Prep school preparation for senior school scholarships

[MrPickles73]

How far in advance do prep schools start actively preparing potential scholars for the scholarship exams / assessments by senior schools. Our prep (non selective outside London and the SE) has only just started at the start of Year 8 and the assessments are next term. This all feels too little, too late. Am I unreasonable to think they should have started at the beginning of year 7? I'm talking preparation of Art portfolios, practicing non verbal reasoning etc. Thankyou

Surely scholarships are awarded for natural talent? If you’ve got “it” then you shouldn’t need endless preparation.

Also, the school should (rightly) be concentrating on getting ALL of the children into their first choice school. Scholarships are just the icing on the cake.

My DD has a scholarship in a creative subject. All of the work had already been done (photos, experience, exam certificates etc.). It was just a case of collating it all and spending a couple of weeks working on a piece required for the assessment process. Absolutely not something she needed to spend over a year on.

At our SW London Prep there is a dedicated scholarship stream from Year 7.

Bateleur my expectation was dedicated scholarship stream from Year 7. Unfortunately we live in a very rural area so there is not a massive choice of schools and ours is quite small.

You are quite right the school is focused on getting everyone into their school BookwormButNoTime but certainly for an academic scholarship there is additional material to cover so its hard for the teacher to do that whilst teaching everyone..

Thanks, it seems different schools have different approaches..

It varies. For CAS and specific scholarship exams it was year 6 onwards. For those entering for schools who just award on entrance exam performance there was nothing special. Sports, music etc were ongoing.

They are getting rid of the scholorship financial advatage everywhere now. All schools in my city collaborated to do it in one hit this year. Bursaries only now. Bursaries will prioritise those that do best in the exam though.

cantba in many cases scholarships are only worth 5-10%. Some schools do 'look more favourably' on those who get scholarships for bursary applications but I understand this is being phased out too.
It's more about the kudos than the cash ;-)

At first reading it sounds late but actually if the preceding terms have been well-taught and productive then preparation for scholarships should be able to start in Y8. My DS went into the Scholars’ class in autumn of Y8 (non-selective country prep).The curriculum had been well and truly covered and they spent the autumn preparation working together on scholarship questions and papers for the major schools so that they were all able to handle papers in a range of styles. I don’t know about Art or Music awards though. Does your prep have a reasonable track record in achieving awards? If so they probably know how it’s done so as to balance demands of the process with pupils’ well-being. Good
luck, @MrPickles73

Thanks Catherston79 that gives me some comfort. English seems pretty secure. Maths a little wobbly as they have all been in one class til now so I suspect haven't covered everything they could have. But DS is more secure in maths. We're also doing Art and it seems a last minute scramble to rustle up a portfolio..
School has a very good track record but there has been a change in a couple of key staff and what with that changing schools during second COVID lockdown and lockdown itself I just feel they've dropped the ball somewhat. But I tell myself overall they know what they are doing!

Yes same where we are. A friend who is applying for Sevenoaks was saying they’ve really tightened up on bursaries too (as in the criteria that needs to be met). Not sure if this is true of other schools?