Atom for 11+ Grammar School entrance

[GTJLondon]

GTJLondon

DS has just started Year5 and we are preparing him for 11+ Grammar school entrance, specially for Surrey schools. Have a few questions please:

1. How helpful is Atom learning for Grammar school tests? I can see it’s highly recommended for ISEB, but couldn’t find much for Grammar Schools.

1. Any other online practice sites recommended? Sites which have topic wise or adaptive tests?

1. Any recommendations for tutors, centres or online classes especially for Surrey grammar schools like Willsons, Wallington County, Sutton Grammar, Greenshaw etc?

Thanks!

I used Atom from April onwards. I think it’s a good platform (I’ll tell you how good when we get the results later this week). The online lessons were good as was the standardised scoring which shows how your DC is doing compared to others on the platform. Good value for money, but I’m glad we only used it April to July (in August we did paper-based tests).

Thanks a lot for the feedback, LemonWeb. It does give the confidence to take the subscription and also an idea as to when could be the best time to start. I was bit skeptical when to start as the cost seems to be on a slightly higher side. But not bad if 4 months' usage could give the positive results.

All the best for your DC's results and please do let us know how it turned out to be.

Not trying to be picky but those schools are known as Sutton not Surrey for test purposes. . There is an 11+ website with lots of chat threads - not sure if there any relating to tutoring on there.

Also Greenshaw is not a fully selective school - it takes 60 places from 300+ intake but once you are in the school there is no difference what route you came in by.

VERY useful, if your kiddo likes screen-based learning like mine. Mine used to go kinda Exorcist on me if she saw a paper workbook...
Highly recommended.

I started the prep in Y5 with 10 minute tests in the autumn term, and dd was happy to do one every day. At Christmas we had a break from the 10-minute tests but did the first longer papers. In the Spring term I varied the material a bit to focus on dd’s weaker areas, but still using the 10-minute tests and some Bond books. By April dd was thoroughly fed up of 10-minute tests so relished Atom and did quite a lot voluntarily. We got in the habit of her doing a mock test every other Saturday which really helped, and then every Saturday by July. In August we did CGP tests - the full ones, starting without a time limit but ending up timed. The 11+ for our county was at the start of September and dd came out and said it was just like the practice tests and that she was glad she’d done the preparation.

The real benefit from Atom is the unlimited mock tests - ones you do from other companies like KSOL are expensive and the fact they’re one-off makes them high stakes. With the Atom tests it just became part of the routine.

Dd loved some of the live lessons as one of the teachers was very engaging and funny.

Dd is dc3 and I didn’t tutor the first (he passed but went independent for extra curricular reasons) and tutored dc2 (he passed) but I felt that dd is likely to do the best out of the three.

I think any tutors or tutoring classes we propose by now will be full as they have been back a couple of weeks already and the areas tutoring is highly competitive.

If you were doing all online you would still need to practice the exact format for these schools for both stages. Look out for Wilsons/SGS/Wallington mock tests on their PTA sites and book an early one in May if possible.

Thank you everyone for sharing such valuable information. The 10 minute tests seems like a good option to start with.

I understand the tutors may all be booked (agree its bit late ) but can still try. Could anyone please recommend for Sutton schools?

Have heard about Kip McGrath, Explore Learning and StudyBox, have got mixed reviews only.

Lots of people have been really pleased with Atom, so maybe our experience was specific to the content we looked at... We got the 5 day trial and DD did 10 mocks in May, supposedly designed for Sutton grammars but they were far too easy. She finished them in half the time and got 6 questions wrong across all 10 mocks. She is very able but that just isn't representative of the real exams - the maths at least is very time pressured.

So I would say use it for preparation if you like the platform, but look elsewhere when ready to do practice papers/mocks.

And I would second the suggestion to sign up for the Sutton mocks. You can usually register your interest in December and they'll email you when they are releasing slots.

Use discount code TVyKUb39 for £10 off on atom learning.