Help, 11+ tutor says ds COULD pass IF he made some effort but he isn't trying hard enough

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And ds admits he 'just couldn't be arsed' to try very hard on the practice paper homework he had to do for his tutor in the week. The tutor says he 'knows kids' and 'boys in particular' and the main issue is ds's engagement and lack of effort, he does think he's bright enough to potentially pass IF he works and tries harder.

How can I make him? Or can't I? Every bloody time he has to do these practice papers he throws an almight strop, cries, kicks off and it's a major PITA.

If he doesn't get into local grammar the alternatives are A) other local, in special measures, over my dead body B) we pay, which we could prob afford to do, given that dd goes to school in Sept (i.e. we could divert the amount that's been paying for nursery, which would cover it) but I really don't want to.

Any and all advice appreciated. I don't really knwo how to get him to work harder.

He doesn't get much homework at school, once a week for about an hour, so it's not as if he's over bloody worked imo. TIA for any words of wisdom.

what do you mean re avoiding xtended writing?? is it optional?? if you cat me can give you some good site / materials (feel embaressed at touting other sites on here endlessly like some mad paid evangelist) that can really help with that and are good fun too.
if you have faith in your tutor that is a v good start!
i really liked the vr (and got raaaather good at it). the nvr is pants and ds was much better than me at it.
i think i realised key for me was to identify what he needed to be actually taught first, then to practice, then to practice to time, then to focus on getting best possible accuracy.....
re marking, i did mark once he started doing timed tests (and made him go through ones he got wrong was a great incentive to accuracyas he hated that more than anything!)
you need a reward system (tailored to your ds's interests and personality). effort should be rewarded. "failure" should be ignored as should bad attitude.

Have had three children in grammar school system, one just started. I don't think they do have much more homework than local comprehensiveS, sometimes less actually, do more work at school perhaps?? iIt may be more once they start doing GCSE work (i.e. may take different GCSEs) It's definitely the getting in that is the greatest hurdle and if they are not 'over tutored' they will be fine once they are there. controlfreakyagain's advice is the best but do check which tests they administer...first time round wasted loads of money and time on books/tests not applicable to the grammar schools round here (only test verbal reasoning) but independents do other tests. Also it is much harder to get into the grammar schools here than into the local independents IMO.

respect bagsfor life! that is an impressive success rate! well done you (and your dcs)

Remember my middle one DS2 was the lazy one who didnt get in the sixth form though!!! Did still get to university....and still v lazy, unfortunately takes after me which is why I am on mumsnet and not doing the housework. Seriously though, if they are bright it IS just the getting in that is the problem, and even then its all a bit of a lottery. In our grammar school it was rumoured the score between the top and bottom score to get in was only 8 marks or something...don't mean to scare you!

hi www, will come back to this tonight and read it properly (had internet connection problems). Got as far a Roisin's suggestions about the 10 minute bond papers - little and often is good IME.

I take your point about not wanting to move, www, but if that's the case you need to find some way of dealing with the possibility that your son doesn't get into any selective school. It may not be down to laziness, or any failure on your part - you and your son can only do what you can, and you're not allowed to nobble the opposition

Education is important, but it is not a matter of life and death. You need to maintain a sense of proportion, which will be hard if your son is spending all his spare time working towards an exam for which failure isn't an option. (I think a couple of hours a night is excessive, but clearly others on this thread disagree. If they had found that someone else down the road was putting in four hours a night like that poor child on the TV programme a few years ago, would they have done the same? You have to draw the line somewhere.)

WWW, I'll be facing all this again in the not too distant future with my second son, so this is a timely reminder of the lovely angst ridden time ahead

Ok, here are a few random thoughts.

First, those 10 minute bond papers sound great and I will definintely be getting some in a year or so.

Do practise maths (we did this more than any other subject) especially things like geometry and long multiplication. IME some of the maths questions assume a basic knowledge of mathematical terms (a trapezium for instance). Easy if you know this, virtually impossible to guess if you don't. And missing a single maths question could be the difference between passing or failing.

My son tells me at his grammar school, lots of his class got just one or two marks above the pass rate (calculated as an average over the four papers). Just scraping in is not unusual and no one has been 'outed' for struggling to attain the academic standards. I know of one girl who failed by one mark and then got offered a place just before term began and she's doing fine. IME how you pass the 11+ does not accurately determine how you get on in year 7.

The workload at my son's grammar school in year 7 was less than what he got at primary school in year 6. Even now he is in year 8, his homework is no more than an hour an evening and often a lot less.

Which brings me onto lazyness. Always a problem with my son. I am sure there is more homework he could do, but I don't get to hear of it as it does not get added to his planner. He coasts by. However, talking to his teachers, I do think they genuinely didn't pile on homework in year 7 as the children have such a massively new routine and school to get used to. Ds's friends at private school got far,far more homework.

It was a HUGE struggle getting my son to buckle down and work for his 11+. Warning - you will need a bit of time off from work in the weeks leading up to the exams. I realised I could not leave the coaching to his tutors. I had to sit with him and get involved. It helped highlight what he was really struggling with - ds was able to pull the wool over the eyes of his tutors a little bit. However we never did more than an hour or two a day even on the days just before the exams. Mainly ds did between 10 - 30 minutes with me a few days a week along with 2 hours a week at a tutoring school.

I made a promise to my son that when he had done the 11+, the pressure would ease off. We didn't put much pressure on him to excel in his SATS later in the year. We also made a pact to let ds find his own level at grammar school. Apart from providing him with a quiet study space at home, I vowed to back off and let him sort out his homework for himself. The result was that ds very easily and happily settled into grammar school and coped with the work well enough.... and in the year 7 exams out of 220 pupils in his year came last for effort .

He is working a bit harder now, and I am being a bit more pushy again, but ds will always take a laid back approach to school work, I think. However I have seen a more competitive streak emerging. Ds does not want to be near the bottom in his class - it is not cool when so many of the children are getting good marks. He is happy to be average there and I am fine with this.

IMO being at this particular grammar school is really good for him precisely because he is so easily distracted. Had he been at a school with a larger proportion of students who wanted to mess around, where the general culture was one of underachievement, I am sure it would have been disasterous for him. Like you, www, the non seletive school choices that we faced were not good at all.

Going back to the 11+ exams themselves, in our area at least, it is commonly accepted taht the NVR text is the hardest of the four tests (the others being eng, maths and VR). I talked to someone who is an exam invigilator and she said this always seems the hardest. So it's definitely worth practising NVR and possibly warning your son that some tests may seem harder than others on the day.FWIW< the maths 11+ test according to my son and his friends was actually much easier than the bond papers and he got his best mark in this.

Can't think of much more at the moment - hacve to dash!

Forgot to add that it would in theory be great to see both schools, but it could also work against you.

For some totally random reason, your son just might prefer the comp school to the grammar. When we visited secondary schools, there was one grammar school both my son and I really disliked - he really didn't want to go there. And also there was one comp school he really liked. Had he only seen just that one grammar school, my son would have thought twice about working to pass his 11+! So, if it really is a two school choice for you, and you cannot see a variety of grammar schools, it may be best to play safe and not take your son to either school.

He might hate the grammar school with good reason, of course, in which case it might be better to find out before actually going there.

(I wonder whether we disliked the same one, tigermoth? )

Hallgerda, not sure if you are near me, but the dreaded school was an all boys one, just off the A2 (B---- Grammar). I know other parents (and their sons) who are full of praise for it, but neither my son or I felt it was 'right' when we looked round it.

Ah, I know the one. I didn't look at it as a potential school for DS1 as we're quite a long way away from there, but I've taken him to a chess tournament there and I've met, or know of, several pupils.

The one we couldn't stand was SO in the London Borough of B - I knew you were in the SE direction so wondered whether that was the one you were talking about. It was the most unbelievably dreadful school open day experience. I had the impression that the place didn't want to speak to anyone outside a select few, and that our faces didn't fit. The Economics teacher had put a load of equations on the board and was standing around to scowl at anyone who dared look in. We worked out it wasn't our sort of place quite quickly, so we hid round corners taking the mick out of the school statue collection. "Ooh look, there's a brillo pad playing Rugby, Mum!" "Oh dear, DS1, there's another one and they've gone and crucified it". If I'd ever been a smoker I'd have lit up behind the bike sheds. All the way back home we listened with incredulity to a bunch of Stepford mums eulogising about the ghastly institution to their spiritless sons. Have to say it was an extremely good mother and son bonding experience though...

Hallgerda - I think I know the one you mean!
I bet TM does too.

Hallgerda, I know it too. Ds1 and I had a similar reaction - what a horrible school!!! The teachers were awful and the children were just as bad - most of them wouldn't even speak to my ds!

And to add insult to injury, the headmaster couldn't even pronounce the name of the school correctly in his speech........

Grammar schools do suit bright but lazy boys, I teach enough of them who go on to do very well. It's a bit stereotypical but I see it time and time again, boys do well in tests and can't often really see the point in planning, redrafting or coursework!

For 11+ prep short sharp bursts once or twice a week are better, especially this far off. Suss out the areas on the test not covered by the primary curriculum, particularly in maths, make sure he understands what the vr is asking of him and work on timing (bright boys who should pass don't because of this).

Having taught in SE & Midlands grammar schools, there is not one typical grammar school environment. I would be wary about some (which shall remain nameless), but there are others which are excellent.

Ah hallgerda, I can think of a Bexley school that fits your description to a tee. Marina knows which one C&S by any chance? When ds and I went for the wince-making open day, I can remember asking a maths tutor (or it could have been an economics tutor) if the worksheets on display were typical of year 7 work. He said with great distain that the worksheets were far below the standard of work expected at the school, they were merely summer holiday worksheets designed for children leaving year 6. Other teachers simply turned away and ignored me when I asked questions.

What got me the most were the wooden plaques with lists of names on the walls of the school reception. They listed only those ex pupils who had got to Oxbridge - I guess other pupils, no matter what their achievements, did not merit being on the roll of honour.

Sorry www for the hijack. Hope you are finding some of this useful!

Message withdrawn

TM, after finally twigging which school Hallgerda and Queen Meabh are referring too below, that's three that have slumped down our list
Are you aiming for same for ds2? How fab would it be if mine and yours both managed to end up there...It's that or grow ds' hair and send him off to TGS in a skirt

i considered the cross dressing aspect for ds1..... far more choice for girls round our way...... thought might get hard when his voice broke.....

QueenMeabh, we are definitely talking about the same school. tigermoth - it's not in Bexley but in a different London borough beginning with B - one that only has one boys' grammar school.

tigermoth, one thing that impressed me about my local comp was the Head talking with real pride about a girl the school had helped to find work experience in midwifery. Yes, there were some Oxbridge successes, and they were mentioned too, but not in a qualitatively different way. Had it been a choice between that particular comprehensive and the grammar school with the open day from hell, I'd not have considered DS1 taking the 11+. As it was, we found a grammar school we did like better, and he's there and doing well. But if anyone wants a good default option, there are several houses for sale down my road . It's not quite as leafy as where you are, though, WWW.

Hallgerda, ah - a different borough beginning with B. I get it

Marina, perhaps best not to take our thoughts on grammar schools to heart. Between us, we're dissing rather a lot of your local options

The correct pronunciation is Olives not Olaves. My son attends this school and is very happy there. I don't know any stepford mums either!

No worries about hijack! Hallgerda, did you used to be someone else? Who?

Btw, ds's tutor came on Saturday and ds got 72 out of 80 although it took him AGES so he was pleased and so was his tutor. So he can do it, we just need to work on speed now. We have several books of 10min tests too and he's agreed to do one every night.

WWW, I've only ever been Hallgerda and variants apart from for a thread involving my children's primary school (and another few threads that day for which I forgot to change my name back again).

I'm glad to hear things are looking up

That's good news, www, and there's still loads of time before the exam.

Maddie, I hope you don't take these school comments to heart. I know of several parents who disliked my son's grammar school so much that they chose to pay for a private school instead, even when their child passed the 11+.