Free tutoring for the 11+ - or how to make the 11+ more meritocratic

[tryingreallytrying]

Thinking aloud...

I successfully tutored my own dc for the 11+ and have been approached many times to tutor other people's children (I'm a teacher, but not at this level, but frankly didn't find it difficult to get on top of requirements for the 11+).

I've always said no to doing any paid tutoring (though I've tutored a friend's child for free) - I know I could make lots of money doing this but strongly believe that grammar schools should not only be open to the children of those who can pay - much like it used to be when I went to grammar school myself.

I'd like to return to that situation - where 11+ exams are NOT tutored for. But in the absence of that, I'd like to ensure that 11+ exams are open to everyone, rich or poor, and that the poor are as well prepared for the exams as the rich.

I'm happy to offer my expertise - but can't afford to spend my time tutoring everyone who might want it for free, personally.

So how to achieve that goal? I've thought of creating materials, websites... Anyone else like to join with me in this? Got any other ideas?

Retro I have absolutely no chip about the middle classes, none whatsoever. That would be ironic, being very definitely middle class myself. I'm not sure what your question is if I haven't answered it by saying the purpose of an interview would be to add to the general mix of test results and other data with a one to two or three interview to assess how quickly or with what complexity a child's mind might work. What more do you want? There's as much substance as there is ideology (or idealism perhaps), other than working out the time factor for the already overstretched grammar school staff. If you want me to say I'd be unlikely to be quizzing on maths or English, then the answer is I might, indirectly, or I might not. The detail of the questions isn't of particular importance. What is important is to test how a child thinks, and there are a large number of ways to asses that, so each grammar to its own.

That was a joke btw.

Reading this, it seems like there are clearly far more children who could handle and would benefit from a grammar school style education than there are grammar school places. Seems daft really.

You're quite right misinglalaland. Anyhow, I'm off to do the washing up. Sadly that isn't a joke.

Interviewing is meant to favour m/c private school kids - an accusation levelled at Oxbridge for years - so I can't really see how it will help. If you ask me getting rid of the entrance exam did state school applicants no favours - although that was done in an attempt to even things up. The entrance exam allowed people to show a passion for a subject & reading around that was not related to A level teaching/preparation.

I actually think interviews are a terrible idea - ds2 does very well in interview situations - he's used to delivering lines & solos to audiences of over a thousand so doesn't get particularly nervous/remains cheery, polite & smiley - albeit a little quieter than usual - under pressure. His younger brother who is much more academic/bookish/obsessed by history at age 9 becomes almost mute under interview type conditions. Interviewing is recognised as a bad way to pick job candidates - it's not going to even up unfairness.

As there are too many bright kids for places some people are going to lose out. Other than opening more grammars there isn't really a way to fix that. The head at ds2's school ditched VR/NVR as entrance tests as he felt they needed tutoring/familiarisation whereas at least everyone is taught maths & English. Because of the way maths is marked it is easier to get into the school if you are a maths genius, rather than middling at maths but great at English. I'm not sure there's much that can be done about it. Ds2 was definitely in the good at English, middling at maths brigade & had to put some work into maths to get in, going through past papers, identifying weak areas etc (which we managed without any problem without a tutor). Now he's he's still middling at maths (would be top set elsewhere but the place is littered with matha level 8's in year 7) but being good at English means he's doing very well in all the other subjects.

Ds2's school has a decent socio economic mix - but we live miles away from the bonkers south-east in an area with considerable social deprivation. It may be more mixed than a couple of oversubscribed comprehensives in 'nice' areas. (Although as the population dropped even they were admitting below PAN numbers - so they're recruiting from a wider area than usual - that will all change with the forthcoming population boom).

I do think ds1's school has the right sort of idea - test maths & English - nothing bizarre, with plenty of free & cheap access materials available. A lot of state primary schools here run 11 plus clubs weekly for those that want to apply.

My DS s tutor is here at the moment. I don't like the implication on this thread that all tutors are crap and a waste of money, only for the rich.
I also don't like the implication that I must be some kind of halfwit as I find it difficult to tutor my own child.

Yes, for sure, there will be some crap tutors out there. Yes, there are people that can't afford it. It is not insanely expensive, and I don't spend my hard earned cash on designer handbags and flash cars. I choose to spend what some people spend down the pub each week on a tutor instead, as my DS is doing the 11+ in six months and I want to give him the best chance he has of doing well. He is in top sets at school, but freezes in tests.

It's one day, one chance. I am not a natural at teaching kids, far from it, it's way outside my comfort zone. Most people preaching self tutoring are good at it. Great, good for you. We aren't all.

I have no criticism of people self tutoring. I hate the assumption though that it's an easy thing to do.

The general consensus here appears to be that it's not straightforward to assess a child's potential at 11. So isn't the obvious answer not to attempt to?

Oh I'm not saying people shouldn't pay for a tutor - just that if you can't then it's not particularly difficult to do it yourself. That was the OP's concern - people who can't afford it. I felt that we couldn't afford tutoring for ds2 as we were really stretched financially when he was in year 5 (we don't have holidays, we don't go to the pub etc - there were no luxuries to cut) but he wasn't disadvantaged by that as it is easy to access past papers - which is the main preparation a child has to do.

We could probably afford to tutor ds3 but I'll do it myself again. Partly because I think there are some advantages to doing it yourself & partly because I'd rather spend the money on other activities. For ds3 it will be a choice, for ds2 it wasn't - either I did it or he didn't get any past paper practice.

saintly the exam is back, at Oxford, for most subjects at least.

Oh well I'd see that as a positive for state school applicants tbh.

Amber the 11+ exam is broader and nearer to testing intelligence?An interview is testing personality.

And re the constant m/c kicking.At the grammar single my single parent friend's son goes to the maj were privately educated.Those that can afford private education and hours of tuition at £30 an hour are not m/c but rich.

Most m/c families I know have an old battered car,don't go on holiday and have very little spare cash.They could never afford private fees.To pay for a tutor they would be going without elsewhere.

Kind of not liking the assumption that any m/c kid at a grammar shouldn't be there,is average,near the boarder line and all fsm applicants are truthfully bright and somehow more deserving.

You will get bright w/c kids and bright m/c kids both of whom will be equally deserving.Seems to be a view that only rich kids and w/c kids should be at grammar as all the m/c kids have sharp elbowed parents who forced their way in.

Seems kind of ironic that some think my very poor w/c dad who got into grammar a year early was entitled to his place but his m/c grandson for some reason won't be should he get one.

venturabay - sorry, not convinced me at all. I think the whole idea of interviews for 10-11 year olds being fair or desirable is nuts. Loads of the brightest dcs at that age are also the least confident verbally. Give them an essay paper if you want to find out what they think and how they express it (but change the questions wildly each time so they can't be prepared for!).

missing - totally agree that the real solution is to increase the number of grammar schools/places - so less of a tutoring bunfight for those places that exist.

taffeta - have you actually tried tutoring or are you just assuming you can't do it? I'm a teacher but in adult ed - no previous experience of teaching either maths or 10-year-olds. And I managed, once I'd figured out what resources I needed to access. Lots of people on here tutoring their own kids with no teaching background at all. Being able to teach people things is not some kind of 'magic' skill that only qualified teachers have - indeed, many (most?) 11+ tutors are not qualified teachers at all, at any level. And no teachers have received training in teaching for the 11+, for the simple reason that no such training exists, anywhere in the country (maybe it should, but it doesn't).

So if you want to pay money to a tutor that you can afford to make your life easier, that's entirely up to you and I don't care one way or the other. But if you're going to continue to propagate the lie that ordinary parents cannot tutor their own kids, then I do care very much. Because it is precisely that attitude that leads parents of bright, less well-off kids (not nec poor ones on FSM, I include all the ordinary families over that threshold who cannot easily afford £30/week or so to spend on tutors) not to enter their dcs for grammar school entrance exams or not to bother to tutor their own kids, because they think they have no hope of doing it 'properly'.

Sorry, that's bollocks. By all means assume you're too crap to tutor. Just don't label all other parents with your 'crap' brush.

Retropear - ignore the needling - grammars are there for all kids, regardless of class, who are of the required standard.

My aim in starting this thread was to look at ways to make that more equitable, so that children from families without the money to pay for tutors or private education could also get places they should get, without those places being unfairly dominated by the children of the rich. I don't see that what social class you come from is remotely relevant - entrance should be class-blind as well as money-blind. And as you point out, class is a fluid concept: if you take a child with working class parents who made good, are they then mc or wc? Irrelevant.

amber I think the general consensus is that it is impossible to make fine distinctions in ability when you are looking at the long tail of a standard normal distribution. Which is, in essence, what is happening in regards to grammar school places in many areas because there are so few places and so many children.

Do we have a general feel for which kids are academic and which are not? Yes. I think parents and teachers have a pretty good feel for it.

Perhaps the answer is more places and then letting parents and children "self select." Sounds daft at first, but I think if the standards were uncompromising and everyone understood that the schools in question were rigorous and weren't going to tailor their standards down but would let unsuitable children fall behind, you'd find a lot of parents taking a cold, hard, objective look at their own children, and deciding sensibly whether it really is in the child's interest.

I agree saintly. These Oxford tests are good. But then you get lots of people complaining that the pre-tests favour private school kids. Basically any test which the testing school or university implements raises a cry of how that test favours private school kids and the corollary seems to be that therefore there's no point introducing the test.

I'm not especially hung up on interviews for the 11+ but I interview in an educational/ academic setting myself and think interviews are an exceptionally valuable tool. So often what's written about an applicant on paper seems light years away from the individual who appears in front of the panel. I strongly disagree that interviews are about personality as opposed to ability and I think if the poster who wrote that had experience of interviewing in a comparable setting she'd see that definition is exceptionally crude.

I'd be interested to know from the dissenters why they think it is that the top independent schools interview, the top unis interview and all the top employers for academic jobs such as the Bar interview. The essence of these interviews is to find academic potential, and teachers are well equipped to make allowances for a reticent child or a nervous child or indeed any other child foible that presents.

Anyhow, interviews aside, it's very good that the whole grammar school system is finally getting into gear to try to sort out the tests so that those without parental advantage don't miss out on a place they deserve. But of course more places, more evenly distributed, would help.

I assume I'm the main alleged middle class basher. I can't tell you how middle class I am, but enormously, almost eye-wateringly so, and as such I possess no chip whatsoever. I'm simply interested, for professional reasons, in making sure that the well off and advantaged don't get an unfair advantage. The Admissions Code could do with allowing more contextualization and subjectivity into the admissions process, so as to help those most deserving bag their place.

I agree Retro.

There is some sort of weird opinion on MN that the middle classes are somehow doing something harmful by doing the best they can for their children's education.

I don't get it at all. Surely it's a good thing when parents support their children's education.

If criticism is deserved anywhere (which I don't think it is) then surely it's the parents that don't bother to support education that should be told they should do things differently?

Trying, I admire your POV, but I think you need to be careful not to assume that home tutoring is something that all parents are capable of. Like you, I believe the vast majority can have a good go at it, but it is very difficult for many people.

Speaking from personal experience, and bearing in mind that I did home tutor, I could not have tutored my child in maths. My maths ability is just not good enough, and my child's maths ability was greater than mine when he was in year three. Honestly.

If he had needed my help with maths to cover things that he hadn't been taught at school yet, I would have seriously struggled. I could have spent hours learning the subject matter myself in order to teach it to him, but it would have been bloody hard! I would have worried the whole time that I was doing it wrong. That would have been enough to put me off doing it, but then if my child's maths ability hadn't been high then we wouldn't have gone for the 11+ in the first place.

Home tutoring did get my child a super selective grammar school place, but only on the waiting list. It wasn't good enough to guarantee him a place at the school, because quite simply, there is no way in this world that me and our unsupportive state school could have given him preparation equal to that of a private school with additional tutoring.

It's pointless to pretend all parents can provide good enough support to give their children a decent chance at a highly competitive exam, especially when they not only need to give enough support that their child gets the pass mark, but they also need to ensure they get a high enough mark that they are in the top 100 out of the 600 that apply.

You have to remember that many children don't get places at grammar schools even when they have passed the exam.

I'd be interested to know from the dissenters why they think it is that the top independent schools interview, the top unis interview and all the top employers for academic jobs such as the Bar interview.

Can't answer why top employers for academic jobs interview because I simply don't know for certain. Top independent schools interview not only to assess academic potential, although I realise that will feature, but also to assess how well a child will fit into the environment they offer, which is often about sport and music ability as well as academic. They want well balanced, self motivated students that will give a good impression of the school and will uphold their values, as well as academic ability. But that's irrelevant, because they are private schools who can do what they want, they aren't choosing between children who are all equally entitled to a state funded, but limited, school place.

And it's largely the same for university's, but as I've already said, the whole process of applying to university is different to the process of applying to a grammar school, so unless you are going to make ten year olds submit UCAS style applications and introduce a process of clearing that will get any child who wants one a grammar school place somewhere, then you can't really compare.

I will ask again.

What is it that you think interviews will do to decrease the disadvantage faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

How will interviews help schools decide which children are more worthy of a place that they are all equally entitled to?

trying it's mildly irritating to say that there's needling. Unnecessarily patronizing in fact. I entirely agree that anyone of any income and any background of the right ability should have equal access to a grammar school place. What is shocking at the moment is the annexation of a disproportionate number of the too few grammar school places by what, as a shorthand, might as well be called the well-heeled sharp-elbowed middle classes and that is for social and educational reasons wholly unconnected to ability. That needs putting right, and the current movements in that direction amongst GS HTs is coming not a moment too soon. I find apportioning blame to parents who haven't the wherewithal to tutor their kids immensely blinkered and rather offensive.

The Bar,Oxbridge and top private schools are absolutely no argument fir interviews as the maj doing them will gave been privately educated which pushes public speaking.It's laughable and an indication of how out of touch you are not to see that.

I have explained why the latest attempts to help the grammar situation is an utter crock.It doesn't help it shuffles places,penalises others and the rich privately educated still get 80% of the places.

Do you choose not to read posts Ventura.

The well heeled sharp elbowed m/c are actually the rich.Most m/c parents I know are struggling to pay their heating bills.

Your obsession with the class system,generalising and putting entire sets of society in boxes is unpleasant.

WooWooOwl - what you say is true though I suspect you must be in a very small minority of those who both have a child bright enough to go to a ss school and at the same time are themselves unable to cope with maths aimed at 10-11 year olds. I think usually genetics means that if a child is bright enough to get in, then their parent is bright enough to be able to cope with maths aimed at children. There is probably a greater number of parents who would struggle with self-tutoring VR/English for the simple reason they are non-native - but then, IMO, much 'tutoring' at 11+ is simply a substitute for reading widely, which can be achieved by any child with access to a library, whatever language s/he speaks at home.

And my aim is not to make the system perfect - though that would be lovely - but to improve it. I think enabling self-tutoring would help many, though not all.

And I don't think it's necessary to give all children "preparation equal to that of a private school with additional tutoring" - I actually think that is wild overkill. An acquintance I spoke to recently said her dd's prep had done NOTHING BUT 11+ EXAM PRACTICE FOR A WHOLE YEAR PRIOR TO THE EXAMS, AND STILL VIRTUALLY ALL PARENTS PAID FOR TUTORS ON TOP!! I think that is madness, not only unnecessary but almost certain to backfire as you will simply beat all the creativity and enthusiasm out of children with a regime like that. It is the very last thing I would want for any dc.

Back again... Only to say that as a music teacher every year many many pupils tell me that they give up music lessons for 11+ tuition as parents can't afford both. It breaks my heart

WooWoo I'm afraid you wholly misunderstand the purpose of university interviews. They have absolutely nothing to do with musical prowess or sport. I suppose if an applicant presented as a gigantically annoying individual who the tutors really felt they couldn't teach, then that individual might not get a place despite being well up to the course. But it certainly isn't about fitting in. In fact both the universities and the grammars are seeking diversity, not homogeneity. You can't bullshit these tutors with a veneer of confidence or arrogance, they're smarter than that.

I believe that 11+ interviews could be conducted in exactly the same way, at an age appropriate level, and I see no reason why they shouldn't add further context to the tests. I can't really help you further than that. But interviews are most unlikely to happen, if only because of shortage of teaching staff time. So a serious dollop of contextualization couple with a drive to recruit those who should currently be applying but aren't, that should help. Because as you quite rightly say, everyone should have a fair crack at a place and for the moment that isn't happening.

Apart from having no axe to grind on the class front, I have no axe to grind on a personal school front, since all my DC are beyond 11+ age and whatever happens with the current movements to shake up the system will have no personal consequence for me or my family at all. That nevertheless doesn't stop me, from the inside, being very strongly in support of these moves.

Trying, you might be right that I'm in a small minority of parents that couldn't cope with maths aimed at 10/11yos, I think I have dyscalculia tbh.

And I agree that it is more likely to be non native speakers that struggle more with English and NVR, but judging by the number of non British students at our GS, I don't think is a huge problem, and if it is there are already ways that motivated parents find to overcome it.

I also agree that enabling self tutoring would help many, and it's admirable that you want to do so.