DD Year 8, struggling at grammar

Yes, I imagine the whole Options selection nightmare will be even more so this year so best wishes!

I’ve just asked DD who has a inset day today if we will receive the assessment results and if she has had her Maths and Science results yet - I got a raised eyebrow, a ‘I don’t think so’ and a ‘we haven’t had those yet’. Which makes me a little suspicious! She’s a bright girl but far stronger on the Arts, Humanities and MFL sides which oddly enough are the only results she’s told us! At least you’ll get your DDs but it sounds like from the conversation you have had she is completely on track and the issue is confidence and not ability.

Absolutely @BaconAndAvocado! At the end of the day our DC live in the imperfect system as it is and we have to do what we can. My DD is also Year 8 and it’s been a weird term finishing with a solid week of back to back assessments. No wonder your DD feels under pressure. Mine has been rather more blasé but we’ve noted so far she’s only given us the results of the tests she’s got flying colours in - the overall picture might be more interesting! I don’t know about you but we’ve not got a Parents evening until Jan, it would be good I think if our schools could update us on how they have faired and where they might need support before then.

Agreed. But with people who have the income, the Genie is out of the bottle. You would have to ask parents to make a declaration re tutoring on the forms. Even then they would lie as they do over home address.

I would love to know what percentage of dc in grammar counties get full marks, even with tutoring. Interestingly when DD took the 11 plus the ones in her class (3) who got full marks and her with 1 mark under, had not been professionally tutored. The parents didn’t believe in it! Including me. 28/66 went to the grammars that year. That was a very high number and it was a bright cohort. Normally full marks was considered boffin territory! One a year if the school was lucky. But the tutored ones didn’t get it.

The key is to somehow even up chances. Making more pp places available at county wide grammar schools does nothing if these dc don’t get help to pass. Helping the deserving pp dc get exam savvy would help. However I think general knowledge and wider reading is also a big help due to a much bigger vocabulary. Schools must promote that.

DC who scrape through due to tutoring are the ones who struggle around here. They have taken the places of others who have just failed and have had no advantages.

Superselectives are a different beast of course.

bacon so sorry your DD is having a hard time but glad she felt she could talk to you about it. The week before Oct half term and the couple of weeks after are ‘known’ as being really tough. The honeymoon period of the new year has worn off and Christmas seems so far away. Dark mornings/eves it’s tough in any year, let alone a pandemic one where all the fun bits of school are missing.

Talk to the school and get an idea of whether she is really not coping or whether this is a pandemic related blip. The workload does up quite a bit from Y7 to Y8. Perhaps monitor it till Xmas. Can anything be done to make life easier - commute wise etc - surgeries in particular subjects at lunchtime to build confidence?

In the background, get an understanding of your local state and indie offerings (don’t share this with her at this stage!). If you plant the seed she is leaving it’s hard to retract it and you don’t know what places are available/suitable.

The easiest time to transition is y9 (13+) before GCSE selections etc. She (and you) may feel this is too long to wait, but try not to be knee jerk/reactive. (Easier said than done when we feel them hurting). Kids can be incredibly resilient and her reaction might have been a product of being tired/run down/acclimatising back from lockdown etc. She may feel differently after a weeks rest and some perspective.

I think I’ve waffled a bit but hope this helps.

Shameful thread de-railing on this thread that does not help or support the OP.

OP: I would be focussing in her social stability and security. She has had a hard time, finding it hard to settle followed by massive COVID disruption.

Tell her her tutors have confidence in her.

Also check whether test scores are fine against the complete curriculum rather than only the areas studied. After some low scores in Ds’s tests we discovered that these were in old GCSE papers or for the whole year, fir which they had not completed the curriculum.

I agree that this is a situation created by and upheld by parents - or rather more affluent parents (because let’s face it, no one aspires to keep a system in place that disadvantages their child and gives them a place at an underperforming school with less qualified teachers). It’s probably no coincidence that counties like Kent and Bucks who didn’t ditch the grammar system are very Blue counties. Two interesting articles about ability and the effect of tutoring (SATS v 11+) and how the system could be changed. From reading these, I think either all schools in grammar areas should coach all pupils for the 11+, the marking/question format could be reviewed or we scrap the entire thing! There is something fundamentally wrong in a system in which access to the best schools is determined by parental circumstance and class.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-39786477

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/kent-11-plus-coaching-ban-private-primary-school-application-a8522251.html%3famp

@BaconAndAvocado - sorry this has all gone off thread and into a debate about the entire system! At least your DD will shortly have a week off to recharge her batteries which by the sounds of it she needs. Nor am I directly criticising any parent who went the coaching route, we all want the best for our children and while my DH wouldn’t let DD sit the 11+, her Music Place at and out of area Secondary wouldn’t have been achieved I’m sure without the years of music lessons she has had!

Perhaps the point we are all trying to make is that children should not have to be tutored to pass a test at 10/11 years age. This is a situation that has essentially been created by parents. One parent does it, another finds out and doesn’t want their child to be at a disadvantage so signs up too and so it spirals onwards. The tests for these super selectives needs to be so hard because if it was at the right level for children just going into Y6 then right now huge proportions would pass with 100% because they are working two years ahead of where they should be. Because of tutoring.

TagMeQuick: I have found that many parents are happy with the secondary moderns here. However a handful are not great. Where I was a governor, there wasn’t a decent secondary modern in the town. So our higher performing dc at Sats didn’t get a decent secondary education. When I arrived at the school they had, bizarrely, put a couple of their brightest dc up a year. So for them it was the 10 plus effectively as the parents believed they were really bright dc and would refuse to repeat y6. Of these children, not a single one went to the grammars! You cannot take the exam twice, so off they went to the secondary mod. Not sure that would be allowed now but it was unbelievable!!

We do have some truly excellent secondary moderns here. Several of my neighbours dc went to our local one and did very well. Maths degree at Exeter. Chemistry degree at Nottingham, Engineering at Bristol. (All these had highly educated professional parents). Add in Sociology at Portsmouth and Nursing at Bournemouth where parents didn’t have degrees. These dc are not written off. They have achieved admirably and the best secondary moderns are as good as lots of comprehensives. But - we are in an affluent county. The secondary moderns can have up to 40% high achievers! Results match that and the best add value too. That’s why some parents don’t lose too much sleep over the 11 plus results. There are other decent schools but the top group of high achievers is missing.

In my view it wouldn’t matter if some dc were double coached. It would help the ones that need it. Others at the top of the academic tree get there anyway. It’s the margins that need change.

@AndThatsNotRight, sorry that was probably my sense of humour fail. I’d been reading about the Uyghurs in China and it didn’t feel appropriate to compare their experiences with a bit of algebra and geometry.

I went to a grammar school and from personal experience I would say that there is an adjustment to be made. Like someone upthread said, I was used to always being the top of my primary school class and having no problems with any subjects and then suddenly found myself in the second from bottom maths set! However, it was temporary and I did manage to come to terms with the fact that whilst I wasn’t necessarily going to be the best at everything anymore, I was still able to hold my own enough to do ok in most subjects in a grammar setting so must be doing ok. It also becomes easier as you go up in years because you get to leave behind some subjects that you are not as keen on.
One last thing - friendships are quite tricky in year 8 from memory. In year 7 everyone is wide eyed and keen and friendly but by year 8, some of the cliques have formed and that can be tough depending on who you’ve managed to make friends with by then. You say your DD does have good friends so that’s half the battle. Some girls did tend to be hard on themselves when they didn’t think they were getting good enough marks but it’s all a process and a learning journey and hopefully you can in-still some self confidence and set her off again on the right path.

@Guymere interesting post about children being 5 marks off but not given entry. That's sad. Whole post is sad.

Also think we have such a stark set of choices in the UK and there's a shame associated with no being 'traditionally' academically bright and good work options closed off to you. Like you're already binned before you started out.

German system that allows as many bright children to go onto academic schools as want to, can (no limit on places) and those that want more training-on-the-job teaching can go to different schools. There's no shame either way as both seen as valid entry points to working life. Much less classist thinking and less of a gap between rich and poor because people treated more equally. No 11+ rush or pressure like we have here. Education needs a complete overhaul in this country. Wonder when or if it will ever happen??

Most preps don't even do SATS at the moment. Imagine how hard they'd practise for them if they determined 11+ outcome...

@turlstreet like you I have no idea of how you solve the problem either! I’m not sure that loads of DC would be getting 100% in the SATS though. I can only go on what I know from the cohort of my friends but my DD got higher marks in her SATS then a friends DS who had a 390 11+ score and is at Skinners (although both got over the 110 Greater Depth) and DDs friends at Grammars (not the local super selective got similarish results. All good but none 100%. It just (to me anyway) seems a fairer more democratic selector. But I agree, it would be hard to stop the additional tutoring if not impossible!

I meant opt out of taking the 11 plus. Lots of parents might think school tutoring wasn’t good enough and still pay. When I took the 11 plus we were tutored every morning in school - state school. That was outlawed. It should come back. Then at least the suitable poor children whose parents are not capable of tutoring would get a fair crack. At the moment they get nothing.

Nah, DS doesn't talk to me about French grammar either HunkyPunk, that bit was wishful thinking. He talks to his dad about prime numbers instead. I have to talk about French grammar to myself .

Where I am, you opt out.