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?

WRT to the girls grammar near us, you never seem to hear that the girls enjoy it once they get there, only that the parents were thrilled they got in. Not surprised your son took that decision.

No way, couldnt afford private!! nO he would just have to go but I think we would continue to try and 'tutor' him to some degree so that he was always a little 'ahead of his game'academically, so to speak. I think when it came to GCSE time them we would maybe have our tutor again to help him with anything he was struggling with or could do with improving on.

I just want him to be happy, and enjoy his school years without huge pressure. I have no idea whether either of mine will go to university, college or whatever- but I worry about the pressure put upon them in some schools to achieve at all cost.
At least at the comp he will have local friends, rather than boys bussed in from a 40mile radius.

Well good luck carmen- March is a long way off!!!!!

Thanks! I know i cant beleive we have to wait until March!

I really want ds to be happy too, but i figure that he will make friends easily( he is very outgoing) and at least a grammar school he will be mixing with ,like minded children and parents compared to a lot that couldnt give a shit at the comp.

I went to grammar school and like others on the thread did a few practice papers at school and then sat the tests. Crucially, this seemed to be the same for everybody. I now live in the same area and have just come through the madness that is the current 11+ with ds.

In our grammar school area, there are loads of private prep schools but hardly any private secondaries (in fact, I believe there's only 1 or 2 private boys' secondaries in the entire county). The prep schools are totally geared up for the 11+ and have very high pass rates, quite often at either full score or very close to it. The state primaries do a familiarisation pack and then 3 mock papers. From what I've seen, if you are poor but bright, you have little chance of passing. Your only chance is to be poor but super-bright and even then, you're going to struggle against those kids who have been tutored to within an inch of their lives. We only do VR papers and a great deal of the questions come down purely to technique - if you practice enough, you should be getting these questions 100% right.

It's all wrong.

I would tutor my child not to get into our local Grammar School as the state of the kids that come out of there are awful and they have no manners, no common sense and are just horrid. I have yet to meet anyone who went to it that are clever and nice.

All the nice kids locally go to the local secondary school which has double the amount of people trying to get into it as they are known for looking out for the kids and making them all round good kids.

What, all of them? Where on earth do you live?

I agree its the lack of decent school places available that forces parents into a corner where they feel they have to give their child the best chance of competing for scarce places by tutoring them.

Both my children have had tutoring but neither for common entrance exams. DS1 had a horrible year with a bullying teacher who just screamed at the children all day (yes we and loads of other parents, did complain but to no avail). He regressed, lost his confidence and lost all enthusiasm for school. The 121 tutoring was excellent and he was soon blooming and confident again and has continued with it as he really enjoys those 45 minutes 121 attention each week.

DD has suspected mild dyslexia and I have employed a tutor to give her extra 121 support with letter recognition. She is much younger than most of her classmates and again, this is partly to increase her confidence. She loves her tutoring and her SEN tutor is dfantastic at pinpointing the areas where DD has been struggling and helping her in a way that is patient and fun.

I so strongly feel that we shouldn't have to pay for tutoring (which we can only affiord by making big sacrifices elsewhere), but it is a symptom I feel of having too-large class sizes the constant pressure of sats/inspections/compliance etc etc

We are emigrating, largely due to our dissatisfaction with UK schools and are moving to a rural area where the entire school has only 60 pupils

Excuse the rant but it does seem to me as though education in the UK has become polarised between "failing" schools which don't teach basic grammar and "pushy parent" schools, where parents who can afford it are shelling out for extra tutoring because they are so anxious about the scarcity of decent schools and want to enhance their children's chances of winning one of the few prized places

We did not move to birmingham although DH had ajob there and everone we know were raving about the GS.Infact the employer said that as one of important reason to move there. One of the reasons we did not move is that I did not want any extra pressure on my Dc.You have so much pressure in every aspect of life whe you are an adult so we wanted to spare our DC these pressure so early in their life. DD is very academic and I am sure she would def stood a chance if we have moved there.Instead of preparing for the 11 plus I want her to enjoy her childhood and learn whatever she wants to rather that VR/NVR.At this age you need to nurture the quest for knowledge.Our friends DD is going to have a tutor in year 4/5 inspite of being sent to an academic prep school.I visited them and had the oppurtunity to meet few othe others who live there and their whole life revolves around prep for this exam.Infact there are parents who go to great lengths to avoid telling that their DC are being tutored.SAD but true.IT DOES LOOK LIKE AN ARMS RACE.

DD is in a private school now. We have friends and rellies (w/o kids natch) who are 'anti private school' and go: "Why don't you JUST put her in the grammar school when she's older?" as if that were the easiest thing in the world to do and a beacon of light in terms of equality in the education system here.

Question: does it count as tutoring if parents help children with exam technique/practise papers?

I bet that some children have cash rich time poor parents and get a tutor in because they can't be around to do it and the nanny/au pair isn't up to it but it wouldn't be seen as tutoring if it were the parent who was around to do it?

And for that matter as a governess was I 'tutoring' my ex-charge (with a view to doing the entrance tests for selective UK prep schools) or was that just my job doing what the parents weren't around to?

Reading this thread back (and others) I think the term tutoring is bandied around quite a lot without looking at the different reasons a child may have a tutor.

You sound very sensible notanidea.

Thanks

Frakkinaround, we always come back to the question you have asked. What counts as tutoring? if I help DS with his maths homework is he tutored? If we have access to BBC bitesize Maths on the internet, is that tutoring?

Nobody ever seems to know what exactly it is that eleven plus tutors do that a parent cannot do at home. Having had some 11 plus papers in the house when DS was going to sit the exam, I just don't see that there is that much you can really teach them that is exam specific.

No tutor can possibly predict and coach the vocabulary that will come up in the VR test. It could one word in five thousand.

I think someone who uses an eleven plus tutor needs to explain what it is their child is getting from the tuition.

I think some children in my ds's tutor group had parents who paid for a tutor cos they couldnt be bothered/were way too busy with careers to do much themselves. They would send them to every available class- extra maths, extra VR, extra NVR whereas we thought about it long and hard and sent our ds to the basic class and towards the end to some extra maths as that was a weakness.

basically those kids were intensively tutored by the teacher and had little input from the parents whereas we tried to do as much as we could ourselves once we realsised we were on the right track

I was tutored for the 11+ (and passed with a high mark) - had I not been I would not have had a clue what to do VR and NVR test. I had never seen one until I went to my tutor!

I think YABU to expect a child to pass these exams without tutoring in it's current format. YANBU to think that children should get into grammar skill based on academic ability without tutoring though, they just need to change the way they examine the students though IMO.

I also live in an area with a few grammar schools and the competition is ridiculous, you don't just have to pass, you have to pass and be in the top 5% with the highest mark. Why wouldn't a parent give/buy extra help if it would enable them to get a better standard of education? IMO anyone who could pass the exam would get on just fine at grammar school, these tests are selecting the very top performing students though and in most cases that will require some coaching.

Well I could tell you all exactly what I go through with children when I tutor them but honestly (really, truly honestly) it is nothing different to what I would do with my charges or my own as-yet-unborn children. Will I be tutoring my child from birth then?

It's 99% jumping through hoops and it's just a different set of hoops for 11+, for SATs, for GCSEs and for AS/A-levels or the IB. A tutor is a person who knows those hoops but any person (parent or otherwise) can work out what they are with a bit of research and experience.

I would just say to move to an area with no grammar schools and just comps.

You can then relax, enjoy your children's childhood and they will probably end up where they should be anyway.

I grew up in a non selective area and it was relaxing at primary level. Obivously it picked up at secondary level. And, loads of us went on to Oxbridge from our local comp.

(having done far less work at primary level than our prep school and grammar school contempories.

Dustydolphin.

I agree that the media polarises schools but what we experience round here is lots of excellent primary and secondary schools.

Schools that have SEN pupils, Oxbridge types and others.

Why not just move to a different bit of the UK where we don't have these pressures rather than going abroad.

The problem is that there aren't enough grammar schools. More of them would take some of this pressure off.

I agree, Builde. I am so relieved that we moved away from an 11+ area. They do equally well at the comp, and many go to Oxbridge. I was totally disillusioned, when we lived in the 11+ area, that it was possible for parents to drill their DC to pass when really they didn't have the ability. Unfortunately the poor DC struggled once they got there.

I'm sitting here feeling very low tonight questioning why I have put my DD through this over the last few months. She will be sitting the entrance exam for our local high-performing GS this Saturday and we have spent the last 2 hours with her in floods of tears because she's so scared! BTW this didn't come out until tonight - upto now she seemed ok with it.

I didn't get a tutor but I do some teaching myself and my brother is a teacher so we have helped her through a few practice papers. We certainly haven't worked on the papers to the extent described by some parents on this thread. She is obviously very bright as she has always achieved well in school and teachers have recommended that she sit the entrance exam. However, I'm not sure I wanted her to go through this amount of pressure at such a young age, and I have to admit I'm feeling quite guilty sitting here tonight, listening to her crying.

I know she'll do just as well at the local (good) comp if she doesn't pass the GS exam and I've stressed to her that DH & I won't think any less of her whatever the outcome. But she feels under pressure because some of her classmates are also taking the test and she doesn't want to admit to them if she fails.

Ah well - it's a lesson in life I suppose. Not sure it's one I wanted for her though.

I don't think I'll go through this with DD2 however bright she may be in the future!

I think that this is the whole problem,releasethehounds,whatever you tell her she will feel a failure if she doesn't get through. The worst is that it is only the start-think of the pressure later on when exams really matter. I would just stress to her that she can only do her best and it isn't the end of the world if she doesn't get through-just as many successful people go to comps and there is no need for it to hold her back. I should stress that Saturday is no more than an opportunity to show what she can do.

My SIL wouldn't let my dn take the 11+. My db says it is one of his biggest regrets. Dn left school and has gone to do a vocational course at college. She was very bright in primary school so would most likely have passed and possibly gone on to university. Instead she went to a very poor school and has achieved the bare minimum academically.

I think the choice of 11+ or not depends on what the alternatives are. Ds will do the 11+ if he is bright enough as there is no way I'm sending him to our local comp - it was rubbish when I was school age and hasn't improved in the intervening years.