Practising 11+ or SATS test papers with your children at home

[tigermoth]

Anyone else out there doing this over the summer holidays? I'm trying to do half and hour or so with my son most days. Not too much, just something to keep him ticking over, I hope. Little and often as opposed to a sudden panic a week before the 11+. I am trying to reduce the pressure as much as possible. No other homework, reading or music practice demands are made of him and he chooses the topics and the time.

I praise lavishly when he gets questions right, and we go through the wrong answers together. I try to teach him, but he seems to hate me taking on the teacher role and often refuses to listen to me till I threaten to ban things. I have no idea if anything I am saying to him sinks in. Sometimes he whizzes eagerly through his chosen questions, other times he looks at them for a millisecond and says he can't do them, his brain hurts, when I know he hasn't given them any thought whatsoever. He wants me to sit with him for the whole time he is doing the questions. I do this but I know I won't be there to hold his hand in the exam.

My dh also sits with him sometimes. My son seems to cope better with dh teaching him, but my dh can't do this every evening.

I worry that my son will not work independently when it comes to the exams, will look at questions and instantly reject them before thinking them through. I can see he is improving (I am too) with practice but it's a struggle. And he does got some proper tutoring in a group each week, and seems to be ok with this.

The questions we are working on - NFer Neilson ones - are really not easy. I can well understand my son feeling daunted by some of them. I do too. Even if he doesn't have to get all questions correct in order to pass the exam, the sheer fact that on the day of the test he will face questions he can't do is bound to dent his confidence.

Sorry I am rambling. I just wonedered if anyone else is going through this. And what about those with older children now at secondary school. Do you think the practising at home helped? Did your children act like this? Any tips to pass on?

All the tests in our area are after the closing date for the LEA form too.

BUT the only schools insisting that we name them as first preference are religious schools, where I guess they want you to put your money where your mouth is and demonstrate your religious commitment! So we'll be putting down four academically selective schools followed by two comprehensives (that's the provisional plan)and as I understand it, none of them will know where we've put them on the list. Also none of the ones we're applying to state in their published admissions criteria that they expect to be named as first preference, whereas the religious schools do state that quite clearly. As I understand it, the published admissions criteria have to be stuck to, or there would be grounds for appeal.

Talking of appeals, I don't really understand how you can appeal if ds or dd just didn't do well on the day, though it sounds like very good news if you can! If they're under the weather on the day, you're supposed to ring in, so I wouldn't have thought you could appeal on those grounds unless you have notified them.

I agree the new system is adding to the stress, as if it wasn't bad enough anyway! We've had to spend a lot of time getting our heads round it as well as visiting schools and memorizing their application criteria! And trying not to instil anxiety in the child, while at the same time lying awake worrying at night yourself, is another challenge...

I would have thought appealing because your child messed up on the day of the exam is precisely the best reason for appealing. Sitting an exam is a stressful experience at the best of times. When it is the first exam proper you have ever sat (I don't include the SATS), then the potential of ballsing it up is huge. Surely it is the consistency of the work done over the last year or so which is a better indication of a child's ability rather than just how s/he performs on one particular day. Isn't that why they changed how GCSEs and A levels were graded, using more coursework?

Oh and we only have a choice of 3 schools on our application forms.

I agree, it would be mucy better if coursework was taken into account. Freckle, I thought the 6 school choice was standard throughout all LEAs in the country. Obviously that's not the case. Are the schools in your area not that oversubscribed, hence the need to put just the three preferences?

Not sure of the reasoning for the 3 choices. All schools in the area are heavily oversubscribed, including the grammars. I'm not aware that there has ever been more than 3 choices. According to my mum, it was the same when she had to choose schools for my sisters and myself and that was over 35 years ago!

Sorry Freckle, I agree with you - I didn't mean that not doing well on the day because of stress shouldn't be grounds for appeal, just that I didn't know it could be, and if it is, then that's great. I'm a complete newcomer to all this, learning every day...also new to Mumsnet, learning every day...

What a profoundly depressing thread. Back in the day (Lincolnshire in the 70s, but still a bastion of selective education today) we went into the school hall to do a test and got a piece of paper a month later telling us which school we were going to. No preparation, no practice at home or at school, no big deal. Certainly no prizes for passing! It was a shocking way to decide the fate of the youth of the county, but it did at least guarantee that the lucky ones who 'got in' did so on their own merit, and were therefore best placed to thrive in a more intellectually demanding environment. No prizes for guessing which colour I vote I know, but seriously, haven't we collectively lost the plot here? We can't all be bringing up mini Einsteins can we...

I don't know what you mean by "losing the plot". The system exists here and I have to deal with it. There is an anti-grammar school campaign which rears its head every now and then and they have forced the local education authority to spend millions of pounds preparing for ballots which never take place. They never take place because the campaigners do not have the support of the majority of eligible parents.

So we still have the system. As a parent, I feel I have to do what is best for my child. Grammar schools here have an excellent reputation and get good results. Should I ignore that in favour of another school? Not if I'm doing the best for my child. So I work with the system and not against it.

What I mean is, whether you are for or against selective education, you surely want the selection process to result in the every child being given a place appropriate to their skills and strengths (the fact that that is well nigh impossible is an argument in favour of comp ed but let's not go there) The alternative is that we want a selction process that favours the children of those of us with more money/time/knowledge of how system works/whatever. This may or may not be the right thing for our child but it profoundly disadvantages the children of parents who for whatever reason don't have those resources. My point about the 70s was right or wrong the system did at least assess the children and not the parents.

I agree with your point about the unfair advantage that some parents have if they can afford tutors/whatever. I had this discussion with a grammar school teacher before the summer, who felt that it was not right. The LEA stipulates that primary schools are not to coach their pupils in the 11+ or do anything other than a mock exam to ascertain whether a particular child should sit the exam proper or not. Although DS1's school adheres to this rule religiously, there are schools in this area which do not. One school has an "after school club", which is in effect a coaching session. So it is not a level playing field with some schools giving heavy coaching and some doing next to nothing. I owe it to my child to give him as much of a chance of passing as a child who attends the "coaching" school. If it were a case of every child reaching a pre-set pass mark, e.g. 60%, then I wouldn't bother. But each child who sits the 11+ is competing with every other child who sits it, so I need to ensure that my child isn't disadvantaged by attending a school which abides by the rules.

I'm sure the 11+ was far easier when I took it in the late 60's. And all those who passed got a place at a grammar school. Not so now. I have been thinking back to those times a lot recently and wish my son faced an old style 11+ test papter today. No need to practice much, just sit it on the day.

Instead he will face a new style maths paper. A good third of the questions IMO will be on areas his school, following the national curriculum, has not yet covered If he did not get help outside the school he would almost definitely fail those questions. As it is, the help he has had is IMO nothing like the help he would get in a classroom lesson.

I think it's really unfair that 11+ results nowadays can be helped along by parental time, effort and money. It is profoundly depressing. I agree. I definitely think that heavily coached children have an unfair advantage in the maths paper.

Freckle and Catan have made all the points I was going to make about the present system in my area. It stinks! I also feel for those children who pass the 11+ with flying colours only to find there is not grammar place for them as they live just outside the accepted distance of the oversubscribed grammar schools here.

one down, three to go!

ds came out of the maths test saying it was 'simple' - much easier than the NFER Nelson tests. I'll take his words with a pinch of salt as he was just so relieved it was over. I got a quick impression that other children found it ok as well. So those that pass will have to do very well I guess. Oh well, at least ds attempted 90% of the questions,( had to guess the remaining 5 or so) and finished with time to spare. So tentative smiles all round

tigermoth! While I was looking for practice papers for Twinkie, look what I stumbled across:

standardised test scores illustration!!!

and a handy explanation too. Obv as it says it is only an illustration but it should help!?

Oh, hadn't seen about his Maths - tentative smile from me too - hope he has done really well!

janH thanks and thanks again!

Catan, he's a bit on the young side - birthday at end of April. I know this means he gets slightly more marks in his favour that someone with a September birthday. Thanks for your good wishes.