11+, very slow worker, any experiences or tips?

[Ceravera]

My daughter is sitting the 11+ in September. She is a bright girl and I am confident she has the ability to get into the school we want, but she works very slowly. On average she is completing 35/50 of the maths and 50/80 of the VR in the allotted time. Her accuracy is pretty good, but unless she picks up the pace she won’t score highly enough. Anyone been in this position and had their child get quicker with practice? For her it’s a mix of getting a bit distracted and just generally working at a slow pace.

My daughter was the same - she's very bright but easily distracted, especially when doing something she doesn't want to do!

She had a tutor (who found the distractedness infuriating!) and we did lots of practice papers over the summer. I resorted to bribery in the end - every time she finished a paper (regardless of the score) within the time, I gave her a 'voucher' for a Starbucks drink or something. It really worked as it incentivised practice, improved exam technique (crucial for the 11+) and gave her confidence... This last one was the clincher I think - once she realised that it was actually possible to complete the test in the time, she believed in herself much more.

It could be that if she is a slow worker she
wouldn’t keep up in a grammar school though. The 11+ is not just about being bright it’s the whole package which includes speed of thinking and response

Either see if she can have extra time if there is an issue causing her to be slower or just timed practice?

Agree. 11+ is brutal it is about thinking and working out answers quickly.
Grammar schools are expecting students to learn a lot in a short space of time!

She'll get quicker over the Summer. I tutor lots of children for the 11+ and at the moment I'm interested in accuracy over speed. The timings will improve. 😊

Practise, practise, practise....my fourth child was like this, easily distracted and a bit slow, but scored highly on the answers he did....we just did lots of short bursts of questions over the summer, with long papers at the weekends and it was fine. We also worked on using gut instinct/choosing something rather than leaving a question blank if he really had no idea, on the basis he had a chance of picking up a mark rather than throwing one away. (It would depend what area you are in though as I'm not sure if some places have negative marking.)

For those saying it will be a struggle if they get in - he has done very well at the grammar. The pace is fast but he's risen to the challenge and "loves school". His siblings all went and although I had reservations (and we had a solid Plan B!) he's proved me wrong.

I do know of a child who was like this. Her parents made her spend every day of the summer holidays doing practice papers, no play dates, holiday or fun activities. She passed with a good mark. She continued to work at a snails pace in class and I had reservations about whether grammar was the right environment for her. no question she was bright, but the amount of pressure and tutoring it took for her to get in, plus how well (or not) she coped in a mixed primary class, suggested to me grammar school wasn’t for her, but her parents didn’t want to hear it.

Just to add following other comments, I'm a secondary school teacher and actually hugely ideologically opposed to the grammar system. It took a lot of soul searching to accept that I was going to have to go against my beliefs on this for my daughter but, the fact is, a) where we live there aren't many good options at all at the moment and b) my DD is quite clearly a 'grammar school child' so I needed to help her get to the right school for her. To not do this would have been absolutely the wrong thing to do.

It is an enduring falsehood that tutoring kids sets them up to struggle in a school that's too hard for them. The test is very hard - only a small proportion of children would pass it having never seen a practice paper or had any intervention to help them understand the nuances. Similarly, a smallish number of kids wouldn't pass even if they'd had huge amounts of tutoring and practice. There are an enormous amount of kids in the middle of this spectrum who have a chance of passing if they understand how the test works.

The test, therefore, is absolutely set up to favour wealth and privilege... If you can afford tutoring and have the wherewithall to help your child practice, your child is in a much better position to pass. It's hugely telling that private/prep schools often sell themselves as 11+ test prep centres whereas ordinary primary schools aren't allowed to teach their students the test or how to pass it.

Anyway, sorry for ranting but - it's perfectly reasonable to help your ten year old to understand how to pass a very difficult test that has a bearing on the school they will go to, especially if their main struggle is focus/exam technique - anyone who tells you otherwise is absolutely wrong.

Thanks for the supportive comments. I believe she would cope very well at a grammar - she is not particularly slow across the board but she is slow with these style of questions which are very much specific to the 11+ (doubt she will need to do this sort of VR again afterwards) so I feel it’s more about working with her and learning how to get quicker at them. It’s encouraging to hear about children who did get quicker as time went on!

We don’t live in a brilliant area for schools and our local school is not right for her in many ways, so this is our best option and she loved the two schools we are considering. We will absolutely not be working her all day every day for the person who implied we might. We are doing 20-30 minutes a day over the holidays and one test paper a week. If that isn’t enough then so be it and we will accept that outcome, her childhood and happiness is our priority.

@Ceravera We did about 2 hours total a week in the summer before the exam - so you sound as though you are doing the right things, and practising without pressuring - which is key. (Good luck - and having been through it 4 times, I know how hard it is to tread the tightrope of sounding chilled out about it, whilst ensuring they are doing enough but not too much!)

I agree with FridayNightFever that the system is horrible and unfair - we are in Kent and the preps market themselves with their 11+ success rate (and many of the prep children are tutored on top) but the state primaries are completely forbidden from doing any preparation with their cohorts - even 'clubs' at lunchtime. However, if you have a bright child, you want them to be stretched you have to work with the system you have. My eldest was bored rigid in primary, teased for being 'a professor' just because he loved learning - he absolutely flew at the grammar and is now at Cambridge. If he'd been a talented footballer or good at drama, perhaps others wouldn't have had an issue with him being at a specialist music or sports academy/school, but if you have a super bright child, somehow it's wrong if you want them challenged, and sadly, not every school can manage that with mixed ability cohorts.

It could be a processing speed issue especially if she is slow but accurate.

Yes maybe slow processing. It’s specific questions in particular - like those VR ones when you have to find the next code in the sequence. She gets them all right but it’s quite a painstaking process counting back and forth along the alphabet line! There’s also an element of her not knowing when to stop and move on - like if she can’t see a number sequence straight away she will stay on the question and really focus until she spots it. But if she had moved on she probably would have picked up several more marks. So it’s getting her to understand that.

could you break the tests down and start with a smaller number of questions and length of time? e.g. if there's 40 questions to be done in an hour start with her doing 10 questions in 15 minutes so it's less overwhelming. Does she have a watch or clock in front of her so she knows how long she's got left? I'd also remove all possible distractions because in test conditions it'll just be her and the exam paper.

I think timed practice and exam technique is the way to go. If she feels the first questions are too easy, and she's getting distracted as a result, investigate starting at the back with a system of starring questions to come back to?

Regular practice. That's all she needs, and from there the speed will improve over the next few months.

I'm a particular fan of using the CGP workbooks (which are topic based) and the CGP 11+ Practice Papers. Do the ages 9-10 and ages 10-11 books (plus the 10-minute tests ones) and once they're done with those then do some of the EPP papers.

Good luck!

This was my daughter this time last year. Exactly that:) what we saw overtime was that the more she did the same question type, the faster she got .by early August she could do all codes with her eyes shut. So plenty of “ typical” question practice and she will pick up speed. Atom learning was super helpful because we could just focus on tricky question types over an over ( not too long, 15 min every day) and things god much faster

my DD scored well in all 4 modules and ended up getting into several high ranked indies ( no local grammar schools unfortunately).

good luck to your girl! Lots of Bitesize practice and plenty of gentle reassurance ❤️

I know this is an old thread but how did your daughter get on in the end? I could have written this post -my daughter is very slow at VR and NVR and we’re practicing alphabet codes right now as that is one of her main struggles 😄.

As others have said, practice makes perfect. The more practice tests your child does the more used they will get to the speed they need to work at. We used a combination of the 10 minute tests books and the younglearning online platform to get the pacing just right.