If your DD moved from State to highly selective private at 11 please come and talk to me!

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If your state educated daughter transferred to a highly selective secondary at 11 I would be really interested to know:

• did you tutor for exams? If so from when?
• what extra-curricula stuff did she do? To what level?
• was she always top of the class in primary or just quite bright?

DD is y4 at state primary in London. She wants to go to Godolphin and Latymer (v competitive local private girls school) at 11 but I'm not sure if that's realistic or how to manage her expectations.

DD is very bright, she's reads loads and loves writing stories. She does well at school but she's not amazing, just good, top table for everything but probably not top if the class. Teachers always say she's doing great but I don't think they stretch her. She's august born. Outside of school she swims, dances, does gymnastics and plays piano all if which she loves but I wouldn't say she's outstandingly gifted in any of these areas, she's good and enthusiastic but that's it.

My eldest DD was just accepted at City of London School for Girls. I don't know if other Mumsnetters would consider it "highly selective" or not.

She is coming from a state primary that has never sent a child to City or even tried. It is a good state school though, and they have been supportive of the application, giving her time off school for the exam and the interviews and writing a thoughtful reference to City.

She always did well in school and was a "top table" student without any tutoring. She had/has loads of extracurricular activities including sport and music. We let her watch scads of tv and muck around until the end of year 5, when the penny dropped that she was actually quite behind in a very competitive field despite being at the top of her class. We tried to tutoring her ourselves, but it just didn't work. In the end, we paid someone to do it for us. She was so much happier to listen to someone who wasn't us, and happier to do practice papers for them too.

Once she had some practice writing stories and essays, and learning long multiplication and fractions, percentages, ratios, etc., she was able to close the gap. For 6 months she saw a tutor once a week and did an old entrance paper as practice once a week. She did one paper over Xmas break. Then the week before her North London Consortium exam she got up half an hour early to do bits of old exam papers as practice. It was her idea. I don't know if it helped, but I think it gave her a sense of purpose and control.

She plays the violin in the school orchestra and participates in a load of sports. I am not aware of the schools taking any notice of this. It's my impression that they are not bothered about musical ability unless you have reached grade 5, at which point they do take notice.

Sorry for rambling. What I am trying to say is, if your DD is around the top 5% academically, she should easily be able to gain a place. But, she will still need some form of tutoring to bring her up to the standard of the test. The extracurricular stuff is nice to have, but I didn't notice much emphasis on it from the schools. The exception being, if they are at scholarship level, which is very high and requires a long term time commitment to reach.

The most important thing at all these schools is the entrance test. Download an old example from the school's website and do it yourself. It gives you the best idea what you are up against and the gap you have to fill.

Hello, DD is at state primary and also just got an offer from CLSG (MustChoose: we should hook up on another thread!), and DD also passed G&L, SPGS and LU exams (we are waiting for the admissions letters today....)

DD had a tutor from year 5, twice a month and then weekly during the last 6 months. I am not sure it was (lots of) money well spent though as he only seemed to collect old exams and sit DD down with them for an hour while he had tea, and then marked them. I only sent her because he was very strict and I needed a bad cop . I know a girl at Godolphin who came from DD's school and was (definitely) not tutored at all. It depends how much time and effort you want to devote to home support and how much your DD is willing to do at home. We bought all the Bond assessment papers and did the 10 minute tests on the bus / tube to school etc. During year 6 every Friday afternoon, we spend the 2 hours gap between school and swimming in a nice cafe with one practice exam (real past exams from different schools' websites), a hot chocolate and at least one brownie (each).

DD moved to top 5% during year 5, possibly as a result of the extra work. Her school is not very academic though and homework almost non-existent, so I don't think she was terribly stressed.

Extra-curricular activities are only important if you apply for music scholarship (lucrative at G+L but hard to get!). For the interview, any hobby is great when presented with enthusiam .

Well done to your DD intrepidfox. That's an impressive list of schools. We didn't consider them for geographic reasons. Sometimes constraints make things easier! LOL

We also felt that the tutor was "money for old rope" at times. Sometimes she couldn't do the maths questions herself. Oh dear! (She was a state school high school teacher!?!) We had waited so long to engage a tutor that we had to take what we could get. It was still useful for motivating DD to actually do a practice exam each week. My husband finally decided to mark them himself, to "save the tutor time." If DD kept missing the same type problems, we stepped in and explained. We hope to be a bit more savvy when DD2 comes along.

In the end, we might not take the place at City, it depends on whether she is offered scholarships at our more local schools. They are a tier down the rankings, but at half the price, they would be good enough! She is at a state school rather than a prep-school because money is an object for us. (We can't get a bursary. I don't work, and we have too much equity in our home.)

Where does your DD fancy intrepid?

My dd passed the exam for our local selective and was also offered a scholarship.We did the 10 minute Bond tests and past papers.These were particularly useful to locate gaps in her knowledge.For example she hadn't covered Algebra in her state school.The tutor ( vastly experienced in the 11+) then went over the salient points.This meant we were able to target the gaps and not waste time going over secure areas.Hence we had only a few tutorials.Dd is bright and one of the top of the class but there are several other bright ones in her state school.The tutor also helped immensely with the verbal reasoning ( dd naturally good at the nonverbal and maths) as these were often types of questions she wasn't used to.

DD is at state juniors and top sets. We didn't tutor but did do bond papers for practice. DD sporty (on school teams for three sports plus one club outside school) - but no schools asked for details beyond that basic info. No other extra curricular. Level 6 predicted for Maths (v strong in maths) others 5a poss 6. She got offer from top 10 independent and scholarship offer from top 25. We resisted "pressure" to use an external tutor (saving for school fees) but did do papers so did home tutor - from early Nov til early Jan exams. Good luck to your DD!

my son is at a selective school, but they take loads from state schools, about 1000 applicants for 120 places, to give an idea of how selective (not as selective as the London schools I understand, although the children don't usually apply to any other school)

He was always on the top table, found primary very easy and scored high in Cat tests in yr 4 (130 ave)

No sports but played double bass at grade 2 standard at the end of yr 6 and promptly gave up at secondary!

We didn't tutor but the exam process especially said not to tutor as they were looking for potential

dd is in Y7 at a selective school (on a par with G&L)

slightly different situation as we'd already moved her from our local state primary to a local non-selective private primary, but there were other reasons apart from academic ones behind the move iyswim

the school prepared them well for the exams - regular VR and Non VR practice plus lots of practice papers in the Christmas term of Y6

We knew dd was bright so didn't do any other preparation so I'd say it was equivalent to still being at her state school (which didn't prepare for exams) and either doing 'tutoring lite' or a bit of home tuition for that last term

Many children in her year were doing tutoring in addition to this and if we hadn't felt secure about her chances of getting offers from her chosen schools maybe we would have too

as it was she got scholarships from everywhere she applied to and is very happily ensconced at her first choice

G&L is a fantastic school (my alma mater ) but I would advise having a back-up or two or being happy with your state alternative as the sheer numbers of children applying to the London schools means they have to turn down several children who could easily cope with the academic pace but they simply don't have enough room to admit them all

oh and there are lots of children from state primaries in dd's year

I think the message is that there are plenty of state primary children at highly selective private secondary schools. But it is very rare for a child not to be prepared for the exams to some extent. Especially because the state curriculum is not designed to prepare children for independent 11+ exams. There is a gap to smooth over. No need to go wild and prep them from year 4 or something crazy. But sensible to do some preparation starting 6 months to a year out.

You'll know what your DD needs if you look at an example test. Here are past sample papers for G&L:

www.godolphinandlatymer.com/_files/past%20papers/1A9BFF06B572FA6256F1E7A639FF2542.pdf

www.godolphinandlatymer.com/_files/past%20papers/908B8ACF391F53167B066F1D31E8DCCC.pdf

Of course school reports and interviews are important, but generally they have so many applicants that they won't bother to read through the subjective stuff or give an interview unless your DD gets a minimum score on the written exam. They have to whittle down the numbers somehow.

Our son is at state primary and took exams/interviews for two schools - one considered highly selective. He got offers from both.

We didn't tutor for months. We did 1 hour a week for 10 sessions in the run up to the exam - focussed on exam technique and reasoning questions that aren't in the national curriculum.

The state school national curriculum is enough to get a bright child through (plus a little help on reasoning and exam papers).

Add to this

• lots of reading and story writing
• plenty of activities outside school (theatre, ballet, music, sport, drama, art etc, whatever they enjoy)
• always answer questions fully and with detail in a grown up manner
• let them play
• don't stress
• make sure you have back up plans for schools that she likes too

Thank you so much for all your replies. I'm so pleased I asked as I was thinking I needed to engage a tutor now! I just wish DD wasn't fixating on one highly competitive school as I don't want her to be disappointed. She's only Y4 so it's odd she's even thinking about this!

• did you tutor for exams? If so from when?

No. We were of the opinion that if she was only going to scrape in because she'd been tutored, it wasn't right for her. We did get a couple of practice books so she knew what a verbal reasoning test looked like.

The school she was trying for was very much anti tutoring anyway.

• what extra-curricula stuff did she do? To what level?

She played two instruments to grade 4-5 level and was a (just about) national level ice dancer (as in: she competed at national level, she didn't win).

• was she always top of the class in primary or just quite bright?

She was always top of the class.

God we did loads more tutoring than that - an hour of week for 18 months.

But then again ds is top table rather than top of the class and a bit pants at checking his work. He has no musical instruments and is good rather than good at sport. He is also fantastically inarticulate with unfamiliar adults. Actually he's pretty inarticulate with those he knows too.

Anyway he's just got into two of the three pretty selective (not Westminster, but the next level down) schools he tried for.

Sorry that should read: good rather than great at sport.

I would say they should be able to write a page and a quarter on A4 of high quality writing

I am that daughter from many years ago now!

I moved from a small state school to SHHS.

I was near the top of the class but in no way a genius, there were 4/5 of us who were all considered to be quite bright (the other 4 all went to Latymer Grammar, so arguably much brighter considering how hard it was/is to get in).

However, I had tutoring for two years, once a week, and then I only got into the school I eventually went to (good interview). Supporting factors were probably playing the violin (to Grade 5 - so again, no genius here) and a dyslexia diagnosis that may have helped to mitigate aspects of the test. The tutoring was key to my success, especially as the tutor was very familiar with what the schools look for in essays/interviews etc.

The most important thing is for your DD to be familiar with the test format, and the things the schools are looking for, so perhaps one or two sessions with a tutor and then do the Verbal/Non Verbal/Essays at home.

When she gets in, don't be too alarmed if she is behind the rest of the class. For the first year at SHHS I was at the bottom of every class, but by Year 8 things had evened out.

I am also that daughter. In fact I am old Dolphin. I went from a state primary with no tutoring. I was also on a scholarship as my parents couldn't afford Godolphin's fees.

It's a great school. I loved my time there. If I had had girls I would have loved for them to go there too.

I would encourage her to follow her dream and help her as best you can.

Both dh and I went from state to private selective with just a bit of parental tutoring to prepare for the test. dh got a full scholarship too. I don't recall ever thinking that the children at my school who had gone to the feeder prep had any great advantage except in French where they had had at least a years teaching already. But it was a long time ago!

We were expecting to do the same with our children, but emigrated instead and they will be state educated all the way as our local schools are good and there aren't any private (non religious) options.