To pull my daughter out of tutoring?

[Chairmancow]

Another shitty weekend ruined by trying to get uncooperative Dd (9) to do her homework. She started tutoring for 11 plus 3 weeks ago and we've all had enough already!
She's not able or willing to independently get on with the piles of work she has to complete each week. Consequently we have to stand over her helping her and scolding her when she pisses about. Which Is frequently! We are so frustrated with it all. It's spoiling all our weekends. I've doubts about her ability to work quickly enough to pass it anyway.
Should we quit or keep on?
The comps round here are dire, obviously if they were any good I would never have started all this.
Dh doesn't deal with stress well (mental health problems) and I think we're both feeling under a lot of pressure to not to let her do badly at school.
Advice please!

god let her go out and climb trees and play with her friends.

The Uk school system is actually out and out cruel to children - from the age of 4 upwards. No wonder we hev the most anxious miserable children in Europe.

You say it would take 2 hours if she got down to it - maybe she wants to switch off! Maybe she really really needs the weekend to be about play and enjoying herself in order to cope with school all week.

There is a big difference between being tutored to pass the 11+ and actually doing proper school work. Not wanting to do the first says nothing about how you might approach the second.

I totally disagree with those that say that 1:1 tuition rather than group tuition is always better. It really depends on the child and the tutor. The fact that group tuition might be a bit like school makes it far more palatable for some children. We did 1:1 tuition with my eldest DD and she absolutely hated it. Group tuition gave her far more confidence.

I don't really understand why you are putting your DD through this tutoring when you don't think she will be able to keep up anyway. If by some chance she did get into Grammar are you prepared to tutor her the whole way through that as well. Would you really want her to struggle on from years 7 to 11 because that's what would happen. I think you need to follow your gut on this one and let her enjoy being a 9 year old without heaping all this on her.

Wow, does the tutor earn 7 times 25= £175 an hour?

Shrewd man!

Tutoring, either by parents or paid tutors is another thing that makes the 11+ so unfair, and skewed towards the middle class/educated/privileged families

But everything in the education system is unfair.

Its unfair that schools around us are not great, its unfair ( perhaps but not really) that neithr DH nor I earn enough for private school, its un fair this or that or the other. Its un fair that all schools round me are swamped with students, extra classes being built and so on.

DD class cohort are year 5 and some have already been tutored for a year. I am told the HW they do is vastly superior to what our school is giving out.

So my DD who is very bright - is competing against girls who have been tutored for a year, two girls same level one tutored one not...who will get in?

Personally as someone who cant afford private and who cannot afford years long sustained tuition I still don't feel you can punish those who want a grammar education for their DC or blame them for tutoring,

Instead make the test more accessible for the dc of parents who are not motivated or interested for whatever reasons. The problem is most state primaries ( some however do...and the FSM cohort is therefore higher...) will not help dc who want to take the test.

So, right there your hobbling dc whose parents are not interested. Do something about that then see who gets in or not.

The Uk school system is actually out and out cruel to children - from the age of 4 upwards. No wonder we hev the most anxious miserable children in Europe

I totally agree with this but I also feel a student is happier in an environment that suits them most, huge massive comprehensives are not for every dc, a smaller school would suit them better so ultilamtly I believe in choice

Roomster - I didn't mean to imply that group tutoring is useless for all children, just that if it's not working for the OP's DD, it might make sense to try a more personalised approach, once a week, rather than twice.

As I say, where we are in south- west London, there are so many tutors and tutoring agencies capitalising on hysterical parents and the 11 plus indie hype. Some tutors even run "mock exams" - i.e. hire a hall and then charge parents £150 for the privilege of sending their child along to complete the papers "under exam conditions". These are basically just past papers - in most cases, the very same ones that you could just print out from the school's websites. Still everyone jumps on the bandwagon and the halls will be packed with maybe 60 anxious kids. 60 x £150 (£9,000!!!) for a few photocopied exam papers and 3 hours of a Saturday morning. I regret to say I did this with DS1, but wish I hadn't bothered.

It's crazy that May wants to extend a school system in which it is forbidden to teach the basics of the test that is required to access half the available secondary schools.

It is a system so patently heavily tipped in favour of privately educated, middle class, educated families that it is absurd.

Jiggly only in some primaries is it forbidden. Some do help and there is increase in FSM in those grammars - obviously!

its skewed because the system makes it skewed not the parents in the system.

The Uk school system is actually out and out cruel to children - from the age of 4 upwards.

There is no UK school system. There are many issues with schools in Scotland but the pressures described in this thread are not amongst them.

I could cry now as I've just looked at a paper on verbal reasoning. Word coding and that kind of thing. I'll be honest now, not in 100 years of staring at it would I be able to work out the codes to answer the questions!
I've spend my whole life feeling stupid and inadequate compared to clever people. I never even sat the 11 plus as I was never going to stand a chance of passing.
What is unfair is that my daughter also seems to be lacking this inherent ability. She is creative, kind and wonderful but that doesn't seem to be enough for this world. I'm very sad about it all.

Seriously, you are way overthinking - she isn't lacking anything. Some people have a logical mind, some people don't, we all have different strengths and weaknesses. She isn't you, don't make her pay for your childhood insecurities and issues. My DS isn't academic, he does his best (hhmmm, well when he can be bothered) but he has many other strengths. Embrace her strengths and don't focus on what she isn't good at. She is nine years old, just let her enjoy a childhood with no pressure.

How does she do at school? What did she get in her year 2 SATs?

I only have experience of Birmingham, which is a super selective area, but what we learned was that the tests were very hard and actually, getting 60-70% would probably be enough. It's about working quickly and leaving out some of those impossible questions.

We forced a reluctant and immature (Aug bday) boy to do the test, although as we home educated at that point we were able to prepare intensely over a shorter period. He wasn't keen - he didn't really want to go to a 'hard' school - and he resisted work generally.

But we knew he had the basic ability, his sister was doing brilliantly at a selective school and we felt he'd underachieve if allowed to coast. We bribed him with rewards.

I'm glad we did it. He got in to a grammar school, now in year 7 and really enjoying it. Homework requires a lot more hand holding than it did with his sister, but he's perfectly capable just a bit lazy and defeatist at times. He knows he has to do it or he'll get detentions. I'm hoping the effort now will result in a more independent and confident boy later. Who knows but the stress was definitely worth it for us!

The key thing is - donyou think she's got the ability? Is she top third in her class/year?

Oh and the other thing I meant to say - he's matured hugely since the start of year 5. He sees the bigger picture now, he understands about exam results/jobs etc. Passing the 11 plus also gave him experience of hard work paying off and the pleasure of improving at something - really valuable lessons. He could have failed of course - but he would still have seen the improvements ( we did practice tests and rewarded improved scores) which I think taught him a lot about the benefit of hard work.

So just because she's not keen now - don't think it means she's unsuited to grammar school. She will grow up!

Chair - don't worry about VR. Basically it's about 50% ability and 50% technique / familiarity with those questions. There are about 8 question "types" and you get used to them.

Do check that the school you are going for even uses VR as many schools are phasing this out as the useless bollox that it is. My DC's school used to use VR and NVR in the past (alongside Maths and English) to select at 11 plus. The school then did a study which tracked the progress of students who scored very highly in VR and NVR throughout the school and found that high scores in these papers at 11 plus is no indicator of academic performance throughout the school or at GCSE / A- level. This is because some children will have done these papers ad infinitum. They are no more intelligent, they have just learned how to jump through those particular hoops. This Is Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith and many similar selective schools are now abandoning the VR / NVR format because it's such a pointless grind for pupils (and parents).

What many schools do instead now to address the tutoring bias, is integrate VR into the comprehension paper and NVR into the maths, e.g. when my son sat for Hampton School, the reasoning was in the form of maps, charts and grid sequences and it's not something you could have really prepared for. Can you get hold of any past papers so you know what you are dealing with?

"I totally agree with this but I also feel a student is happier in an environment that suits them most, huge massive comprehensives are not for every dc, a smaller school would suit them better so ultilamtly I believe in choice"

What if there's a child who would suit a smaller school but they don't pass the 11+?

Then they have to make the best of it bertrand! Like the people who have to make the best of it - all through life - the job you didn't get the partner you didn't get the job/house/life you didn't get!

we can change the things we can change and we have to learn to accept the things we cant. As long as we dont willfully withhold that change for our dcs, our conscience in clear.

There will be plenty who do suit it and who will get in and vice versa, one size doesn't fit all and life is short to shoe horn a into b when you have a chance at a!

Word coding and that kind of thing
Op get the book that tells you how to do it!

Its very simple when you understand it and I got a U in Maths it really is - its just a question of knowing how to do it, once you have that simple key it very easy.

sunseptember Do you think it will be possible to learn it from a book? Simpleton that I am
Any recommended books to explain techniques?

I thought studies showed that there was a perceptible difference in performance after 1practise paper, but further practise led to no significant improvement?

@Chairmancow

My daughter found a mock test worthwhile. It was in a hall with 100 or so others - she felt quite calm in the real thing as was used to the setup.

Jux- that is certainly the received wisdom. Supporters of the 11+ are very invested in the test being untutorable and familiarisation is all that's required. Anyone who has given the papers more than a cursory glance can see that is not true.

I think 9 is too young, and tbh I am not a fan of tutoring anyway.

I think you need to lay off, and if you are determined to tutor, perhaps find one who she gets on with better. You would hope a really good tutor would motivate & inspire.

I also think it would be very empowering to say to your DD that you don't think she needs a tutor because she is so bright and capable, hardworking etc, but that if she wants to have a tutor at any time she can change her mind.

OP
first, don't worry too much about speed. All year 5 children are way to slow at this point. Concentrate on working out questions and accuracy. Speed comes later.

second double check that VR. The old VR exam had loads of weird codes and things. But most of the exams now use VR to mean things like - which two words are the closest in meaning? Which of these words is the odd one out? Which word fits best in the gap in the sentence?

If you do need the codes, you can buy books which explain how to do it. Tips to look for, some of them basically need you to learn a method.