Bilingual child at 7 plus exam

[julianp]

So my DD is bilingual and we think to change a school at 7+, aiming to Latymer, Highgate and Alleyns. She’s a bright cookie, does pretty good at math, but obviously her English is not on the level of native 6-7 y.o speaker (her second language is on 7-8 y.o level and accelerates quicker). She’s only 5 now and I wonder did anyone have an experience of bilingual kids going through 7+ and are there any considerations from a school’s side about child’s not being 100% native?

Hey, I have this experience. My daughter just started in Highgate this year after successful 7+. We only tried her in two schools South Hampstead and Highgate and she got offers from both. Her English was good enough but weaker then her Math, we were concentrating on the structure of her writing and adjectives, she also had quite a bit of spelling mistakes. Still got offers! I think it’s worth trying. And she is a summer born.

Same here - my DD is summer born. She is lacking vocabulary though (we speak the other language at home), did you experience similar? I’m afraid she will not write as complete and full sentences in a creative writing (she tends to simplify sentences for that reason) as they’d expect her.

In the UK its maths, not math!

You just need to practice it with her. You have plenty of time to do that. When discussing a book encourage her to answer questions in full, there is also a list of adjectives and interesting key words that you can teach her to use. We started our preparation quite late, just 3 months before the exams so with the time you have you should be good. Also they are looking for a potential and I believe that schools take into account a bilingual factor. Good luck!

It is harder for bilingual children, my eldest is 9 now and still doesn’t have as good vocab as I think a monolingual child would have, but she knows every word x2. I think eventually she’ll catch up but it’s unreasonable to expect her to have the same vocab as an equally developed monolingual child. She did 4+ - got offer from Channing but not NLCS, I think due to that (despite being able to read and write better than average by then, reading at 7 y o level)