common entrance/scholarship books

[miggy]

can anyone suggest any good textbooks/work books that we could order?
DS is in yr7 and working for common entrance and financially a scholarship would be fab.
have looked on amazon but most of the books seem to be either not yet published or from the 1960s.
Im not a hothousing/slavedriving mother by the way, ds has asked for some books like this.

Friend who used to teach in private sector in UK recommended Bond Assessment Papers as a way of preparing them for entrance tests and also to give a feel for what is expected in terms of wording, presentation, timings and so on. Have a look here as there are some samples to download. Apparently prep schools start to use them from about 6 so that it becomes second nature by the time they are required to take them.

have you asked for past papers from school of your choice

DH school give them out every year apart from verbaal resoning I think it is called.

Are they not practising in prep school already?

thanks LIZ
just had a look though and checked free papers and really for younger children, ds will be 12 and others will be 12-13. those stop at 10-11
thank you very much though

kangamummy-yes they are practising already, exams every term and using common entrance papers BUT much as I love their school, and they love their school, it is not the most academic place in the world.
Reason I have been prompted to explore furthur is that DS brought home a common entrance RE textbook tonight, that has been "loaned" for prep. Having looked at the standards of the scholarship questions in that, I feel DS may need a bit of help and books would be cheaper than a tutor.

If your DS is going to be doing the scholarship paper, he should go into a scholarship stream in Year 8. You can't really expect him to do the scholarship papers 14 months early. It's unlikely he could do scholarship without special tuition in his prep school, so the prep school should be geared up for it with plenty of past papers from the senior school of your choice or the common papers.

The scholarship papers are a lot more old-fashioned than Common Entrance (which looks more like GCSE).

My DS is in the scholarship stream at his prep school (he is in Year 8), and he would completely revolt if he had to do any more work at home, in addition to the prep he already gets.

Do you have any friends whoose DS have got scholships for school of choice?

Have you asked at the school you want?

Are you just thinking of one school?

what do his teachers think is he predicted to get the grade?

How many go from his prep school to choice?

How many get scholarship?

Can you get tips from them?

The teachers should be gearing them to the school they think suitable for them.

eg at DH school they have prep schools that feed them but the prep school only really put forward boys who will cope with the high standard.IYSWIM.

There isn't much point in cramming them because when they get further up the school they struggle to keep up.

They can also stand out like a sore thumb as boys who have been crammed when higher up school.

I hope that makes sense

So basically I would talk to his teachers and to the school of choice also to parents of boys in year 8. or ones that have already gone.

good luck.

CGP *,ight( do them.....will do you a link

ameriscot-he will go into the scholarship stream next yr (well saturday mornings extra as they dont have enough kids to have seperate class full time).
I wasnt expecting him to do it early
Just trying to get some extra stuff now rather than cramming it into next year, particularly areas where I know the teaching is poor (eg french)
As I said, I am not "asking" him to do extra work, he is an incredibly driven child (self driven completely). He said tonight, having had the RE book, I wish I owned this book, and was reading it for pleasure at tea.
The school does win many scholarships every year but minor ones and with 3 children a large scholarship would really help financially and it seems a shame not to try and help him as he is so keen himself.
Please understand i am not pushing him, I am mrs laid back mother, he pushes himself and school work/learning is his interest in life.

it seems that they dont....they do have 11+ ones though

popsycal-what was that

sorry-posted at same time

ooops!
lol
CGO books!

can thourghyl recommmned them for other stuff - cheap and accessible

CGP books

soprry typping in semi darkness - light bulb is bust

Oh my goodness I wasn't concerntrating I am watching TV at same time

Sorry I am sounding awful.

I wasn't meaning that you were a pushy mum as you had already said you weren't

I was just talking about crammed boys in general.

I am glad that you have a self driven DS

According to DH they get on really well as they are hungry to learn and ask for extra work and really are so keen to know everything.

The ones when the parents are pushing them are the opposite

Agree with everything Kangamummy has to say - ask your school. They are the experts on your child and on the senior schools they feed to - and that's what you are paying the big mullah for. In my very limited experience, it's the school that calls the shots on whether the child will do scholarship - they inform (in July or September) the senior school has already pre-selected them, that the child is clever and they'd expect them to be doing the scholarship paper. A lot depends on how well they do in their summer term exams (which will undoubtably be CE past papers).

Our prep school virtually guarantees that each child will get into their senior school of choice - they haven't had any rejections at CE during the reign of this headmaster (7 years). There's a lot of wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes for borderline kids. The main thing, though, is going for an appropriate senior school to begin with.

My DS has very little chance of getting a scholarship because he has only been doing French since Y7. However, he is being put forward for it because he is, other than that, scholarship material (unfortunately the senior school will not take extenuating circumstances into account). It's appropriate for him to be in the scholarship stream for all the other subjects, so that he gets challenged and so that he challenges the other candidates. Otherwise, he would just coast the year. The carrot on stick is that by sitting the scholarship paper, he should get Common Entrance exemption.

With 5 kids, a scholarship would be a dream come true...

Topical anecdote - I am very good friends with the headmaster's wife and we were having we were having a little chat the other day with some other mums in our social circle (church mums). One was a Year 6 mum and she was mentioning that some other Year 6 mums were discussing what they could do to help their kids prepare for the pre-test for a particular senior school (along the lines discussed here about buying practice papers). The HM's wife was really cross that those mums hadn't asked the school for the help - she was so cross, she could hardly express herself coherantly.

kangamummy-please dont be (whopee- never used that icon before!)
You were very helpful- fully understood all your comments and thanks for taking time to reply
Sort of wish had changed my name for this though!
Ameriscot-DS is gifted and has already accelerated a year between yr1 and 2. In the last exams-this term, he was 60 points ahead of the rest of his year in an aggregate score on common entrance papers. My point being that the school cant really help, from their point of view, he is a great pupil, with no effort from them will get good marks, is enthusiastic and is in the school play/orchestra/choir-a compulsive joiner/doer.
BUT there are areas where I know that the school teaching is poor and I dont want to go to them and say "your teaching of X is cr$p" and have a fight about it because lots of other things are good and I dont want to be a moany parent. There is nothing more that the school can do or be expected to do for one person. I was just looking for something that DS could do by himself at home and enjoy doing so.
Dont know how you manage with 5 full stop! I am in awe-truely

Your son sounds like he will thrive in a school like DH one.

I understand now more where you are coming from regards present school.

DH is out at a meeting atm

when he comes back I will ask him if can think of any books you could get for DS.

He is Head of Chemistry so french may be a bit of problem.

If you can think of specific questions he could ask at school tomorrow.

ok?

Thankyou

here

DH has just started using this for year 8 if you type in 7 you will get the yr 7 one.

He doesn't teach year 7 and 8 though

he teaches older ones.

They have entry at 11 and 13

Competition for places at 11 is about 250/300 boys going for 60 places.

At 13 prep schools pre-select so competition in the exam is much less severe but they still have to come up to very high standard.

They do not have common entrance anymore because there are so many schools around here

They all set their own exams because they can ask more searching questions then CE or SP do.

SP ask the same topics but in a more searching way to find out how much a boy knows about the topic.

BTW DH school do not pre-select boys into who should do the scholarship stream that is done by prep school.

They have no influence which boys do scholarship stream or exam.

Prep schools do all the deciding, in this area anyway.

Which subjects do you specially want books for?

Hope that is of some help.

Let me know if you want any more help.

BTW if a prep school is doing its job properly it should only put boys up for schools where they will cope to be fair to the boy,

but sometimes to keep their successes up they cram them and then are not being fair to the boy or his family.

They have to get a good exam result agreed, but if the boy has spent the last 2 years doing past papers they probably would do.

Then they get to senior school and struggle

I know that isn't the case with either of your children Ameriscot2004 or MIGGY they are obviously top high flyers.

But it is just very sad when parents ask DH why their sons are finding it hard to keep up with the work.

Kangamummy-thank you
In case anyone else is interested, these books were mentioned in the telegraph today. They look really good and I have ordered some. You can download some chapters to get an idea.
French looks like it would be generally good for gcse as well.
galore park

I am glad that you have found some books for DS

I am sure that he will do very well in his exam when it comes to it.

He sounds a brill young man