How smart do you need to be to pass 11+

[Mumofgirls12341]

My 9 year old is in year 5 and preparing for 11+ and I was just wondering how smart does a child actually need to be in order to secure a place? We’re aiming at London super selectives Latymer, HBS and Woodford County Girls School.

DD has always been exceeding/greater depth since reception but I wouldn’t say she is exceptionally bright - does she have a decent shot? I have heard of people saying it’s almost impossible to get into these schools so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

True. There are grammar schools who’s entrance exams align to KS2. They do this to give state kids a fighting chance. The problem is that these tests can can be more heavily tutored than non-KS2 aligned tests. And there is some evidence to suggest KS2 aligned testing ‘dumbs things down’ and children who do well in these entrance exams don’t always do well at (or fit in at) grammar.

So it does suggest to me that KS2 is probably not worth the paper it’s written on. It’s just the basics a child should be able to do to be ‘literate’. Your child should be forming well in excess of KS2 standards to be considered for grammar. For DSD I decided to stop all KS2 homework while we prepped for her superselective 11+ and I basically taught her myself using materials I obtained from the school directly. It was so, so difficult.

theres a bell curve and most kids who get in will be bunched up around a band of scores say 116-120 for example

DD was scoring around 115 without any prep - slightly less for NVR, much more for English/comprehension. That wasn't nearly enough for Henrietta. OP is targeting the very top super selective in the country :)

That's how one ends up jumbling SAT scores with Atom Learning 11+ scores, resulting in a comparison of different things and abilities at different levels.

Sorry I don't understand what you're talking about. Atom lets you choose a target school and do mocks specifically for it. DD did five mocks for Henrietta and the scores are from HBS bell curve on Atom. What does SAT have to do with it?

Atom score 115 is around 20% of the samples who actually opt in and took the specific Atom mock test. Your quoted PP refers to the KS2 score, where 115-120 is among the top 10% of all state primary school students in the country.

With different exam contexts and populations, you just can't compare two Bell curves.

PP didn't say it was about SAT 🤷‍♀️ The thread is about two London super selectives OP is targeting so I'm not sure how even Kent grammars would be relevant, let alone state SAT.

There are some super-selective schools in Kent. You also agree on a PP comment about SATs, though I'm not sure that is relevant.

Back to the OP's question: if NVR is lower than the 20th percentile of the exam population, the chances for HBS are very slim because the 11+ entrance exam heavily focuses on NVR. For Latymer, there is no NVR but there is VR and Maths in the first round, so the focus is different. The variety of 11+ test subjects for different schools makes it harder to say what you mean by 'smart' ., let alone how..

Very, only something like the to 10% can pass. Basically a/a* students.

Sutton only tests Maths and English at both stage 1 and 2 and is largely superselective. Wilson’s School achieved 95% 7-9 GCSEs and 98% Astar/A/B at A level in the 2023 exams (and they keep the boys and do not cream off high achieving girls into their Sixth Form, like some other grammars). These are all kids who are going to get top grades, which are also the kids who are going to get top SATs results, typically.

Too much handwringing going on as usual, trying to deny that some children are just clever. You can prepare for London superselectives and some parents go over the top, but you cannot get an average child in. It is just not possible. The results of these schools speak for themselves. A top 10% child may have a chance. The point is it is difficult for the parents to tell if their child is top 10 per cent or top 5 % etc. For these schools, you need to be amongst the top few in your typical primary class. Inherently fast and good at Maths and an avid reader. You cannot start picking up a book at the end of Year 4 so early reading helps.
That means amongst the top 3 in a class of 30. But usually those that get in easily without too much prep are in the top 2 per cent. That is 2 out of 100 children.
There are plenty of top 1-2% kids in plenty of other non selective London schools too though. What the grammars can offer is some more academic subjects, lots of kids doing eg GCSE Music, Latin, AdMaths (not just Further Maths). AdMaths is hard and almost half an A level and gets you UCAS points. Plenty of comps just do not offer it. Or do not offer the full range of language choices an academic child may want. But then the grammars may not offer all the DT options. So a parent needs to choose wisely, depending on what they know about their child age 10. And children can and do change their interests.

No shortage of knickers getting in a twist on this thread.

Some people want their kids to get into a highly academic school and are happy to tutor them heavily from age 6/7.

I have no problem with this (and no, it's not what I chose to do either).

Errm, no... I didn't agree with PP on SAT because it didn't occur to me you can base your 11+ predictions on them. DD's school doesn't do them so I wouldn't know her SAT score.

My understanding is that SATs are much later in Y6 so you wouldn't know their scores anyway before 11+?

Regarding KS2 Sats, my point was simply that all children in state schools are tested by schools at age 10/11. Often people come onto grammar threads and moan about how inhumane it is to test 10/11 year olds. When in fact Government mandates it.

Our state primary school does a ton of SAT revisit from January of year 6 until SAT time. I was simply pointing out that my DC did a lot of revision for this at school. Unsurprisingly, our school tends to top the league tables locally, lots of kids get into grammars and many get into top sets at comps and go on to do very well. People select this primary because it is high achieving and works the kids quite hard.

If we wanted a fairer grammar system for all then the work should be done at primary school so that poorer bright children get a chance too. Like reserve some places for after SAT results, at least for FSM type thing. It isn’t really a controversial thing I am saying.

Oh I see now @yousf meant your comment @Araminta1003 😂

Yes yousf, I tend to agree with Araminta on many points, and it would be OTT to explain every detail to every poster :)

Some children from the( state) school that I teach at got in to HBS and Latymer in recent years. I can say that they were all in the top 4 or 5 in their year at primary school ( in fairly high-achieving cohorts) but not necessarily stand-out brighter than anyone else in that small top group. I can also say that they were quite heavily tutored and very hardworking, with a serious attitude towards their work.
Those particular school are more competitive to get into because there are very few selective state schools in the area; it's not just a question of being in the top 10 or 20%. I do not know any children who got into those schools in the last 10 years without being tutored, although it hasn't always been like that - I went to one of those schools with no tutoring at all, as did some of my friends.

@DelphiniumBlue I have a similar observation. It's likely the top 15% of the primary cohort that gets into these schools. However, they aren't necessarily in the top 5% in terms of actual ability, but typically benefit from very involved tutoring and parents supplementing their 11+ exam preparation from early years to gain advantage.

I tend to agree you on some points, exept for many of them I think make no sense.

There were 2615 applicants this year to Latymer. Kids with extremely high scores were not in top 700. Overheard several chats at school gates from parents talking about strategies to rent second homes to be in the catchment, wholly off putting and grim.

I don’t really understand the grammar school system as I’ve not lived in an area with them. So children are tutored to get in so not necessarily the smartest children just the children of parents who can afford to pay for tutors from an early age. What happens when they get in? Do they get dropped when the school realises they’re not so smart or are they tutored the whole way through. Or is the teaching that much better that the average children still do well? Seems a lot of pressure on young children and not much fun.

I have to say it’s often implied that only heavily tutored children get into grammar, it’s just not true. I went to school with kids who were very clever. A lot of them were asian (as am I, as this comes up a lot), but they didn’t struggle once they got in. They were actually just really quite bright and it shows at GCSE and A-Level (there was quite a lot of messing about at school as well so these weren’t kids how were being beaten at home with a ruler).

The algebra stuff is over egged imo, a reasonably bright kid can work out how to figure that out. I wasn’t taught any algebra and it was definitely in my paper (I remember being slightly horrified, not tutored, only a couple of weeks of practice,had to work it out in the exam) and I’m not very clever by any stretch of the imagination, (top sets but definitely found it hard going compared to others). Today, yes being introduced to it is probably necessary so you can get through it quickly but it’s not impossible.

There will be a lot of competition around the lower entry point where tutoring may make a difference but the truly gifted (definitely not talking about myself, I would have probably failed if I were sitting it today) really don’t need much help. For some reason it makes people feel uncomfortable that there are people who manage to obtain places because they are just smart.

It’s not a matter of just buying a place, especially at super selectives. If you get into one of those with the intensity of competition then you are most likely just very capable. It’s not something you do it’s just what you are, roll of the genetic dice, like being extremely beautiful.

This with bells on and the vAT will only make them more elite

My dear DD got in second round HBS this year. Only the top 300 amount 3000+ girls will be picked to the second stage. Questions are harder and lots.

This is just scare tactic talk. I taught in a super selective grammar mentioned here before and maybe one exceptional kid in a generation could do that.

My kid competed in Maths since they were little and got Gold in the IMC since year 3, which aims at 14-16 yo. They might have got 90%+ in the Maths but no chance of getting anywhere near 80% in the nvr paper. Vr and English would be around 30%. They went on to get full marks in the one grammar school exam they took and full scholarship in some of the big name private schools. My kid would have been considered not capable according to this crazy criteria.

For everyone else reading, tutoring is a necessary devil and don’t believe for 1s if anyone says their kid got in without tutoring. Tutoring takes many different forms and can be done on the cheap. Even if you have no money for formal classes, it is still doable, just need lots of time, determination, natural ability of course and a bit of luck.

@GHGN, you wrote “My kid competed in Maths since they were little and got Gold in the IMC since year 3, which aims at 14-16 yo. ”

Why was your child taking the Intermediate Maths Challenge rather than the Junior Maths Challenge, with the chance of qualifying for the Junior Kangaroo and possibly the Junior Maths Olympiad?
Or, was in pre-2021? IIRC then there were different mark boundaries for gold, silver and bronze depending on the age of the student. Were there even boundaries for those awards if you were theoretically too young to be entered for that Challenge?

The IMC is for Years 8-12.

The Junior Challenge is for up to Year 8 and I assume the expectation would be for children to get top marks in that one.

And yes my friend and many other tutors in the area have their pick of students and prefer to take the top students. And yes many able students would be rejected if they couldn’t meet her benchmark criteria. That’s life.