team or else they do their best to stop anyone from making a complaint.

I would say they totally take advantage of parents anxiety and if you join at a late stage, they know you won’t just cancel the contract if your child has started to use it.

A horrible experience.

I am doing exactly that- thank you all!

I’ve seen that too regarding peak prep and was also messaged directly and encouraged to try their free trial. Given where we are at for this year and all the other uncertainties I would go with atom or bofa as they are both used by prep schools locally.

Ok thanks very much for the warning!!!

Agreed, @Coconut2010. Some "clever" online marketing in play...

Hi, thanks for your message. I’ve never heard of peak Prep! I’ll have a look at it today- thank you. Did your daughter find the level on Peak Prep to be similar to that of the actual test then? Did she take the Pretest this term? Thanks so much for your advice!

@Coconut2010 All the best for your daughter's exams, I bet you both can't wait for them to be over. I have used Atom and Bofa, and Peak Prep and found Peak Prep by far the most user-friendly and the right level of content. They have a free trial so you could still use them for some last minute mock tests. My daughter found the Atom content too hard and so got really discouraged :(

Thanks @FlossyLondon, good to hear the maths wasn’t too hard.. I think last year the kids thought it was so that’s good news! Or maybe everyone has just upped the amount of preparing they do!

@Coconut2010 yes, the VR and NVR is interesting. This is where we found the biggest improvements esp in NVR which was totally alien to my son before. Yes he is at a prep in London - the mocks to start with were not good, SAS on Atom of around 105 but we managed to push this to a point where he was scoring above 120 on Atom most of the time and this seemed to be in line with his CAT score too. It wasn't a case of completing endless mocks. We did practice questions and it seemed to be particular types of questions holding him back like the different shapes etc. so we focussed there. We did a few mocks before the actual pre-tests again and that's when we saw the improvements. The end of topic tests in the course area are not that helpful in my opinion but the ability breakdown is so go off that! Our prep did a webinar for parents on CAT scores and what types of schools we should be aiming for. 120+ seemed to be the general goal for top schools but obviously some are higher - Westminister, St Paul's etc. Probably more like 130+. DS isn't quite at that point. @RoniH I'm not sure tbh...DS found the math fine - no big surprises. There shouldn't be anything that they haven't covered in school!

Hi, thanks for the useful info about Atom learning. Our school have told us that the ISEB examining board have said that the maths this year will be ‘different’ to previous years but they didn’t explain how!! Just wondering if your son can give any insight into this?! Tricky question I know! Thanks in advance x

DS completed his ISEB pre-test last week and we'd been using Atom Learning through year 5 and 6. DS said the comprehension is very similar - click through the pages (no scrolling) and similar math questions. We've definitely found it very helpful not just for pre-tests but for general confidence levels as DS is quite bright but there are gaps in knowledge from our time in the US when he was younger. I'm going to keep our subscription going - it's not cheap but DS actually doesn't mind using it and he is improving in Eng and math which his teachers have commented on. Also it should be helpful for some of the senior school tests in the new year IF he makes it through the pre-tests!

In terms of when to start, I asked about this for my younger DD - the Y3 and Y4 content will release before Christmas but will be more geared towards building foundations rather than test prep. We'll give it a go in December. Until then, wait until Y5 before subscribing or it will be too challenging most likely!

Can anyone confirm whether ATOM is truly adaptive in all 4 subjects or mostly the maths please ?

It’s not for 8-9 year olds. Do not waste time or money. Your child will be disheartened by it. You will be disheartened! At 8-9 (year 4?) focus on reading and solidifying maths.

Particularly on the type of subscription- basic/standard or premium. Which one is most useful?
Thank you

Has anybody have any vies on Atom learning for 8-9 yr olds?
Thank you