State primary and grammar without tuition

[jollybloodyhockeysticks]

Just wondering if anyone can share their experiences. Do you have a child who went to a state primary and passed the 11+ without tutoring? Is it imperative to get tutoring for the 11+ if your child is naturally academically bright and excelling in a state primary? Tia x

Thank you LePetit I also think the same, if this is meant to be her path it will happen. Just You and me must be OTT together.

Minimalist - long division is not recreational maths.

LePetit - get her checked for dyspraxia. It's not well understood by - well, most people - but it's helpful to have a diagnosis. My honest advice would be if she can't do rotations (or those net things) to accept it and just move on. There are some things we just can't do. The whole exam won't be rotations and nets. (actually I had a nightmare the night before DD2 did the exam for her first choice school that the whole exam was, in fact, rotations and nets. Including the English paper. It didn't turn out to be true )

Rabbit what do you do for recreational maths?

Rabbit your children must have gone to an incredible state school to have covered every single 11+ maths subject before the exam? There are several areas that won't be touched by our state school before DC does her 11 + so I need to make sure they are covered by either me, or more likely, the tutor.

Rabbit do they get extra time?She has an appointment with the paed.

Don't want cause more stress and bother though.

Lepetit, if your dd is having trouble with rotations, try drawing dots on each corner of the shape, then drawing L shapes (along the x and y axis) from the centre of rotation to each dot, then look at how each L shape would rotate.

Many thanks Richmal. Sounds like a good tip.

Minimalist logic problems. Puzzles. That sorta of thing - the kids think I'm mad although they all do the standard Japanese ones you get in the papers and puzzle books. They turn their noses up and the specialist maths magazines though. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder if they are changelings.

As for the school - not really. It's not considered one of the better ones where we live. Certainly not the 'aspirational' one. Although I thought it was alright as these things go - and very loving/nurturing with good SEN provision (DSis dyslexic, and has had far more challenges than the girls) which was a key thing for us. But one thing it always did was stretch the able kids. DD2 was working at L6 in Y5 and she wasn't the only one. There was no L6 when DD1 was in Y5 but she was working at L5 at the end of Y4 (and consequently quite bored a lot of the time in years 5 and 6). They weren't the only ones either.

Lepetit - DD2 did, DD1 didn't (rule change) but she did get her papers marked by hand not machine for the multiple choice ones, and she was in a different room (the one with the other kids with SEN diagnoses) which was quieter and smaller. Her english paper (well, the SPAG and the essay) were also marked bearing in mind her handwriting is atrocious. They say handwriting doesn't matter but to be honest IME what they mean is as long as it's in the realms of the 'normal' it doesn't matter if it's at the dodgy end. Neither of them needed the extra time though, and apparently (so DS's SENCO reckons) it can often do more harm than good if the child is the sort to get flustered and second guess themselves (don't know if this is true or not, DS has also lost his extra time for GCSEs because he is deemed 'not dyslexic enough' to qualify).

Richmal - if she is dyspraxic that won't help since it's the 'thinking how they might rotate' that will be a mystery to her. Of course she may not be dyspraxic.

Rabbit you've been lucky.My dd2 was also level 5 at year 4 but then they decided to change the way they taught and was lumped in with the whole class for year 5.Consequently she stayed at exactly the same level.I know my dd2 is bright but I now realise her teaching is extremely inadequate.She's basically is not going to do well in this 11+ as she just hasn't been taught many basics.Luckily I know she will get in but probably not get a scholarship.
A lot of kids at state schools in my area may be bright but are not being taught well and are being badly let down by the education system.

Re the timing/speed/accuracy thing.

Certainly this has become very important in Kent. This time, they changed it all around, and with Maths - instead of 1 hour, 50 questions it was 25 minutes, 30 questions. Very few children finished. Lots of multi step problems apparently, and very little time to do them in.

Calvinova nope, you're wrong. She was taught with people up to 2 years older than her when she was in Y2 (actually, possibly up to 3 years older since she was the youngest in her year being end of August born) because at that time they set for English and maths and regarded years 2, 3 and 4 as one mass of kids, and divided them up according to ability. Then the head of governors changed and so did school policy, in Y3 she was taught in a Y3 class, in Y4, because she is August born, she was taught in a split Y4/Y3 class in Y5 it was fully Y5 and in Y6 it was split Y5/Y6 BUT this time they put the kids either working at or expecting to work at L6 in one class instead of spreading them between 2, 3 or 4 as had previously been the case (there were 47 kids in the year, and over 40 in the year below). At no point was she having tuition she was working on the top (or, when she was in Y2 not the top) table with other kids of the same ability at each stage. And she was far from the only one, she was not the top child at maths in her year. But it's irrelevant - we didn't ask for her to be taught with older kids we were opposed to the idea at first and asked them to reconsider, we had no problem with her being taught with the kids in the year below though because most of them were more friendly with her since they were closer to her size. Other parents were happy with being taught with elder kids and furious about being taught with younger ones but we were fine with it because we knew the work would be differentiated. They didn't differentiate everything well, but they did with the basics. We never had any doubt that she was being set work at the right level for her until Y6 when it became clear that the L6 kids were not the focus (to out it mildly) but we could understand why - the kids not yet at L4 needed the input more.

My point remains - if a child is not working at a particular level then there's a reason for that and the reason is that they aren't ready yet. Not that they are less bright, just that they aren't there yet. Spending hours in the school holidays trying to boost a child's level by brute force isn't, IMO, a sensible thing to do. School teachers don't hold kids back out of spite or laziness, they want their pupils to do well, they want the best for them. Properly supported learning is infinitely preferable to hot housing and kinder to the child involved. But there you go - you disagree and you are convinced that your way is best so, good luck to you and good luck to your DD.

Clavinova - Perhaos you've confused me with someone else though because your misrepresentation of what actually happened is so extreme that can be the only possible reason...

Clawing a - having read your post again you are seriously distorting the facts. I suggested 10 minute tests as a fun thing to do, DD was set them at school as part of the L6 extension work. She does do puzzles, I have said so several times in this very thread, although the benefits of Sudoku for 11+ must be minimal - not crosswords though, they are probably v useful and I mentioned them somewhere near the top of the thread. At no point did I say that she was the only child working at her level at her primary school, I said several times she wasn't and that there were 2 other kids who were working at a higher level than her (they were taught with the older kids every other year because of being autumn born rather than summer born, she was taught with them when she was in Y2 and not again until Y6, I went through the whole of her school life till then thinking that one of them was in the year above because he is as tall as my 14 year old DS). She did indeed go on G&T events organised by the school, as did the other kids identified as G&T. 4 in maths, 5 or 6 in English, 4 in science. From what I can see the G&T provision where we live is middling, better than some areas less good than others. 1 or 2 days each term. I did have to pay, some others didn't. If you seriously want to claim that being selected for G&T stuff at school, being taught at your level in school, and having lots of books (mainly about space or dragons or space and Dragons) is the same as being forced to do hours of basic maths during the xmas holidays then go ahead. It won't make you right, obviously.

As regards DD1 - she isn't 'only of average ability' at her school. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. It is far from the truth. DD1 has had a very successful first term and had an excellent report, however you seem to wish her ill so cheers for that.

Can I just ask a question about English?

I have panic attacks about Child Genius style flash cards etc.

However, I do still read to DS every night. I ask him about words I think he might not know, definitions etc.

We read all sorts from David Walliams, Morpurgo, Alex Rider series to Black Beauty.

Is this the kind of thing that makes a difference it do you still need to do more formal stuff?

Obviously I do this as a matter of course, nothing to do with the 11+ (and he's only Y4)

Make sure you include some classics with old fashioned language eg The Secret Garden,The Railway Children etc.

A lot of this is just peculiar modern British mythology. newrecruit wrote above Finland with the best schooling system that it has no homework and no testing until 18. This is totally untrue. Finnish education system is very different to British. School starts when they're seven, but it starts serious.

School has formal lessons, it finishes at 12.30 or 13.00 and there is homework to do every day. Independent completion of homework is essential in many schooling systems. Testing is also something most systems do regularly. It's not a big deal, to test whether kids got a new topic, and usually happens every two weeks. And they're grades, in primary school too. I still cannot believe how many British people think it is irrelevant and refer to non-existing studies that supposedly prove something.

I have taught my son in addition to school and set him homework from year 2 in the UK, because I believe some teaching in some subjects - in my experience, in his school - has been simply inadequate. Every subject, even if you're supertalented, needs practice. I don't know what they're doing at school, but certainly not consolidating. I'd rather the school day was much shorter, actually.

And what is all this fuss about preparing or not for exams. You reap what you have sown! This is as much true when you;re 10 as when you're 16.

olguis I couldn't agree more with you about you reap what you have sown. There is nothing wrong with children knowing that you can choose to work towards a goal.

I also would love a shorter school day and be able to give one on one time next to my child which they won't get at school to consolidate learning. At my DD's state school there has not been enough consolidation around key maths basic IMO.

Yes! And this idea of a test testing potential rather than what kids have been taught and have practised in is quite rubbish. Quite often, you can't distinguish this! In some way, you won't know the real potential of the person until they grow up, and maybe not even then.

Yes, you can include puzzles and problems that are interestingly formulated, but most of them, as models, have been developed in terms of 'entertaining maths' for the last 2 centuries and if the kids have been exposed to them, are way easier to solve than if you see them for the first time.

How can potential and giftedness make kids discover what a square root is, or make them calculate 17*8 quickly if they only done 5 of such calculations and not 105? You can't expect that kids who are not taught maths concepts properly excell in maths. If a child hasn't been taught maths properly in years 1-6, there is no way his hidden mathematical potential will be discovered by a test. Such a test doesn't exist. This is a myth. His knowlegde achieved through teaching, learning and practice must be adequate in order for the ability to become manifest. Things in maths build on each other, you can't suddenly become brilliant with fractions and percentages if you never learned basic arithmetic operations properly, systematically and consistently.

In my experience, this is often not done in the primary. In my DS school, they do data, geometry, whatnot, projects instead of maths, maths gets cancelled at the first opportunity, jumping like fleas between topics, and I had to consolidate all the basic knowledge. This is the new function of the mother.

This is not tutoring to the test - this is just straight teaching. Parents end up having to teach their kids. And this has nothing to do with 'natural smartness' or 'dumbness' of children - this is another myth that only exists in Britain. If you said in Finland that you can differntiate 6-7 year olds by ability, this will be a national outrage and a scandal!

Last thing about 'natural ability' - yes, they are some very able children in maths. Some will become mathematicians. These are tens in hundred thousands, 5 in millions. Geniuses. But

Basic arithmetic - that is what primary school maths is - is accessible nearly to everyone. Some need more time, different time, different styles, different amount of consolidation, but this is not about ability; this is about teaching every child what they can and need to learn.

Talk about ability or over-teaching supposedly burning kids out because they work and learn something should come in when it's about rocket science not primary school!

Oh my goodness I agree with EVERYTHING you have said olguis. I mentioned upthread that my DC is being tutored. I thought having a tutor would lessen the pressure off me. It hasn't, it's simply demonstrated to me how basic maths in my child's primary school does not seem to be taught in a way which is making it go into long term memory. They jump from topic to topic in such a way that basic maths functions are going into short term memory and are not being consolidated. I thought Maths wouldn't be too much of an issue before we started having her tutored in the Autumn as she was top table in Maths and had good strong levels. How wrong was I? It only highlighted the gaps in her knowledge and gave me a huge wake up call. Practice is the key to great maths and there is NOTHING wrong with learning how to do something and to keep going on it. It will only make a child more maths able.