to have spent thousands of £s on 11+ tuition and still dd has no place!

[annoydmum]

so depressed!spent alot of money on tuition to no avail :(.....

If you want to get into one of the super-selective grammars, such as Tiffin Girls, you WILL need tutoring. It's not like trying to get into a grammar school in, say, a rural part of Lincolnshire: people come from as far away as Portsmouth.

OR, you just need to be quite bright.

money can buy you the tuition but it can't buy you the ability - when i was at a grammar school some years ago there was a guy in year 1 who should have been in year 3 but you had to pass to move up each year, he left during my first year there but I often wonder if he woulds till be sitting there going grey!!

if you need intensive tuituion to get in you will not keep up and this can make for a very unhappy situation

There will be more 'quite bright' applicants than places at popular schools. A quite bright child could easily not get a place because lots of almost as bright children perform better on the day because the exam questions are more familiar to them. A very bright child shouldn't need tutoring but most children who are in the top numeracy and literacy groups in their primary schools, but not genius bright, are fairly indistinguishable from each other and its more than likely that amongst these quite bright children the tutored will get places over the untutored.

Even a very bright child, with no preparation, will find it a challenge.
The questions, particularly non-verbal reasoning, would come as a shock if you have never seen anything like it before.
All very well if no-one has a tutor, but as someone said before, if some are having extra tuition, it only seems fair to do the same for your children.
If it was taught in primary schools the situation would not arise.

Although spending £1000s is in quite different league from familiarising dcs with the exam format etc.

Thousands?

[sceptical]

Round here the 11+ results were out back in October before you had to send in the applications for a place

this week the places were allocated - if you passed the 11+ you would get a grammar place, it just may not be local to where you are.

Don't understand how you haven't got a place- even if the place in Dover and you are in the Orkneys.

Blu - I meant that people would rather pay tutoring fees than secondary private fees and thats the gamble iyswim.

Agree with abr1de - different counties have different systems - in some like Birmingham a bright child will do well with a bit of (family) tuition, in other places like Kingston, Sutton and bits of Kent dc need to really know what they're doing (ie getting near 100%) as they up against other dc from a massive area - indeed I knew a family who got their ds into Tiffin and then moved from Hong Kong.

Am also a bit that the OP hasnt come back.

eatyourveg - you can make the pass mark for individual schools with individual exams and still not get a good enough pass mark iyswim - if you are within x amount of marks then they will wait list you and offer to each of the pass marks down as people take up private places etc - its all very complicated, not like it used to be when we did it at all.

It is nice to know that the system works.
Your DC isn't suited to selective education, at the moment. IMO they should do it without tutors, but if they have a tutor and still fail then it is the wrong school. Passing the exam is only the very first step-they have to cope once they get there.
You have to find a school to suit your DC not find the school and make your DC fit!!!

If it worked then all exams would be a doddle- right through to university-throw enough money at it and you get top marks!!! Luckily it doesn't work like that and you have to have the raw material in the first place.

Just saying that I don't think this is a genuine op. "Thousands"? - smacks of someone looking for material for a column to me.

The OP still hasn't returned, FourFortyFour.

Sceptical as I am too, since the subject is being discussed I'll add another tuppence worth by saying that some of the problems of grammar school selection might be resolved if they were allowed to revert to the interview system.

When I was a child it was necessary for a grammar school applicant to pass the 11 Plus, possibly pass an in-house examination too, and then both child and parent/s had to undergo interviews with the Headmaster/Headmistress. The child would be interviewed alone, the parent/s interviewed alone and then the family would be interviewed together. Successful entry was far more akin to independent school procedure and it was that interview which determined who would obtain a place just as much as the 11 Plus result.

I just looked up Tiffins - looks like something that should be an inde school. But its becoming an academy? What?
And the education must be really really good to make your son wear one of those blazers. Especially if they have to get public transport home across London. Very cruel. (Sorry, it just made me giggle)

You don't mean that title of yours quite literally do you? You didn't spend thousands of pounds, you spent a lot of money you mean?

If it wasn't a genuine OP then she is making a good point-you can spend any amount of money and you can't make your DC pass exams if they don't have the ability.

Is that a good point ?

I would have thought it was a case of the bleedin' obvious.

It's not real guys, look, the OP has disappeared

It isn't the bleedin' obvious when people see a selective school, think 'my DC won't get a place-must get a tutor' instead of finding a school that is suited to their DC!

Translation:

'I pissed away a shitload of cash on trying to give my thick kid and unfair advantage'

Boo-fuckety-hoo.

(I can say that on AIBU right???)

So you're daughters not academic. Neither is Alan Sugar. I'm very highly academic (got the IQ test results to prove it) and I technically live below the poverty line. Your excessive focus on your daughters academic ability is not healthy. That's precisely where my parents went wrong. Winston Churchills exam grades were appauling and Einsteins teachers famously said "He will never amount to anything". But you don't want Sugar, Churchill of Einstein. The way you're going you're going to end up with MEEEEE

I don't think you have wasted your money just because she didn't pass. If your child has had tutoring for 11 plus maths and verbal reasoning, then their maths and vocabulary and reasoning skills will have been boosted. This will give her a good preparation for the secondary school she goes to.

I am going through maths at home with DD; this will prepare her for the 11 plus and will prepare her for secondary school regardless of where she ends up. I would still do maths with her at home even if we didn't live in an 11 plus area.

If, on the other hand, you got her a tutor because you thought that the 11 plus was some kind of mystical art that needed to be taught by a specialist, that is a waste of money.

That's what you get for sucking up to the private school system, I guess.