11+

[curlew]

Thought I'd start a thread for anyone whos dd or ds is doing the 11+in January. Are you starting to feel stressed about it yet - or is that just me? Are you doing lots of preparation? And - this is my big worry - how are you helping your child deal with the possibility of failing? And why am I having to use words like 'failure' about my glorious, clever, talented, delightful but mathematically challenged daughter?

It's a hard time, isn't it? Fortunately for us, the admissions procedure has changed this year so that the over-subscribed high school can no longer discriminate against children who sit the 11+ and fail. This makes the whole "shall I enter him/her for the 11+ or not" dilemma a little easier. Previously you would only enter your child if you were 100% certain they would pass (and who can be that certain??).

DS2 is heading for the 11+ in January. He will have a mock 11+ at the end of this month. Based on the result of that, the school will advise whether, in their opinion, he should sit the exam proper. Based on a similar test done at the end of last term, there is no question that he will sit it. He is very bright (although lacking in self-confidence in things academic).

His best friend from primary will be going to the good high school, so, should the sky come tumbling down and DS2 fail the 11+, he won't be too bothered about going to the high school.

If your dd is as bright as you say, I suspect that a poor performance in the maths paper won't scupper her chances of a place at a grammar. AFter all, if it were just maths that counts, there would be no need to do the other papers. The non-verbal reasoning paper is the one which really shows their intelligence and, if she gets through that one, and performs well in the verbal reasoning, the maths will be less important.

Hi, my son sat (and scraped thru') the 11 plus last October, and started grammar last week. We didn't send him to a tutor but he practiced at home with various papers. It's a big deal here in Bucks, as the alternative is a very bad upper school, or forking out about £100k in all for private. I highly recommend that you check out the forum on the elevenplus.co.uk website. It's a mine of help & support. Good luck.

My dd2 will be taking her 11 plus in Jan and I'm a bit worried to be honest. She's far more scatty than dd1 though very bright. She gets frustrated if she gets anything wrong and helping her is really trying my patience! We don't have a tutor (I'm a teacher myself) and we need to up the number of test papers we do. Dd1 (now Y8) actually recognised quite a few of the verbal and non-verbal questions in the exam from old papers we'd done.

My DD took her first paper this morning so we are too late to be stressed!

It was the verbal one, her best - next Monday she will sit the non-verbal one and I don't think she will mind me saying - her bloody worst!! So next weekend will be stressful!

We will take it from the USA in november - we move back to the uk in march next year. Swedish mum - read your post on my homework thread and re practice etc its been really hard going. DD wants to take the exam, she asked me if I would be cross if she failed. Have no idea if she will stand a chance really...oh well

would be great to have some people in the same boat to chat to - noone here understands because its such a different system.

SkyTV - where do you live? We're in Kent and we do it in January.
Best of luck to your daughter,BTW
MrsA - we're doing practice papers because I've heard that's the best way. DD wants to do the exam, but gets bored with the papers, so we've done a deal - a reasonable number done willingly (ish) means an extra riding lesson.

We are in Lincolnshire. They do it now, we get the results by 14 October and choose the school by 24 October (first time in a number of years we get the results first). We still do not get to know until 1 March 2007 which school they get though!

We did practice papers and she was consistently getting over 90/100 in the verbal tests. She did a verbal test this week at school and got 99! It was one of the ones we had done over the hols but she didn't tell them that

Problem is she did a non verbal test at school last week too and said it wasn't anything like she had been doing at home - she said I had obviously bought the wrong papers! - and she only got 4 but I'm not sure out of how many. The highest was 10 though! Apparently they will be working on this before the REAL test on 18 September. I am at work all week full time and really want to speak to her teacher but can't get in. Probably venting on here will be enough. She can only do her best after all.

I presume that the pass mark has to change depending on how many people do well - there are only so many places after all. I do wish ~I knew what we are aiming at though.

I thought that too Curlew and am clinging to the hope that not many of them are going to be any good at the non-verbal. It can't just be my DD can it? This is the first year they will have taken the non verbal as part of our 11+ and her Head told us that it was to "attract" a different type of child with different abilities. I hope the grammar schools are geared for this!

We will be doing wirral authority - they say there is a standard to be attained to be considered for the grammar schools, but that acheiving the standard doesn't nec. mean you'll get a place. They consider siblings, distance from school etc in the mix as well

Any other Kentish folk about?

Sory to gatecrash.But see that skyaddict is in Lincolnshire.We are moving there end of Feb.Ds1 will be 10 on 29th August.I am assuming he will be in year 5 this year and then Year 6 from Sept 2009.Does this mean he will probably be siting 11+ this Sept?