The Trinity-Whitgift-South London school 10+/11+ thread of 2014

[Ladymuck]

A few days early I know, but most of the entrance exams will be out of the way in a fortnight or so, and I'm sure there are a number of us who are in need of or or as we watch our (still very little) boys forget everything that they may have learned over the last couple of years. And there are many veterans of the process who will hopefully be around to reassure us that we will all come through this unscathed.

I don't think either HM would be including the other foundation schools in their figures. In terms of bursaries, I think they do give the specific amount in their offer letter (rather than working it out later), and again will have a limited, though substantial pot, so not surprised that they're doing the groundwork now. I suspect that they may get more bursary applicants than a lot of other similar schools.

Yes, Y4 is the bulge year where they had more exceptional candidates than normal [snort]

Lots of the boys will be sitting for more than one school but the figures given by MrB will be the number sitting the T exams.

There was a post up thread about how T showed a movie. Can anyone shed light on how the W or DC day pans out? Anything nice to tell DS about to enthuse him ?

W seems a long day! DC only half a day.

Thanks

Justanotherusername Can't see how the DC day can be anything other than compressed exams with brief breaks - three three-hour papers (two of which are 2 hours 15 mins for my DS because of the extra time factor) in 4 hours and 20 minutes. All over between 9am and 1.20.

Have been wondering what to give him for breakfast... at his school they normally get their lunch at the time he starts his English exam so he's going to be jolly hungry... Might have to give him a couple of sausages and a bit of cheese to nibble on the train in the hope that some protein keeps him going a bit longer

*THREE ONE-HOUR PAPERS! ONE-HOUR PAPERS! good grief, what was I thinking!! And it's wrong in the brackets as well.

I was thinking a three hour paper was a bit harsh for a 10 year old, let alone three of them :o

Yes - lunch seems strange. They offer lunch at 1.20 just before pick-up. I think need to pack some sandwiches (just in case) but assume there will be plenty of snacks.

Do Whitgift show a movie or something (like T) to make it all a little more relaxed? Later start (9.30), later finish (3.3) - than DC - so one extra hour in total, but then they have one extra paper (creative writing). So still fairly compressed..

I was also about to give pity to the extra timers, as an extra 15 minutes is one thing but having to look at some of those papers for an extra hour would simply be depressing.

I know Caterham includes an activity (which you choose in advance), as did a number of the girls schools, but I think it is just "playtime" at W (as well as a lunch which is usually described as the high point of the day).

ladymuck/soupdragon I'd quite like an extra hour or so on the creative writing papers, though. Give full rein to our boys' collective imaginations to see how many more deaths/ shootings / alternative universes / time travel scenarios they can come up with. DS's storylines most often fall down because they are too plot-driven rather than atmospherically episodic (IYSWIM) and he simply can't resolve the various cmoplications within them in time. The storyline where the Taliban invaded Barry Island in the middle of the night springs to mind.

Hi All,

DS has just survived his first term at W (In fact, he's loved every moment of it - so much so that his first report should have been much better!!)

I can assure you that the schools go out of their way to ensure exams day is not stressful. DS sat W and Caterham and he came out bouncing and smiling after both. The schools are still "selling" at that stage and want to win over the boys. In our case the legendary W ribs for lunch probably tipped the scales. He later told me what really impressed him though was the way they treated the boys: apparently one started crying in the first paper - a teacher sat with him, encouraged him and he managed to finish it. That boy is now in DSs class.

An extra hour to do a piece of creative writing simply allows more characters to die in horrible, gory circumstances :)

I think DSs both did stuff like football in the sports hall at W.

For the Wilsons exam we were not expecting a 60 minute writing exercise, but were assuming 30 min comp/30 min essay. Ds comfortably finished his written effort within 30 minutes, and then wondered whether he would be allowed to get out his reading book and carry on reading whilst waiting for everyone else to finish. Thankfully he resisted the temptation.... [And yes, his Wilsosn writing piece did kill off the main characters].

Wish my DS would give someone a nasty death in his stories- may make them more exciting! Only applied to W two weeks before deadline but candidate number within first 100 so maybe not issued in order of receipt?

Ah... I suspect this may be partly why DS didn't make the cut for Wilsons. Even now, 3 months further on, it's impossible to get him to write to an appropriate length - he persistently writes about half what's needed, and it's the biggest single cause of tension when looking at his practice papers, that he simply hasn't written enough (bearing in mind that what he does write is not of superlative quality, although usually it would be good enough for a moderate pass if he wrote enough). Pointless asking him now if he continued to write for the full hour, he can't remember what happened yesterday, far less back in september.

Certainly ds said that almost everyone had finished writing by 45 minutes.

His attempt at the Alleyn's paper produced one paragraph. A long paragraph, granted, but still only the first of what should have been 3 paragraphs...Wonder if he's get any credit for his plan?!

This is all a relief. DS has same problem. I think I posted upthread that he refuses to write the Whitgift one hour story as its too long. I suggested he writes two stories and join them together somehone (a timemachine, surely?) but that didn't work. Now I am trying an approach of: well just sit there then and hope he will be so bored doing nothing he will write instead.....

Glad we are not alone in this one.....

Can I join please? DS is sitting DC, Whitgift, Alleyns and Emanuel. Trinity too far for us and I didn't dare even go to the Open Morning in case it was too fabulous to resist.

Whitgift number is in first 50, I think I applied end of October. Does everyone else have a letter as part of the candidate number or are we being marked out for some reason . It does seem like an amazingly long day but I guess they know what they're doing.

Looks like Alleyn's goes up to 588 sitting the exam. Yikes. Plus lots of scary girls with excellent creative writing skills.....

I will be taking DC up on their lunch offer, DS loved the lunch on the Discovery day.

Is anyone getting them to do work this weekend? Not sure if it will just stress DS out or help him feel more confident. Or perhaps I will just shout "Read the Question!" and "Show your workings!" over and over until I get hoarse.

We did Dulwich A maths paper today. Pretty good result overall - doing stuff that I didn't expect her to do but continuing making ridiculous errors like "18-4=16" and reading wrong numbers off a graph.

Does anyone know how DC maths papers compare to Alleyn's?

We will keep going with one paper a day alternating between subjects until last exam on the 16th just to feel we are doing something.

Still haven't touched NVR.

Ladydepp, not all girls are have excellent creative writing skills. My DD goes off on such a tangent with stories that I am praying for a descriptive title with no plot. BTW, after lots of nagging on making her sentences more varied - she went from one extreme to another. It used to be "She said", "he did", "then", but not one sentence is a bloody paragraph.

I just hope her maths and VR will carry her over to interview stage.

Doing KGS tomorrow, about which DD was surprised to hear today - she forgot about it!

Anyone with experience of KGS exams? They seem to be one of the exceptions among day schools by having a separate scholarship paper so I assume the normal exam is on the easier end of the spectrum.

Ds's first exam isn't until Friday, but we're done with papers as such, and will now just do some exercises, so no focussing on scores as such. Same story: maths and VR are fine, English could be fine or pants. Ds has asked if he can practice some story planning (which I suspect means he doesn't want to do any more writing!). I think I now need to think about parking/transport for the different days, as well as stocking up for breakfasts/snacks etc.

Good luck for those whose dcs are sitting this weekend. And see you at the interview strife stage!

Hi ladydepp, my DS sitting W and also have a letter as part of the candidate number. I wondered what that was too! The day does seem long . My DS is more worried about the breaks and the lunch than the actual tests as he won't know anyone else there. He is worried he won't have anyone to talk to. There is more worrying about the exam.........

Out of interest for those of you with dcs at state schools, how much times creative writing would your child be doing in yrs 5 and 6? And would they be doing time short and long pieces?

*timed

I think my answer won't surprise you as I think I've said this before, but they don't do any at DS's school, either at school or as homework. They do stuff like biographies, but that tends to be researched on Wiki so they do struggle to get Wiki out of their head and rewrite for themselves. They don't have to do more than half a page, and it's not timed.

I think I'm going to find other people's answers depressing, as I fear it will become evident just how much of a disadvantage DS is at. Only recently have I become aware just how well he's doing, given that he's had to learn all this stuff just from tutoring, and a lot of the time with the tutor has been taken up with comprehension instead.

I'm not sure how much timed writing DSs did but I'm going to estimate it as very close to none! At least until they got to SATS practice which was after all the exams.

They did creative writing (stories, poems, news reports etc) but none was timed.