to think a child should be able to get into a grammar school without tutoring?

[AntonioGramsci]

I am surprised at how many kids get tutored for the entrance exams, surely if they are clever, enough practicing a few papers a few weeks in advance should be sufficient? Did your child get in without being tutored?

Oh, thank you, I was worried the thread would get into the usual pie fight, but we all seem reasonably well behaved. [happy]

Sorry similar threads appear all the time, I was too lazy to do a search tbh.

I do think often as parents we do not see the difference between the truly clever child and the bright child. I see it amongst my ds' friends. They are all very bright, in the top set, but, there is one who is truly different and real grammar school material, this boy at 5 was doing muliplications effortlessly, absolutely astounding. The rest bright but average really.

FreeGeorgeJackson is an oldie and has seen everything. I well remember being told that as a newbie I should be looking up the archives for the wisdom of the established.
Now that would be boring.
If a topic bores you then you can simply ignore it FGJ.

If a topic has been done extensively before, you can always link to it to help out the OP - as it might mean that people aren't going to repeat what they have said before. This thread seems to be going along quite well, so obviously lots of people aren't bored with it.

My son is bright but lazy and easily distracted. When he was coming up to the 11+ he did a few tests at school and was really low down the class - he's also young for his year and quite immature. I never thought we'd tutor but I tried doing exam practice with him and he wouldn't concentrate for me. One of our neighbours is a retired teacher and for 4 months he came round once a week and did practice papers with him and went over his mistakes. Suddenly it all clicked and he sailed through the 11+. Maybe it would have clicked anyway. Now he's in grammar school and doing really well - top 1 or 2 in most subjects. I would rather not have tutored. I would rather we didn't have a divisive school system but I made a call on what was best for my son and I don't regret it.

While I agree that tutoring in some parts of the country has gone dompletely mad, tutoring per se does not always have to mean kumon (sp?) math lessons at 3, letting the tutor in by the back door and covered under a cloack and spending loads of pounds on millions of lessons.
The way I see it there is obsessive tutoring and reasonable coaching. For me the former means obsessing about getting the best tutor, like ABetaDad said, and pushing the child beyond their abilities and out of their interests. The latter means teaching them what might not be taught at their primary school and practice test papers.

The uber-academic child might get in anywhere with no support and do well anyway. Those are not to be worried about, are they? But there might be some other academic children who would be good grammar material but happen to go to an average primary that does not teaches them v/nv reasonong for example nor gets them to the level they should be when they start. In this case I do not see anything wrong in either teaching/showing those things to your child yourself, if you are lucky enough to be able to do it, or employ someone, if you are lucky enough to afford it.

An example to this is the following. In my days in my home contry I had to take an exam to get to study Architecture at Uni. The secondary school I had attended focused on Literature and Classics so we were all behind in subjects like math/algebra/design etc. I passed the exam but only because it was the aggregate score that counted. I most likely failed all the math/algebra questions and got all the verbal reasoning right. I however struggled so much in the beginning because I was so behind. Learning the basics that were not taught well enough at my secondary prior to starting would have been beneficial. However there is of course another side to this story and it's that I am mathematically challenged and no matter how much tutoring I got it would never be a natural thing to me. So I left. Years later a more verbal degree proved to be easy peasy and a joy.

The great shame it is of course that not all schools manage to provide their children with the resources to sit such exams. Passing them should be based on their natural abilities. But that's another story.

sorry for the length.

Antonio is this boy good in every subject or a few? Not sure what grammar material means tbh as due to the age of my dc I have not research it yet, and I promise myself I will not for a good few years . I assumed one would need to be a genious though, or does one? If so nobody becomes a genious no matter the tutoring imo so a total waste of time and forget all I have said.

How boring are those posters who just because they have seen it all just butt in to say "search all threads". If we all had to follow such advise there would not be any MNet as I bet it has all been discussed already and the world will be a pretty quiet place don't you think?

oh and welcome to MN antonio

My point is that the OP is onyl starting this thread to wind everyone up hence "his" user name.
If your kid is clever then why is it an issue?

and all grammar schools are different so you whole theory is a generalisation

But I do not htink my kid is grammar school material at all! When did I say that?

Honestly!

FGJ ! I really do not get your point. I think it is you who wants to wind everyone up and stir a strangely relaxed and civil thread.

i do nto belive that a less than clever kid can be made to pass the test that I have seen. Really no way. They are hard and I really found them tough.

Yes, he is pretty good at everything from what I see. Reading, drawing, just a fascinating brain tbh. The mum is very normal, but told me that her dad is a scientist, went to Cambridge, etc, a talented man...and she thought her ds had inherited her dad's brain.

wow. I'd like to see a child like that. really. it must be fascinating. In that case he would not need tutoring. And if that is what grammar schools are all about then tutoring is pointless, a waste of time and cheating.

Oh, I have no idea. That poster exhausted me though.

I am wondering now who is George Jackson.

Time to stop mnetting methinks for tonight. I might post in secondary though to see if any kids got into a grammar without tutoring. I am really curious on the subject. I was reading in the Guardian or somehwere else about kids doing extra lessons at 5am that got me thinking that it is whole a bit bizarre and a waste of money.

Oh I read an article in the DT a while ago that make me want to puke and like you made me against tutoring by rule. It was all about fighting for the best tutors at exhorbitant fees, hiding the tutor from friends in case their children got in, mandarin lessons and kumon math lessons at 3. Most of these things obviously quite the norm in parts of North London. It made me wish my child to be good with their hands from the starts not to run the risk to get sucked in.

GrimmaTheNome is spot on I think. We should be questioning why exactly the state schools witin the catchment areas of Grammars aren't teaching them to the standard necessary for a reasonably intelligent child to take the exams IF they want to. I mean why is it that you either have to buy the Vr/nonVer practice papers yourself or tutor? They should all be exposed to it at primary. What is the point of 6 hour long days only to need poss. 2 years worth of extra hours for tutoring?

MollieO Yes, if there were enough in-catchment passes, then a child brighter than them all, living outside of catchment would not get in. Quite frustrating when you live outside of catchment for any school. Had a look at their website because of this thread and the catchment is 6.5 miles radius from the headmaster's (sic) office .

Not all private schools teach 11+. Ours doesn't and doesn't encourage boys to take it. Rather they actively encourage them to go on to the associated non-selective senior school, which 70% have done so this year. This is despite a fair number of pupils being in catchment for grammar - I reckon about half the boys in ds's year live in catchment even though the prep school itself is not.

I am not convinced there is legislation on 11 plus teaching in primary schools. I think it is probably just a regulation in a specific LEA. In my LEA there are no familiarisation papers in school as most children do not sit the 11 plus, and their parents don't want them to.

My dd's are going to take the 11+ (or whatever they're being called now) and I will be giving them some tutoring so that when they see the tests they have some sort of an idea what tey're supposed to do! But I won't be hiring a tutor I don't think as I can't afford it.
I really want them to go to a grammer, they are bright enough to be able to cope with the work but it's worrying that it all depends on the test results so I do think that they should be as well prepared as possible.

The school they are at gets them ready for the tests anyway but there's no harm in giving them a little extra.

Though I definitely don't agree with intensively tutoring a child to get into a grammer if they don't have the natural ability. It's not fair on the child, let them go to a less academic school and they will shine. In those cases it's about the parents wanting their child to get into the 'right' school, but you have to know your child and choose a school based on the child's abilities.

"kids are being stuffed through the tests like meat into sausages and not coping when they do get to grammar school"

If this was the case, then it might be an argument against coaching. But certainly in the Sutton and Bromley grammar schools you are not seeing many kids struggling because they were over tutored for the exam. OK there will be some children in "remedial" classes to cover some stuff skipped at primary school, but they're going onto to achieve high grades at GSCE and A level. Someone dropping out or not achieving well is pretty rare.

I guess it was easier in the days when the schools had catchments. Now people travel miles to sit the 11+. And the school encourage this because it pushes the pass mark up, and cleverer children are easier to teach to pass GCSEs and A levels. So every single mark counts, hence driving parents to tutoring. There are some children who will always get very high marks in any exam, but for those who are in the top quartile but not always the top centile then tutoring must make some sense. Tutoring is not going to take a 3rd or even 2nd quartile child into that 1st centile. Does it seem a lot of cost and effort for a 5% boost? Yes, but if half the successful pupils got in by 5% or less, then it probably pays off.

My DS is at a Grammar and I actually think that intelligence is not that important once you are in. A lot of the homework is very time consuming; typical pieces of work are creating a comic strip about water molecules, writing and illustrating a guide to castle fortifications and creating power point presentations about different authors. These pieces of work are all really about hard work, tenacity, research skills, independent working skills, time management and diligence.

They have one and half hours of homework a night, and while my son can whizz through the maths due to ability, everything else is really about hard work. I actually think my DD, who is not as obviously intelligent as DS, will cope with the work far better because she is more diligent.

I don't think it matters if a child is at the bottom in some subjects at a grammar school; all schools, no matter how selective, will have a range of abilities. You cannot always be the best at everything.