Grammar school

[Lsgandhi]

Our first born went from an independent primary to the local grammar at Elena plus.

Do kids in the grammars continue to be tutored or get parental support.? What is the experience of others here?

The independent primary school provided good support and we did not need any extra coaching .

I have another child preparing for eleven plus and looking at all options as the local indie provides good support for GCSEs.

Thanks

There's no rule, but among my friends (DD in Y11 doing GCSEs), the only parents who are not either tutoring or providing a lot of parental support are those with children in top public schools.

Everyone else is doing whatever extra is needed to help with exams. I know a lot who tutored from Y10, very few before then, and almost everyone in Y11 in at least one subject.

My two went to grammars and didn’t have continued tutoring. I think if they need tutoring whilst there it’s not the right school for them.

They did have tutors to help pass the eleven plus, but state schools locally don’t prepare you for thuus, and the exams had stuff they’d never done before.

Most people at my son's grammar school had tutoring. The teaching was pretty awful TBH and we went privately for secondary with the other 2 kids.

Incidentally, he didn't have tutoring to get in, I just did some papers with him.

Nobody at either of my DCs grammar schools were tutoring. The schools were explicit in their advice that the children are competitive and put pressure on themselves, as parents it was our role to ensure they had time to relax, socialise and do non-academic hobbies.
The little tutoring I saw was for children struggling with science whose parents were planning on them becoming doctors.

I think worth noting what age kids are now.

For many of the current Y10/11/12, they all spent the early years of secondary school in lockdown and therefore missed a lot of the foundations for subjects depending on how often bubbles burst and how good online schooling is.

The experience of someone with DC who aren't in that cohort is likely to have been very different.

Homeschooling also meant that parents are less inclined to trust things to school, and quicker to reach for the wonders of online tutoring.

DS is year 7 grammar school. Some of the parents are super pushy eager beavers on the WhatsApp group and are certainly supervising their kids homework but I've no idea about tutoring. Most if not all were tutored to get in.
DD is at indie and as far as I know most are not being tutored. At prep school the education was poor and most kids seemed to need extra help so alot tutored to get into the public schools starting in year 9.

Thanks

My DS is at grammar and neither he nor his friends have any tutoring or parental help. It is expected at their school that they manage and take responsibility for their work themselves. Those that are not coping are provided with additional support. They are only given a certain amount of homework per day and are expected to report it they get more than that. They are also expected to take part in extra curricular activities. There may be boys who are tutored at GCSE level, but that is common across all schools in our area including independent schools.

Our DS’ grammar doesn’t give any additional support, no additional work for the traditional subjects or support for the newer ones like food science or PE which are new .
The point with the GCSE tutoring is, if that is the norm then when do you start? We started prep for the eleven plus at the beginning of year 5 , roughly 8 to 9 months before the test but others may have started sooner, later and sone may be no extra help at all.

I’ve had two DC go through grammar.

Dc1 we did some 11+ books together, no tutoring and he passed. No tutoring during his time at school apart from the last 3 months before A levels he had help in his weakest A level from a neighbours daughter who was the year above him at school and had finished the year before with an A.

Dc2 did have a tutor during y5 for 11+ as I had a new baby and couldn’t do it myself. He is currently sitting his GCSEs. He hasn’t had tutoring so far. If he needs help during his A levels then we’d be happy to get him a tutor for maths as I hear it’s a huge step up. He’s hoping for an 8, but I’ve heard A level maths is ruthless and just because they did well at GCSE doesn’t mean they won’t struggle.

I know several of their friends had tutors for weaker subjects, especially maths, during exam years 10-13. I don’t know about lower down the school.

I would say that people started tutoring in Sciences in Y10, the amount of content is crazy and teacher shortages are common.

Otherwise the key point for us (and others) was December of Y11 after getting November mock results - and that was generally Maths and/or English.

Post March mocks, another tranch looking for Maths/English/Sciences and content heavy subjects like Geography.

We've done 8 weeks of English with an amazing tutor and it's made a huge difference to confidence.

A lot will also depend on your relationship with your child and their work ethic/revision habits. I am never going to attempt to tutor my child - I don't have that kind of patience and I don't know the spec, so paying someone for an hour a week is preferable!

I'm not sure what you mean by your DS's grammar not giving additional support/work. Presumably your DS receives teaching at school, and homework is set. Why would you expect your DS's grammar school to provide more than any other state school in preparing for GCSEs?

My DD is in Y9 at a state grammar. It has not occurred to us to arrange any tutoring for her. She is being well taught at school, as far as we can tell, and she is doing well. I am confident that, unless she suffers some sort of crisis, she will achieve very good GCSE results because she is a bright child being taught well at school. The only reason tutoring might be needed would be if the school struggles to provide good teaching for a particular subject and DD can't fill in the gaps at home.

(We didn't pay for any tutoring for the 11 plus either - just supported her at home with workbooks.)

Parental support or tutoring. I mentioned both

My experience is people only do tutoring when a child is struggling. Eg all my kids have had maths tutoring because they meeded extra help to get through GCSE. I wouldn't expect most kids in grammar to be having extra tutoring. I would expect most to have parental input/interest though.

For me the question would be to those who did not tutored did your child achieved straight 9 (or even some 8) without? I agree if you need tutoring to do well enough then Grammar may not be the place, but is grammar (on it's own) enough to get mostly 9?

DS just started boys grammar school. Alot of the parents seem very interested, supervising homework and taking end of year tests very seriously. What surprises me is the school does well in A levels for a state school in our county but not as well as the girls grammar school nor the largely non selective public school. So why is that? The kids run out of steam having been pushed so much and without the pushing nothing happens? Boys are inherently lazy and need continuous pushing?

@Lsgandhi I was responding to this comment you made:

"Our DS’ grammar doesn’t give any additional support, no additional work for the traditional subjects or support for the newer ones like food science or PE which are new ."

That seemed to imply that you thought your DS's grammar school ought to provide more support/work, beyond the normal class teaching and homework.

My (state) grammar son had a tutor for English in year 11 as he missed so much of the basics in year 7 & 8 due to lockdowns. We could see from his assessments in years 9 and 10 that this was his weakest subject and was getting 3s and 4s. He got 7 and 8 in gcse as the tutoring helped it click into place. He’s now doing eng lit A level and predicted an A.

I spoke to his English teacher at the start of year 11 to get her opinion and she tailored a plan of his weak areas which the tutor focussed on. He was also a little weak in history - essay structures and timings, but his history teacher felt that if he could get this nailed in English then it would help in history and he wouldn’t need a tutor for that and he was right as he got an 8 in the end. He had an hour a week (with a weekly task in his own time) and we paid £35 per hour.

TL/DR: targeted tutoring for specific weak areas/subjects was useful for my son - we worked out the plan with his teachers and the tutor worked to that plan.

I teach in a grammar school. A few students have tutoring if they are struggling in a specific subject, though not until at least Year 10 as far as I'm aware.

Our DS’ grammar doesn’t give any additional support, no additional work for the traditional subjects or support for the newer ones like food science or PE which are new .

I don't really understand this comment. Do you mean additional work for everybody, or help for individual students who are struggling? As for new subjects - they are taught starting with the basics, as all subjects are when you begin them.

DD is at a state comprehensive.

In Y11, they have holiday revision classes in every half term and holiday across subjects.

Today, for example, there are 3 maths sessions running for students targeting Foundation, Higher 5-7 and Higher 7-9. Tomorrow there is a 5 hour music revision class, and a repeat of the maths.

Sciences have had Saturday revision classes online since the start of the year and after school 3 days a week. Saturday in person for English and Maths - again divided depending on your target grade.

Geography and Music run before school sessions every morning since January.

Seems to be provision for pretty much every subject.

I top up with private tutors purely because DD is clever with SEN and it works best when she is taught 1:1, but otherwise I probably wouldn't need to.

All four of mine are at/have been at grammars - they all had some 11+ tutoring, but none of them had subject tutoring until now - my youngest DC is finishing Y10 and his end of year exams have shown he needs help with physics.

As a PP poster said, Covid hit him hard, and a lot of the 'building blocks' were missed so he's struggled a bit once the concepts got harder. Recruitment of specialist science subject teachers has also been a bit sketchy - so we have found that some of the teachers they have had latterly have not been as strong, necessitating a bit of infilling of knowledge.

My older three all sailed through without any additional support and have done really well in their public exams. I wouldn't say tutoring was standard in the grammars until public exam time and even then, it's not that common (IME)