Candidates flying from overseas to sit super-selective grammar 11+

The only thing parent groups can do is push for existing grammar schools to up PAN numbers.
Parents just won against Cranbrook and they need to reintroduce 30 more day places at Year 9 I think.
This is the reality on the ground. Parent groups will be pushing and campaigning for PAN increases in the top comprehensives and grammar schools.

There is no political will to reintroduce the 11 plus more widely again anyway. Powers to be want people to pay stamp duty twice to cash in on that demographic of supposedly middle class parents now priced out of private education due to VAT. It is a nice little money spinner for them.

Some families are actually a hinderance to their children.

Though, why would anyone want to add an additional hurdle at age 11?

Sounds like the child just had shit, uninterested parents though. Most children need support and encouragement at home to so well. From that snippet, it sounds like that child has neither. Turning down someone offering to pay for tutoring and not appealing a school place is fucking madness. However, the families I know would probably do the same.

Some families are actually a hinderance to their children.

The child might have ended up attending university and securing a middle-class job if he had been in a comprehensive school area without grammar schools, instead of attending a secondary modern.

they failed to get top grammar places despite 100% certainty the year before.

Perhaps not enough "brain power"

It's not an issue for your kid's future. I get that part.

It’s not. But not all children who do the 11+ go to school in grammar areas. So it wouldn’t help them all.

I did, but that was 30 odd years ago. No one I knew was tutored for the 12+, as we did then, we even did the mock exams and actual 12+ exam in the school dinner hall. The 12+ was just what eveyone did. It wasn’t really an opt in thing. There was and still are, about 7 Grammar schools in that area, all in the same town. So it was just the thing there, although, I do know it’s now 11+ there as they no longer go up to year 7 in primary as I did as a child.

@carcassonne1 - that was a political decision made years ago. Those in charge hate grammars so they are not going to introduce it again. They have inadvertently built a money based system where people buy a private education or a catchment school and kids are trapped in poverty. All because they do not want their little darling to be pressured until 15/16.
When the reality is that GCSE revision requires quiet work spaces and is a test of memory and favours the privileged kids even more.
Once upon a time, at least grammar tests were largely IQ based, not money based. Labour destroyed that and trapped a whole lot of poor people in shitty areas with no way of getting out.

It was different this year with VAT leading to an immediate spike in competition for grammar places. I know of many DC who were consistently top of the class at their prep centres/superselective feeder preps/have teacher mums who know the system through and through and preped rigorously/have siblings at schools so all knowledge needed etc - they failed to get top grammar places despite 100% certainty the year before. It's not that they're all thick all of a sudden - they got academic scholarships at top 10 schools like St Paul's, City etc.

And what is the problem with that?

It isn’t my problem if other parents don’t want to spend time helping their children, or can’t for some reason. I’m afraid I can’t care about everyone else’s children.

Life isn’t a race to the bottom.

There was no way my child was attending a secondary where we live. Especially not with the jobs dh and I so in the area and what we know and see. The house was already on the market prior to her passing the 11+ just incase. If she hasn’t passed, we would have taken a massive financial hit and moved to a small flat somewhere with better secondary schools.

In the ideal world all of the 11+ topics, including VR, should be covered and taught in a state primary, including a daily, voluntary homework. That would give all of the children equal chances. In my son's state school only around 1/3 of the curriculum is covered, just a bare minimum that i suspect they can escape with. And it is a 'Good' school. How is this a fair system?

You can buy the CGP Verbal and Non Verbal books or borrow them and they explain the basis of all of it. The National Curriculum is available online. Schools are forever trying to get parents to understand and engage, for a reason. Once you understand properly what is being taught, you can reinforce this at home. Every parent is in theory a child’s prime teacher. The resistance and insistence on this thread about how difficult NVR is for 10 year olds is a prime example of lack of engagement with one book that pretty much explains it all. There is no way an engineer cannot get their head around that in a few hours, if they bothered to try.

My parents live in Bucks and are well aware (if a little behind the times) of 11+. Their cleaner was called into the nice little local village school to ask if she had considered the 11+ for her bright 8/9 yr old. My parents offered to pay for tutoring and this was declined because the child “shouldn’t need to work” to pass. The lovely form tutor did a bit of unofficial extra work but there was zero support from her family and the child was just under the pass mark. The school suggested appealing, but this was declined by mum.

Ten years later said child has no A levels and is doing some cash in hand work behind a bar. I am in complete agreement with those who say that families don’t want to participate - lots of people (and I was really impressed with the primary) were trying to help and convince mum that this was a way to open doors but her family could not see that some effort was involved on their part as well.

Surprised to hear that, I thought that it was well known that the UK education system and red brick universities weren't what they once were. Maybe it's a legacy thing, or people are re-thinking the US at the moment.

Yes. Of course it is. In the best of worlds.

In real life the tutored children (with parents able to pay a tutor or parents well educated themselves to tutor) fill the grammar schools.

I have no problem solving NVR or VR. It is just a form of language like Wordle or Sudoku or Crosswords. It is really not that big a deal. Engage with it and you will quickly understand it.

Nice.

A lot of the Uber drivers with kids at grammar schools also have alternative day jobs you know. That is the way they are inclined, hard work all the way, provide for your families etc.
Now why exactly is that a problem?
Typical British rhetoric - invite Indian doctors and nurses to graft on your NHS because you cannot organise it yourself but if they then want to send their kids to a grammar school it is suddenly a problem? Because it is all too aspirational. Good enough to look after your elderly and pay shed loads of tax, but not good enough to get an educational choice for their own DCs. What a pile of tosh.

According to some of the posters above, you simply lack brainpower.

I’ve said before-I can look at a reception class and predict with maybe 90% accuracy who will pass the 11+. There will always be exceptions either way, but not many.

It is an option for all children. Anyone can do the 11+, tutored or not.

Why wouldn’t it be? You don’t have to pay for a tutor. You can choose to teach them how to answer the questions yourself at home. You don’t even have to buy books, you can get them off the internet.

My point is, you can’t just turn up for the 11+ with no prep at all. You need someone to tell you how to do the papers. Could be a parent, could be anyone. The questions are very different to what most children are used to.

We chose weekly tutoring (an hour a week in a group of 4) due to the health issues I had at the time. We felt it was best for dd to have outside imput. She loved the prep work so did a lot at home with dh too, but he was drowning having to do everything while I was ill, so it wasn’t fair to put it all on his shoulders.

@Mydogisamassivetwat 100% agree with that. I cannot solve absolutely all of the VR/maths questions for a superselective, even my engineer husband finds some of them challenging. Just imagine what a 10 y.o. has to suffer in order to get in. I suspect it has become much worse in the last 10 years due to the overtutoring approach of some parents and the booming tutoring business - the exams have become even harder, more questions in less time and even an average degree-educated adult would find them quite hard. The consequences are that children are made to suffer even more due to overtutoring as they don't teach this stuff at state schools.

I work 2 days a week at the moment (getting over a pretty spectacular health issue). The rest of the time I walk my dog and volunteer at the school. Or sit on my arse drinking tea.

The test should be an option to all bright children. Not only the tutored children.