CEM 11+ (Birmingham) - is this Bond paper an accurate reflection of the content/ difficulty?

[21Sunny]

I have a son just going into Y5 and I'm starting to look at 11 + as a possibility. Picked up these Bond assessment papers in Waterstones and I'm a bit worried because there's a lot of Maths content which I know he hasn't been introduced to at all (sum of angles in a triangle, adding fractions with different denominators together, squaring number). For context, the teaching in Y4 at our school was more or less non-existent during lockdown and even once they were back in class, but there is nothing we can do about this now. His report says he is achieving beyond expectations in Maths but looking at this content and the speed required, I'm just wondering if he can really get up to this level within a year, considering Y4 just didnt seem to happen. If anyone's done the 11+ in Birmingham in the past, do you know if the Bond CEM assessment papers are a good way to judge the content and difficulty of the exam?

Hi, we haven't sat ours yet (CEM but a different region) - so I can't comment on if the papers reflect the difficulty of the exam, but the content will be fairly accurate.

It is quite unfair on the children, as they have had broken learning, but even before the pandemic, it was never a fair playing field. There is always some Year 6 material in the exam which most children in state schools won't have been exposed to yet (eg algebra, probability).

Unless you get a tutor who specifically covers the full KS2 curriculum, or are at a private school where they prep for Yr 7 entrance exams ... or unless you're willing to cover the content yourself - you're at a disadvantage, even if your child is very bright.

I don't think it's too late though - you have a whole year to cover the main topics, and brush up on lots of vocab. It's not impossible, but will depend on how much time and commitment you can/are willing to put in (or outsource to a tutor if needs be).

If you think of it as not training specifically for the 11+, but improving all-round foundations in English and maths, you're not losing anything by trying.

If a state school the work should actually cover up until the end of year 5, and yes they ay throw some algebra in.

But OP you have enough time you just need to be smart about it.

I was in the same boat with limited schooling, quite a poor school. We focussed on getting the maths up to speed and made the other stuff work around it.

I would say bond books are good to try in terms of the assessment books. We did not do too many mock tests, as felt we had to keep covering work, but we did use ATOM for some mock tests, which was good.

That should have read they may throw algebra in, oh and I was speaking about state schools, not private.

Coolkatkit I was just wondering how you know that some year 6 work may be thrown into the mix for maths? You may well be right but I thought it was up to the start of year 6 not beyond?

Yes, there are Y6 topics on the papers.
CGP books are better than Bond IMO. There are workbooks/learning books as well as test books.
Start of Y5 is more than enough time to cover the content.

@flyaboat It's from reading around on the forums, speaking to tutors, looking at a variety of books/papers etc. It's not guaranteed that Year 6 stuff will come up of course - but if you're consistently hearing that this is the standard you need to be to be in with a chance, you ought to cover the material - even if it's 'just in case'.

Agree with the suggestion of looking at the CGP books - the Year 5 and Year 6 study books will cover the material topic by topic.

Thanks so much for all this reassuring advice. I showed him the sample in the photo and asked him to just explain to me how he would approach each question, or tell me if he had no idea/ never seen it before and he does seem to have a little bit more of a clue than I thought I would have, so I'm a bit less freaked out now! It still seems like so much to cover in a year.

My DD did CEM a few years ago (not Birmingham) and passed comfortably. We found that the Bond books were too hard and timings were not realistic. To give perspective, it took me (adult with Maths A Level) about 25 minutes to complete a Bond 20 minute Maths paper. DH is a secondary school Maths teacher who does Maths every day and he completed it in 18 minutes. We switched to CGP after that!

My DD is a year ahead of your DS, and is about to sit the 11 plus for the Birmingham area. We've not had a tutor, and she's at an ordinary state primary that is not pushy at all, so they have not gone ahead of the curriculum. She has done workbooks for the past year, probably averaging an hour per week for the first two terms, and stepping up a little in the past couple of months.

Obviously, I don't know what the actual test will be like, but I think she's quite well prepared. We started with age 9-10 workbooks (actually, 8-9 for non-verbal reasoning, as it was completely new) and worked up to 10-11. We used a range of publishers: CGP, Bond, Schofield & Sims, Collins, First Past the Post.

The CGP books are very good, clearly laid out and methodical. DD started with the 11 plus books at 9-10 which took you through the sub-topics one by one, and if there was anything new or tricky, we did some more practice with the help of the internet, so DD learned as she went on. She would have been daunted by that Bond paper a year ago!

She has also done a couple of mock tests locally, which mimic the exam format and atmosphere. I think these were really helpful, but one or two would be enough.

My kids did Birmingham 11 plus, although a few years ago now (they’re in year 11 and 13). We didn’t really prepare dd at all, other than getting her to do some CGP ten minute tests over the summer holiday, and she was at a failing primary school in Walsall. She got 218, which obviously wouldn’t be enough now, but the rules were different then.

She didn’t find the maths in the test hard though - I think it was actually the non verbal and verbal reasoning that she needed a bit more practice in. I’m pretty sure that with a year of prep, she’d have got in the 220s so you’ve got plenty of time. Definitely use CGP books- we used these more intensively with ds and they were good preparation for the real thing.