To ask if your child passed to the 11 plus how much work they did in preparation.

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DS is sitting the 11 plus in a few weeks time. It is his choice to do it, probably based on the fact that so do all the other boys in his year. We have been doing a little bit most days of the holidays (15 mins) but DS has come home today from school talking about the amount of work others have done. One has done 4 hours every day another has sat 7 formal mock exams every week. I'm now feeling as though we haven't given this enough time. I know this quite a debated subject but alternative schools are not great so I am so desperate to get him. Mothers at the gate play down the amount of work so I would really appreciate some honest input.

I don't think so highinthesky. To be called a super selective has no catchment hence every child there has scored very highly and is in top few percent academically.

What you describe is like the Grammar school my dd has just started. Has a Catchment. If you pass in catchment you get a place. So kids are bright but don't need to be genius level. Pass is rumoured to be 75%. Not enough kids pass in catchment so the spare places are offered on score alone. So yes those kids need to score very highly but they will only make up a percentage. In dd's case 1/3 got in from ooc last year.

DD1 only decided 8 months before exam to take it
We agreed 20 mins a day every day and no tutor. We did each day apart from Christmas Day.
It was a substantial amount of work for me finding questions, books etc and literally hours and hours on internet.
The advantage was that I didn't have to take her anywhere after sch or at weekends and that after a time I could only give her stuff to do that wouldn't be just repetition of stuff I knew she could do (esp in maths).
She got in

Thanks for straightening that out for me Dixie. And congratulations to your DD

Looking purely at academic results at GCSE and A-level, can you see a big difference between standard grammars and the "super selective" (again for benchmarking: there's always a big dissection of academic results at the start of the year).

It's difficult for me to tell given I don't actually know which schools operate this admission criteria. Or perhaps direct me to a website that does? Cheers

Some counties eg Bucks and Kent offer 'Grammar schools' There are several in the county, kids sit the 11+ and a significant percentage will be offered a place.
The 'superselective' Grammars are in counties / boroughs where there are NOT other Grammar schools. They don't have a catchment area so anyone can apply and children travel for miles to get there. In my son's year over 2600 kids sat for the school, for 180 places...

My DC was not tutored and I'm not particularly bright. We are a working class family with no money for tutoring. In June my DC's teacher stressed that he should do the 11+ as he's very bright. My knowing he has the concentration of a distracted knewt questioned that. However she stressed he should take it. We approached it in a very relaxed, just do your best effort kind of way. No stress, no pressure, just get familiar with the papers. We purchased some Bond Books from WH Smith and practised 20 minutes 3 x week. Sometimes he managed to get out of it, if he beat his previous time or he got over a certain score on a test. He like this approach as it meant the more effort he put in to do well the less he had to do. We also never focused too much on the right answers but focused on understanding the ones which were incorrect as these gave us an opportunity to understand the gap in learning and close it. My optimism was infectious and i oozed enthusiasm with every sit down to practice. Praised the effort not the outcome. All said and done this worked so well for us, even on 11+ day I just said 'do what you do and pretend it's practice at home, no good luck, no emphasis on the tests, just enjoy the challenge. He flew through the test and passed with way more marks than he needed at a 'super selective' school. I believe and nerves or anxiety gets passed to the child, you can't hide it. So you have to be an amazing actor. We practised for a total of 3 months if that as he was away the whole summer holiday. We did give in an have 4 session total with a Tutor but she said he was fine so I just rolled with it..

Hi... Anyone here who is getting her children prepared for non such grammar school for girls... Tiffin grammar for girls and Wellington grammar school for girls... As there website is showing that they are only doing English and Maths... So would it be wise to only concentrate on these subjects instead of all four i.e verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning.

I'm being quite honest, mine did absolutely no extra work at all though was naturally lively, inquisitive and creative, always doing something (not early in the morning). As far as the usual school work was concerned he felt he did quite enough of that at school thank you. In a million years I would never have got him to do extra.

The school was good though and when it came to 11+ everyone did well so not a problem.

I'm amazed how many people on here have DC who did very little or no extra prep yet passed – lots of little MN geniuses out there! I’m a school governor in a multi primary school academy and that certainly doesn't reflect our area. In my own (state) primary school teachers do zero 11 plus prep, state primaries in this county are not allowed to do it. Children do not cover non-verbal reasoning in school at all and much of the maths needed for 11 plus is not covered in year 5. Hardly any children pass in our school (eg 1 last year, 1 the year before) even though some do private shared tutoring for a year. Some very bright children don't pass. It’s a good school with good SATs results and there are certainly bright children but it’s not a wealthy demographic in our school. The County Council say 33% of children reach the pass mark but they are not coming from the state primaries according to the figures I see. From what I've learned in last few years – a disproportionate number of children who get into our local grammar are privately educated so I assume they do more 11 plus prep than state schools as they don’t have same restrictions (plus smaller classes etc so kids cover more faster) , and a fair few families I know of (not in our school) start weekly tutoring in year 4 (ie 2 years of it!). Good tutors are booked up 2- 3 years in advance. This isn’t the case in our school though, parents wouldn't be able to afford 2 years. So OP – depending where you live- maybe take with a pinch of salt those who says their DC passed with ‘no or limited prep’ . Probably needs to be viewed in context of child’s school background though there will always be exceptions to this of course. (Anybody who says grammars lead to social mobility by the way is talking nonsense from what I’ve seen in recent years. They did 40 years ago but its very different now.)

OP, try not to worry about this. Other parents are invested in telling you how little work it took their DC to pass, and kids exaggerate. Your child could be one of the children who doesn't need that much prep. Just do what he's comfortable with.

We did nothing.

i didn’t see the point really, I don’t think tutoring to pass a specific exam is helpful.

no extra work here.
just general interest in general knowledge and a few 'taskmaster' type of games over summer (lateral thinking & time keeping).

I think what you have been doing is more than fine. If they need too much help to get in then they will struggle and the GS won’t be the right environment it place for them.
DS wanted to sit the 11 plus as did two of his best friends and another boy from his primary. One of his friends backed out of taking the test in the Sept, the other boy had weekly tuition throughout the whole of year 5. We got DS some test papers but like your DS he wasn’t that interested. His friends Mum suggested they do a couple of practice papers a week in timed conditions with a treat after at each other’s houses 2-3 weeks before the test (he had done little work also). Boys being boys this worked and spurred them on as they enjoyed the competition. Both boys passed with flying colors and did very little work apart from the practice tests 3 weeks before. We are not in a super selective area and have a perfectly good Conp within a 20 minutes walk away.

I was ambivalent about DS going to a grammar school (in Lancashire so not a 'grammar area') as I disagree with the principle of them. I also worried his SEN would mean he found it very difficult if he did get in, so I decided he would not be overly tutored beforehand. I figured if he spent hours every week doing 11+ prep he would probably struggle to keep up once there, and I couldn't afford hours of tutoring every week from age 11 - 18 as some students end up having!

So I paid for four sessions with a tutor over the summer holidays. She had him run through some practice papers, suggested some areas to focus on and set him about an hour's homework to do after each session. I also ran through practice papers with him myself twice. That's it. He got in, obviously, and has had no issues with keeping up or grades thus far. We don't do the NVR tests here though, just Maths and English. If NVR was included I would have gone through that with him in detail too.

This is madness, if you have to coach a child that much they will have to keep at that pace to keep up, which doesn't equate to an enjoyable secondary school exclusive experience. I scored in the top 1% in my eleven plus, no prep, I'd never even seen a practice paper.

(not sure where the word exclusive came from in that post...)

A few practice papers at home with me in the few weeks before the exam.

Children do need to see the type of question they are going to get, and how to answer it. If they see it for the first time in the actual test, they won't have the faintest idea what it means. Particularly non verbal reasoning.

some of the maths was new to him, and we had to work out how to do that before the test as well

Just get him familiar with past papers and timing. If he needs hothousing all the way through then he'll struggle with the work expected from him.

Tiffin and Wallington are just maths and english

I am also surprised by no prep - the ones above cover all of the curriculum to the end of year 6. DD is having an hour a week to cover the bits she has not been taught and exam techniques. Once she has been told something its fine but if she did not know what a synonym or antonym was she could not answer the question

We were advised to get a certain set of practice papers. We did one together, one on her own untimed, one where I got her to make a mark atvtome upmpoint and then she just did the other three working to get her time quicker. We sussed out her best working method and worked from there.
I didn’t want her tutored to get it knowing what she is like this wouldn’t have been the right thing for her

Ours were tested in VR, NVR and maths so needed to familiarise with working to time and familiarity with the style of questions a little more than anything.
DS is thriving and GS was his choice to go. I would have hated to have had to push cajoule and hothouse him as I can imagine he would be struggling at GS and would have low self esteem and a miserable time if we had had to do that to get him through the door.

The cleverest child I've ever taught didn't pass last year. The parents decided not to do any tutoring, just one practise paper.

Missed by one mark and didn't appeal.

Other much less intelligent children smashed it after two years of tuition.

Madness really.

I am also surprised by no prep

NVR and VR were taught as standard at DD's school from 6 so we didn't feel it necessary to have any additional practice. We knew maths and English wouldn't be an issue.

Very interesting Daisy. The importance of knowing what to expect, not just being clever, is clear (and easily minimised).

Yes I am surprised that any child no matter how clever can answer questions about the mean mode and median of a set of data without first being told what they mean - and that is what I mean by prep in our area - it covers the whole KS2 curriculum and it gets taken at the start of Year 6. And how to answer questions

There is a difference between hothousing and prep in my view

My daughter was very annoyed because all of the other children in her class were going to tuition every day for long hours while she only spent an hour on my laptop. She is very happy because she has been offered a place at North Halifax Grammar School in September 2019. This made her very happy because it's an academy and a science college.My child loves science and has always wanted to go to a high school that in an academy. I'm gonna wrap this up now because it's taking to long and my thumbs hurt. Thanks for reading (if you bothered to.).