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?

ABetaDad is right - the 11plus is an arms race. I live in Kent - plenty of grammar schools - but this is the world of the "Super Selectives" so we get a league table of schools and lots of competition for places at the most academic and a thriving tutoring market.

I don't think I have any more to add to what's already been said but I wish we didn't have the grammars here in Kent.

(Someone told me recently there are 36 secondaries - or about this figure - in Kent with unsatisfactory ratings from Ofsted....and there are the same number of grammars in the county)...

MilliR I like the sound of your Dc's school.

Having said that could I ask what is the expected average homework for a state secondary school?

It's so hard because if you don't tutor and everyone else does you'd never forgive yourself if your child didn't pass.

This is quite an emotive topic for me at the moment as my DD is in year 6, and has sat two entrance exams already, with another one in January.

She is at a private prep school and sits past papers from the four schools we are interested in daily, and yes she has a tutor, once a week, to help with concepts - particularly maths, with which she struggles.

Maybe some will consider me a pushy parent, maybe others think it is unfair that we can afford to pay for a tutor and a good education.

Frankly we do what we consider is best for our DD.

Our local comps are appalling with GCSE pass rates of less than 50% and our nearest secondary has a serious drug issue.

For us sending our daughter to a prep school and tutor is about giving her the opportunity to be taught, not just an academic education,how to be responsible,considerate and dilligent in life.

My husband and I have worked 12 hour days, sometimes 7 days a week, to pay for our daughters education so far but I wouldn't change a thing. At 10 she is a mature, articulate,engaging young lady of whom we are incredibly proud - something I consider every parent would aspire for their child to be.

well, dd had a tutor for 6 sessions, and passed. we did it because every other child (so it seems) had a tutor. dd is top set for everything, and v clever and i didn't want her losing a place to a hothoused but less able child. I loathe the system tho - we chose the best of two undesirable options (grammar v sec modern). I would prefer streamed comprehensives.

I didn't miss the point... the point is, the state system is so messed up that now it is nothing like a level playing field. You can't ban tutoring (by parents or professionals), so if we want the remaining grammar schools to be the powerful means of social mobility they used to be then the state sector needs to adapt to try to re-level the playing field. I don't mean sausage-machine stuffing, but enough that bright kids will have a decent shot at it.

There is one exam board/paper that cannot be prepared for, I seem to remember Birmingham uses it or the whole West Midlands.
Maybe that could be introduced nationwide, I mean lets face it nobody wants their child to struggle or be bottom of the class, i'd rather know if they weren't up to it and concentrate on their other talents.

6 sessions is not much, she obviously is grammar school material, in my op I was really thinking of children who start being tutored in year 4...

All this malarkey makes me feel very, very lucky to live in an area where they ditched grammars decades ago.
I find the whole situation bloody shocking, tbh.

Agree with george jackson.

The whole tutoring is cheating concept fucks me off.

It's not cheating. We live in a county that has grammar schools, not many but we do have them. The competition for each place is high, this year predicted to have over 15 applicants for each place.

Our town has awful secondary schools, the two we are in catchment for have results of less than 30% achieving 5 or more GCSES. There is absolutely no way that I would choose for my dd to go to either of those schools, it's not just about results, both schools have a history of fairly serious incidents involving bullying etc, more than the average.
Grammar is really the only option as the two grammar schools nearestr us are the only two that we are in catchment for other than the two failing secondarys.

DD is in the top sets at her primary. They do not teach towards the 11+, it is not part of the national curriculum therefore it is not taught.
The maths needed is yr 8 level, there is no way she would be able to do the paper unless she was taught the concepts first, I cannot teach her. I can do it, I just can't teach.
She has an hour once a fortnight and that is plenty.

DSD on the other hand is at school in Kent, her school tutors the children towards the 11 plus, the more they get into grammar school the better the primary is perceived to be.
It pisses me right off, there is no thought to who would benefit from a grammar eduaction, they are literally herded like sheep through the process. The schools prepare appeals before the results are out, the system is a joke there.

I would never push either of my children to do the 11 plus if I didn't think they were capable, as it happens, I don't think dsd is capable and neither does dp.

Seems so alien to me, I think I only knew one kid at my GS who was tutored, and they were tutored all through GS too. Things have apparently changed a lot, I'm only 25!!

itsmeolord you are so right re the Kent situation - but your DSD's primary is not doing the same as all the other primaries here; some do 11plus prep, some don't. Kent is the largest education authority in the country, and the most divisive.

We are in Kent; my children are at a state primary that is not allowed to coach for the test, but 99% of the parents do pay for tutoring because the children are competing against the prep school children who are also being tutored, and they feel that they need to ensure that the playing field is as level as possible.

I did feel that this was a bit unfair, but my faith has been somewhat restored in the system this year as one friend whose DD has been privately educated and then tutored for two years failed to get in, whereas my next door neighbour, whose children are at my DCs school and who had "only done 3 practice papers in the run up" got in and passed with one of the highest marks in the county.

It's very hard to ignore what everyone else is doing with regards to tutoring - if I am advised by the school that my children should take the 11+, it would be very difficult not to give them the best shot at it - and if that means tutoring, then I suspect we'll do that. As someone else said, with competition SO fierce, parents will do whatever they can for their OWN children.

Is there a lot of competition in Kent then? I thought that it wasn't so very competitive as there are so many grammar schools. (this is from the school dsd attends by the way, am genuinely asking the question.)

Itsmeolord - I don't think it was the ops intention to imply that "tutoring is cheating". It certainly wasn't mine.

I think his or her point is that surely paying for private tutoring to get your child into grammar school makes a mockery of what grammar schools are actually supposed to be? Ie. a challenging educational environment for the very brightest children no matter how poor or disinterested their parents are. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it right (although perfectly understandable if you do, if you can afford it).

I don't see why entrance has to be by exam. Why can't it be by primary school recommendation?

Anyway, as I said earlier, I am very pleased that we don't have to go through this stressful process where I live.

Probably a little bit of preparation doesn't go amiss, but hothousing your children to turn them into grammar school material seems a bit excessive.

Having said that, I started at grammar school sixteen years ago (no coaching at all) and it made a huge difference to my education. I have sixteen cousins and two siblings, none of whom went to grammar school, and I am the only one to have gone to university. Not that that makes me happier or a better person or anything like that, but it did give me a much bigger range of options for my future. My husband is a school teacher at a good comp - lots of kids go to uni from there, though lots don't - and was a teacher at a grammar school when he started. The problem is that the grammar school students are much less self-conscious about being good at things, and have much more time to prepare for university and so on, meaning that while they're definitely not more clever than their comprehensive-school peers, they do get certain advantages over them. It's unfair in many ways, but if I had the choice to send my child to a grammar school, I absolutely would. At least in my area.

It depends where in Kent you live: in West Kent there are plenty of grammars but some are much harder to get into than others. The ones which require the highest scores on the 11plus command much more status, have small intakes and there is a lot of competition for places. The remaining grammars I think are easier to get into. The church comprehensives do as well as these schools however - in fact the local Catholic school got better A level results than some of the local grammars. But of course there lies another form of selection - by faith / church attendance.

Ds got in with no tutoring and with a very lazy approach to doing a couple of practise papers before hand to give him some idea about it all...I wouldn't have tutored him even if I'd known about tutoring and could've afforded it, as I think they need to be able to cope with the work once they're there and it is very hard work with loads of homework as we've discovered.

All the kids I care for have been crammed and tutored since before they started school. They all might have got in but they are so used to adults hovering 'helping ' them learn to don't do ANYTHING by themselves. They will be heavily tutored for many years to come. If they are unhappy now what on earth will they be like at 18. I don't think it's unreasonable. I think it's turned into an arms race and it's ridiculous. The children will pay the highest price. They usually do.

The phrase 'arms race' is not ABetaDads btw, not unless he wrote the article in the Sunday Times on tutoring a month or so ago .

Nonetheless, it is an accurate phrase: no one wants to be the first to lay down their weapons. It is the tutors that I am disgusted at. They are the ones that are preying on unwitting parents. It seems to me that they hook parents in by offering to do a free assessment of the child to see whether or not they are 'grammar school material' and what areas they could benefit from help with.

I wonder if they ever turn anyone away?

And my experience of the Kent schools is nothing like being pushed toward grammar education, but having said that, my Ds went to a Catholic primary and they will not encourage or approve of 'their' children going into anything other than a Catholic secondary school, so he had no help at all. I don't know if none religious primary schools are any different though.

Yes, Trefusis, I'm sure there would be problems. But the current system absolutely sucks imo.

dd is not heavily tutored or hothoused, she has 1 hour once a fortnight and does practise papers/questions in between. Perhaps ten mins every other night..

Grammar school entry is not like it was a 10 years or more ago. It is so different to the old system. Particularly with the recession, it has become a poor mans private ed if you like for a lot of parents.

The sheer amount of competition for places and lack of decent state comps in my area in particular has fed the need for tutoring in my opinion.