Just how much coaching/tutoring is required to get an bright(ish) but not that willing boy through the 11+

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And is it worth it?

DS1 (yr5) wants to go to the local catchment school with his friends.

The school works hard with the raw materials it has, but we are in an area of high SN and High FSM and most "interested" parents don't send their children there. (I suspect the parents of most of the friends he wants to stay with will do their best not to send their DC there) As a result they get only c. 25% with 5 good GCSEs and that is largely by offering NVQ qualifications that count as several GCSEs for the purposes of the stats.

We're not in a grammar school area, but do have the opportunity to take the 11+ and apply for grammar schools in a neighbouring area. The required pass mark is higher than that required if you live withing the Education Authority area though and I know no-one who has achieved this without a lot of coaching.

DS1 is a strong reader with a reading age well ahead of his chronological age, but generally does "OK" at school. His teacher assessments (apart from reading) are all at or just slightly ahead of where he's "supposed" to be. So, what would you do and if I go down the tutoring route just how painful should I expect it to be?

I reckon you need a very specialist tutor who really knows what they are doing for this particular school. They have to have had pupils get in before. I would guess you need them once a week for an hour for at least a year. Then there will be the homework. You might have to give a bit of bribery (to DS1)such as the promise of an IPad if he tries his best during the tutoring time (not for getting a place at the school) but a good tutor should make it reasonably interesting.

Enquire about a tutor from those who have DCs who have already taken the exam. Current ones will not be at all keen to pass on the tutor's name!

Having just very gently coached a bright and willing boy for 11+ all I can say is it is not for the faint hearted.

Get a tutor.

Depends. What area? Pass rates vary hugely, even within our county.

Too late at this stage of year 5.

I think the biggest problem children have is they dont know how to answer test questions.

As part of a research project I have been doing some test papers aimed at level 3,4,5 etc and I find some of the questions very misleading, so what chance do children have? Many of the types of questions used are worded in such a way that they have never learnt the methods in school.

I have been doing maths online programmes with my children and can see how this doesnt help with understanding detailed worded questions. Children need lots of exposure to lots of the sorts of questions that are asked in tests.

Now I know a good teacher should expose children to the sorts of exam type questions, but quite often there isnt enough time.

I have also been looking through my DDs workbooks, and she is mainly filling in worksheets because she doesnt get the teachers attention, but she isnt interpreting the questions correctly because she doesnt realise what she is supposed to do. The reading capability isnt an issue but she doesnt really understand what is expected from the questions.

A lot of tests seem to give a scenario and then you answer ABCDorE but I imagine in 11+ exams they will have lengthy worded questions that you need to dig deep into to work out the answers

In your situation, you're too late unfortunately. He would need to be significantly ahead of where he should be. Sorry

Out of curiousity - how hard are 11+ exams? Are they so different to what children learn at school
(apart from my comments about not being able to interprete the questions properly)

If as you say your ds wants to go to the local catchment school, how motivated is he to do this extra work. If he isn't keen then it would just be a waste of money, you would need to get him to agree to even make it worth thinking about

It depends on the test taken roadart.
My son passed the Kent test / 11+ this year.
It was NVR, VR and Maths. The maths is work covered in yr6 and 7 and the test taken beginning of yr 6, so they need to working significantly ahead of their peers. He was level 5's end of yr 4, on the G&T register and passed with really good marks.
we still don't have a grammar place but that's another story all together

Our local grammar says a child needs to be expected to score high level 5's in the SAT's and that tutoring is neither necessary nor desirable.

a bit late, I would say as yr5 almost over. If your grammars are like the ones round here they do their tests quite early on in yr6 (sept) so not a lot of time left for preparation.

If he was very bright and excelling in everything, I might say knuckle down now and keep up the pace over the summer holidays so that he is familiar with the question styles.

But it sounds as though he would be trying to cover an awful lot of ground in a very short amount of time. Very stressful for you and more importantly very stressful for him.

The competition for these schools is often between children who are usually in the top 2 or 3 of the class ime.

RoadArt, can I ask what onlin emaths coaching you are doing? I'm trying to encourage dc with maths and am struggling.

I would disagree. Yr 5 is not too late.

Just work a little and often through the holidays with him on things like exam technique with practice papers (buy them at Waterstones) and push him ahead on the more advanced maths skills (buy a Yr 6 maths book). Try and get him working academically a year ahead of his actual age and he will be fine.

You could find a tutor and go for an assessment and ask for honest feedback about how likely it would be for him to pass the 11+. Good tutors won't take on children who they don't think have a good chance of a) passing the 11+ and b) having the overall aptitude to succeed at grammar school.

The hardest thing will be convincing your ds that he wants to take the 11+ and go to a different school.

It is not late at all if the child is bright enough. Look at Doherty books, they explain very well the techniques for VR and NVR, there are some great techniques and ways to approach the questions and with some training even my 9 years old can now answer most of the questions. Go on 11+ forum and you'll find a lot of free material to download, I found the lists of words that he needs to know for the 11+ to be very helpful, also the assesment sheets and sample exam questions. You can also ask for a tutor recommendation there. Good luck!

I think it isn't too late - often what they need is more just an awareness of what to expect and a familiarity with the exam format rather than anything else- this was certainly true with my DS. I would aim to get the best tutor you can - try for one with 11+ experience and a good educational background - and good references are a must - we had a wonderful girl from Cambridge university who just understood him and was gentle and coaxing but also really put him through his paces.
I think it's very luck of the draw depending on who you get so don't be afraid to try out several and cancel all but the best after the first session - also I know it seems pushy but there's nothing wrong with sitting in on the first session so you can judge quality for yourself- DS wasn't very articulate about rating the quality of the various tutors we tried!

Oh, and dont listen to people that say that a child that needs tutoring to pass an exam are not a grammar school material. Most kids get some kind of tutoring. YOu dont have much time left, so start right now, at least an hour a day.

Perhaps might be worth having a chat to the parents of these other children - if you could flush out what they are planning, perhas his happy vision of just drifting over to that other school with all his chums would dissipate, if that is indeed what will happen.
None of these things are life and death, but it would be a shame for him to suddenly find that all his chums are actually heading else where and that he hasn't even had the chance to try another route.
We had a bit of this in our class, with everyone being so careful not to cause a cascade of boys leaving at 8+ than the boys who were alwasy intended to thought no one was doing it and that they were going to be taken away from a merry gang which actually wasn't going to exist past this summer.
But I do think you need to crack on.
An assessment by an outside source I think is an excellent plan - I found this v helpful when deciding whether to do 8+ - one doesn't want to be pushing a child towards a fence he simply can't jump.
Having made your decision, if you do want to go, view getting him incentivised as one of your tasks to achieve, rather than a deciding point. At yr 5 they are too young to make these decisions (having said which, complete lack of co-operation will leave you stuck!)

FedUp what makes you say that most kids get some kind of tutoring? I tend to think lots do, but most? Our school says most don't.

Just seen an hour a day. AN HOUR A DAY? Wow.

Tutoring seems to be more commonplace in certain areas. My DD sat the 11+ and passed with only doing practise papers once a week from sept of yr6 and in the last couple of weeks before the exam we did 20m 3 x week.
I wouldn't even have entertained the idea had she not got 5A'S and B's in her SAT's and if she herself had not wanted to sit it. As it is she is the only girl going from her school but she still wants to go, so if your son isn't keen you need to work on that first and also speak to his teacher, as whilst with heavy tutoring he could well gain a place, he may struggle with the workload once there.

My DS did the test last year - his tests were in November.
Our primary school provided a revision book for the summer holidays and we did about 30 mins every day of our holidays (we have 9 weeks holidays here in NI).
If your primary school are no help, you can easily buy books in Waterstones/WH Smith or online. We got a Bond book about comprehension as this is the area where we were both struggling.

The books give advice on techniques for reading the questions and what kind of answer is required etc.

Then we did practice tests together every Sunday morning from start of September term - sometimes just doing the test together going the the questions and talking about how to approach them; sometimes DS did them on his own with the same time limit as actual tests.

Our primary school also provided 2 tests per week for anyone who wanted to do the tests - and sent the papers home so you could see if there was any progress, or where the problems were.

We also did lots of sport and as little pressure as possible. We had already done some school tours, so DS knew that if he wanted to try for a particular school he had no choice but to do the test - so we was fairly motivated himself anyway.

You need to go to the 11 plus exams website for advice from the forum. It very much depends on which grammar school you are applying for, what area of the country you are in, when the test is for the school, which type of test it will be and what the pass mark is. These vary widely from school to school.

It is simply untrue that for every grammar school in the country you must be at level 5 and you must have had lots of tuition. If the test is GL assessment VR and a maths test, then your DS needs to have:

1. A wide vocabulary. He probably already has this, from what you have said about him reading widely.
2. An understanding of the question types. If he is familiar with the VR question types this will double his speed in the test, and you have to answer fast. If he has a good vocabulary you can easily get him up to speed between now and September, or December, or whenever the test is.
3. A good understanding of maths. He will not have covered the whole of the KS2 curriculum yet, so you will have to cover the curriculum at home in year 5. Often the reason some children are at a 5 in year 5 while other children are still a 4 is because some children have been taught the curriculum at home. According to DS's school, he made 18 months progress in maths within half a term in year 5. That was simply because I taught him the curriculum at home in that half term.

You have enough time and it is worth giving it a go. Even if he doesn't get in, it is a good preparation for secondary school.

milly, how did you manage to teach him the curriculum at home?

Milly which parts of the country are hardest for entry and where do you think you can get a place with less than high level 5?

We just used books and the BOFA website, and my son only started doing this properly the summer before the exam in the September. I would say it is learning the style of the questions more than the questions actually being really difficult. I've just checked my Amazon order history and I got the books in July last year, so it was definitely just 3 months practice and no tutoring. I got the Stephen C Curran books and these were better than any of the other books I looked at because they really explain the patterns and logic behind the questions. My son's primary school only gave him one set of practice papers to do so we didn't get much support there. He passed reasonably, not a super high score but not a scrape through either. My son is not working at level 5 (he is Year 6) in Literacy but he can spell very well, at Maths he recently achieved a 5a grade in his practice SATs. With the Eleven Plus he had no problems when practicing the Verbal Reasoning papers but struggled with the Non-Verbal reasoning. You would think that it should be the other way round when you look at his levels. What I am trying to say is that I think the Eleven plus is a very different kettle of fish to the stuff they learn in school. Just practice, practice and practice(!!) the methods, and under exam conditions as well. My son would daydream and not understand he had to get it done in a certain time. He would also take ages trying to solve something rather than move on and come back to anything he was struggling on. If I hadn't made it clear to him how he must skip the difficult bits then I think he would have failed. I also made it very clear to him that he must go back at the end and try and answer everything even if it is just a guess. Children of this age are not used to exams and I think we forget that, or at least I did.