7+ for boys - worse than 13+?

[Flossy72]

Looking for advice from any experienced mums out there... If you had a choice, would you put your son through 7+ or 13+?

We are thinking about preparing our son for 7+ exams in early 2019. He doesn't have to move, as his school will see him through to age 13, but I wonder whether it is better to suffer the pain now rather than at age 12/13, when he will probably not want to study at all!

If you had to do it again - would you put your son though 7+ ?

Not much useful to add but I'm planning g to do exactly the same - have DS sit the 7+ from a through to 13 school.

My (possibly deluded) plan is to keep it very low key and just do a bit of extra work at home. He'd only be sitting the one exam.

Interested in hearing other views!

It depends where you live and where you are aiming for but the number of day places at age 13 will be slim in a few years time as there will be so few preps feeding them, Lanesborough Prep in Guildford that feeds a lot to RGS has announced it is stopping at 11.

He would have to do exams in year 6 to get a place at 13+ for most schools.

+13 plus = less stressful as places for senior school have already be offered. Place is, of course, subject to Common Entrance pass but it seems the reality is somewhat different than fact.......in limited experience no one in DS school failed to achieve their school of choice after +13.

Ask if they are considering, or encourage his current prep to look at the prep schools baccalaureate instead of common entrance! Doesn't do away with exams but does take the pressure off them somewhat.

I don’t understand, how does doing 7+ cancel out 13+? Unless what you mean is 7 plus for a through school to 18yrs, he will have to do either 11plus or 13plus to transition to senior school regardless.

The problem with common entrance now is that many of the schools are doing pre- tests at 11. So this is where the real stress exists. I really can’t see the point of common entrance anymore and I moved my DS from a prep school on the 11+. He then had a stress free y7 and y8 while his prep school friends were having the stress twice, for the 11+ pre test and the common entrance exams.

In your shoes, I would try the 7+ and if needed the 8+ as well but try not to get too stressed about it. There will be a huge amount of competition at all stages.

@trinity0097 is that right? The pre-test -right? We are struggling with what to do too although older DS is only coming up to 4 so we have more time to think than you OP. We're currently living overseas and my plan had been to register at Sunningdale / Papplewick as we have property nearby and then decide later what to do. I had thought they could start in YR 7 but obvs that's not going to help them ..... God it's so daunting. Sorry OP I'm of absolutely no help to you. From the research I've done and from many friends who have older children, the 13+ for some of the good boarding schools seems less of a rollercoaster but obviously that's a different lifestyle choice for your family....

7+ is tough on your own, at least in a pre-prep the school is helping. The problem is, you can't do the thing of saying they're just going along to see the school/have a play that you can at 4, but they're really really young for a formal exam. Worth a try but don't have too high expectations, assuming the schools you're trying for are genuinely selective.

My 7 year old sat 7+ this year for one prep that goes thru to 18 nearby. It’s very selective and he’s at a state school so it was a bit of a shot in the dark. He is bright but we only started preparing him over Xmas as it was a last minute application. We did work hard over Xmas and I got him to practise lots of exam papers but I didn’t make him stressed at all, I just wanted him to know what it would feel like to sit the tests and the time limits. The approach was that we’d work hard for a few weeks, give it a go and if he didn’t get in then we’d try again at 11+. If your child is bright, I feel the advantage at 7+ is that the school can see this shining through because it’s harder to ‘tutor’ kids at this age. By 11+ the less able kids with years of tutoring might scrape through because they’ve been taught how to answer the questions. As it happened my ds loved the challenge of harder work than he was doing at school and really enjoyed all the written & interview assessments at the prep. He was offered a place and can’t wait to start in Sept. If he hadn’t got in then we’d have just said well done for giving it his best shot and moved our focus to 11+. Also if they don’t get in at 7+ it means that when they sit again at 11+ or 13+ they remember what they need to do and won’t feel so intimidated by the process. Good luck!

Further to the above I think it also depends on your child. My ds is very mature, resilient and level-headed for his age (only just turned 7) and also thrives on a challenge. Things don’t get to him. So I felt he wouldn’t be phased by giving the 7+ a go and if he didn’t get in then it would just fuel him up to try harder later on. My dd however might have been very anxious about the tests and then had her confidence severely knocked had she sat it at 6 and not got in. So I think it’s really child dependant. They’re still so young and some 6-7 yr olds might not be ready for such formal assessments.