Is tutoring for the 11+ really essential?

[TheUsualChaos]

We are starting to think about secondary schools for DD. Options are local college (average school, very big but most people say it's alright) or choice of two grammar schools in nearest town. This would involve a bus or train commute but apparently lots of kids go there from where we live. We are going to look at them all soon to see what DD thinks.

Everyone I've spoken to says if your child is going to take the 11+ they will need tutoring starting from around now to stand any chance come next September. Is this really true??

I have a very bright daughter (now 22) who was top of her class and she claims that she would not have passed the 11 plus without tutoring, which makes a mockery of the system really. It is supposed to be uncoachable, but that’s nonsense, there are lots of techniques to learn for non verbal reasoning and lots of vocabulary to learn for verbal reasoning.

Sorry, 'best' should have had inverted commas around it! Tutors who have very high success rates become sought after, but these success rates are often built on their careful selection of who they will tutor. A bit like grammar schools themselves and their high results, in fact....

Most children round here who do the 11+ will have either been to a prep school or had a couple of years tutoring for it. I understand that for very bright children 12 months tutoring may be sufficient.

DD1 was always bright and ahead and was clearly going to be likely pass her 11+. The tutoring was to get her to pass the 11+ well enough to get into a super-selective grammar school, which she did, just. She thrived at the school, it was clearly the right school for her- being borderline on the score to get in didn't mean she would struggle at the school.

DD2 is more average academically but I still wanted her to have the same opportunity- she had some tutoring but it was more to help her feel more confident at school as she is mildly dyslexic. There was 11+ preparation later but she didn't pass - it was always going to be an only just if she did and then I would have had the dilemma of whether she might go to grammar but struggle with the work.

I'd say most kids do need some tutoring - they make it harder every year, for one thing. I'm not sure that DD1 would have got such a high mark four years later.

I don’t recall ever doing extra practice for 11+ and certainly didn’t at home, although I imagine the teacher trained us in the sort of questions during class. Everyone did the exam though and we all went along to a local secondary school on a Saturday morning.

I think it’s fine to be practised in the sort of questions required in 11+, but it worries me that some children might have intensive tuition, pass the test and then find themselves unable to cope as a little fish in a big pond.

Tutors want a year-round income, so they typically recruit new tutees as soon as the previous year group has taken the exam.

That is a bit unfair.
I do 1 hour per week plus homework. There are about 32 different maths topics to cover, and so to spread it over the year, and cover one topic maths per week, you need time. Obviously not every child needs to review every topic, but still.
I only do term time as well, as I think kids need the breaks.

The other option is to do an intensive course through July/August. I don't do that as I have kids myself and like to have time with them in the holidays.

My job is persuading parents that they don't need me to tutor them all through year 3 and 4, and yes their kids can take a break over Christmas and still pass.

Can I also say that I can tell pretty quickly what sort of level my new students are.
Those that are not at grammar school level, are not likely to pass the exam even with loads of tutoring. They will work their socks off, but they just don't get the questions twists.
It is possible to bring someone who is borderline up to the standard, but very hard to take someone who is not able enough up to the level to pass.
So this idea that highly tutored kids can pass and then struggle isn't reality really.

The trouble is, as others have said, if a very bright child does no preparation (which can easily be done by parents) they may not pass.

(and I am always honest with parents, and some choose to continue, to strengthen their child's basic skills ready for secondary school, and others choose to stop)

We didn’t hire an external tutor and my kids got into superselectives.
They both read voraciously from age 4 and were naturally really good at verbal reasoning. They are both quick natural mathematicians too. We had to practise the non verbal a bit and English comprehension. We had to do some past papers with them and mock exams so they understood the time pressure.
Friends of ours with equally able DC ended up complaining that they wasted money on tutors who did far more than was ever required. If you really know your DC’s strengths and weaknesses and they are naturally bright, accurate and fast, Do it Yourself with minimum input. But do some past papers now or at least the basic bond books to get an idea. If DC go from 70 per cent to 90 per cent on all 4 areas quickly then you will know you should be fine.
However, some very bright DC are not very accurate and some are very slow so those are skills you may have to practise, for example, a perfectionist kid can be an issue because it is about speed and accuracy and maximising points.

I think that this type of story, from a generation ago, doesn’t reflect today’s reality - for one thing, state schools aren’t supposed / allowed to teach to the 11+ (not on the National Curriculum, and in sone areas specifically prohibited) so familiarisation in class doesn’t happen. The ‘arms race’ I referred to above has also dramatically raised the required standard and speed.

@cantkeepawayforever - love this “The thing is, the 11+ over the years has essentially become an 'arms race'.”
Probably mainly true for London and Outer London though, right? We live local to Kent, Bexley and Bromley Superselectives and people also tend to let their kids take the Sutton exams. Some parents are already panicking in Year 1 (state) about reading levels, Kumon, daily writing etc. And that is despite having some excellent local comprehensives too (with grammar streams). It is all quite laughable really. There is also a huge online tutorial business not just for 11 plus but all the way through. Since Covid, lots of very expensive tutoring (think £55 to £85 an hour kind of thing) is now offered on Zoom for 9 year olds…
People locally gossip about one infamous tutor who gets 25 kids plus in a class, whips them and their parents up into a frenzy and makes 400k a year for himself… this is not a joke.
I have some friends who used to be teachers, they now tutor instead, make far more money and have lots of spare time. Some have set up tutoring businesses hiring students. Again, huge moneymaker. So be careful who you actually get.
I do not think everyone is as genuine as
@steppemum

I never got tutoring for my DD. I figured that if she needed extra help just to get into the school then she would need it to keep up as well. We did a couple of practice papers so she understood what the tests would be and that was it. (Her primary did no prep as it was a church school that wanted all the children to go on to the church secondary). She did really well and got way above the pass mark and went to a fab grammar school (and then uni and now has a BA and MA).

musicaldilemma
thanks!

I figured that if she needed extra help just to get into the school then she would need it to keep up as well

It doesn't work that way with super selectives though, if they fly through the pass mark for the 11+ but only just get the mark for the school (much higher, and set according to demand and distribution of marks in the test that year) it doesn't mean they will struggle to do the level of work at the school.

Also we had to get a tutor once I realised both DH and I both with graduate/post grad qualifications, DH having gone to a Kent superselective school himself, and both in professional jobs, couldn't really help DD1 with many of the Kent Test practice questions as we found them too hard. The maths made me quite stressed and sick in exactly the same way that hard maths did at school.

@HideTheCroissants unfortunately that really isn’t the case anymore. Even the brightest kids need some work doing in advance so they know the techniques for NVR at the very least.

Agree…it’s a technique that is way beyond my fairly logical thinking.

Can I just say, that if anyone is going to do it themselves as a parent, probably the biggest help to them through year 5 (and year 4) is reading.

If they read for 20-30 minutes every day, with a book at their level, then you will increase their chances of success enormously.
The secret is the book at their level.
I have a trick that I teach my students. Open the book at a full page and start reading. Every time you come across a word you don't know, raise a finger on your hand.
0 fingers, the book is too easy (for this task, nothing wrong with reading an easy book for fun) if you have 5 fingers up, the book is too hard. Anything in between and it is just right and will stretch their vocab and comprehension.

Alongside this, read out loud 2-3 times per week. Read a book which is exciting, but just a bit to hard for them to read for themselves. Read it with drama and at the end of each chapter, talk about the book. This increases vocab and comprehension.

The say the 11+ is won or lost on vocabulary and there is a lot of truth in that.

Honestly, if your child does not have enough time to sit and read for 30 minutes a day, then drop something from their schedule.

Having returned from abroad, where dds attended an English-speaking school, we were told by a family friend of MiL who ran a private prep school, that tutoring for the 11 plus was quite unnecessary (dd1 had only one term to prepare). She said the tests (all VR at the time) were designed to test a child’s potential, not what they already knew.

It was bollocks. The U.K. school dd then attended gave them practice every day. She had never seen this type of test before - her initial scores were around the 40% mark.
By the end of the Christmas term, with daily practice, they had risen to 90% odd.
We used no actual tutor - the school practice was enough. The 11 plus was in January and she passed.

In most state schools they don't allow them to prep for the 11+

Where we live you apply for different schools, the lowest pass mark when ds1 sat was 107, the pass mark for his school was 116 (I think from memory). In practice the cut off mark was 134 as they had filled the places.

My child has just sat his 11+ and as much as everyone thinks it’s worth it, seeing all those kids looking so under pressure was too much for me l wish l hadn’t bothered, l didn’t go to grammar school and l did ok.

We are in the Midlands, having moved from one part of the Midlands where the 11+ wasn't really a thing, to an area where it seems to be everything.

Our DS started tutoring in April and has just done the exam. He is very bright, and above target in all areas. However, despite this, the 11+ was not something he was prepared for in his regular schooling. It was massively tough, and it felt horribly pressured and we had many days where DS was stressed and upset. I wish we'd started tutoring a year earlier or not bothered at all. I don't think he will have passed based on mock exam results that we had in August.

The maths and English parts were okay, but he struggled with the non verbal reasoning. It is an awful lot. At the exam a lot of the kids came out despondent and saying they felt they had failed.

It completely depends where you live. Here the handful of grammar schools have recently introduced geographical catchments and increased their quota of pupil premium children, and it has absolutely kneecapped the tutoring businesses who catered to wealthy parents in leafy suburbs who were buying their child a place at the grammars. Some still go for it - a friend of DD's was told that her parents had left it a bit late to start at the end of Year 4. Others see private prep as a worthwhile front-loaded investment in a later grammar place.

Where I live it’s 3-4% of city kids go to the grammars. Catchments are massive, lots of private primary, booming tutoring industry. If you don’t start tutoring September of year 5 at latest you won’t find a tutor. Loads of kids pass but they are ranked and once the PAN is reached tough shit. I have never heard of anyone getting in without tutoring and we have lots of friends, colleagues and family kids in the grammars.

My oldest is bright but due to her SEN we didn’t think grammar would meet her needs. The youngest wanted to give it a go but lost confidence at the last minute and is happy at local comp. I’m not worried about either of them. Youngest can afford to get lower A levels as she is at an inner city comp with high ESL and pupil premium.