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

[Generallyok]

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.

Mine did as little work as possible throughout school, it was a nightmare. Exceptions were if something really interested him, then he'd be obsessed. He passed the eleven plus a year early though. Has to be said the school he went to up until then was very good.

Difficult to prepare for 11+, I know some people pay a fortune for tutors with no success. The non verbal reasoning is the tricky part. Make sure your son does puzzles so he is used to them but it's not something for which you can really revise.

English comprehension, creative writing which shows knowledge and interests, good spelling and arithmetic. Really, the school should be preparing them all for the 11+ but your input will be invaluable.

Yes, my son passed. I really hope yours does, good luck to him.

I realise I didn't actually say how much preparation my son did, sorry.
He didn't really do very much. The school prepared all the kids quite well, we did interesting things with him, lots of reading, he liked writing and playing fairly complex games which he enjoyed. Maths wasn't a problem. However he wouldn't do anything he didn't want to do! We more or less took it for granted that he would pass because we had both passed our 11+ back in the day, there wasn't any pressure.