How hard is it to get into Tiffins ?

[OneRoseBee]

My DS has been prepping for 11 plus for Sutton grammar schools and Tiffin. Our first preference is Tiffins as we are in catchment and don’t have to move house. I was looking at EPP practice paper and wow it’s quite difficult. I felt its beyond year 6 curriculum and so unfair to expect children to be able to solve them. My question is anyone has their children join Tiffin recently ? I would like to understand a bit more of your experience and how close is the actual test paper to EPP. Please advice !

My nephew goes, he’s very smart and studied very hard. Private tutoring twice and week since y3.

but surely the whole point of the 11+ is that it’s beyond year 6 curriculum to identify the most academic students? no one's not expected all students to be able to solve them just looking for the ones who can

It's one of the most challenging ones to get into. Children need thorough preparation for years beforehand as the expectations and competition are really quite high.

That said, if you've got a smart and capable child, don't let that put you off. Just be aware that you'll need to work really hard.

It’s hard, probably the top 1-2 boys in a given school year 6 would get in.
They do say the curriculum tested is only what they would have learned on the NC up to sitting the test, but that the questions are expressed in different ways to find the boys who think about these things differently.
DS says a lot that the 11+ was harder than the school work!!
He tutored once a week from year 5
There is no magic to it, you learn the curriculum then do practice papers.

If I’m honest, unless he’s been getting extra tutoring sessions out of school since the beginning of at least upper ks2 (if not before), he has no chance.

make sure he has second choice schools, and the bonus of not going to Tiff’s is that he could go somewhere his mates are going to.

don’t make going there a big deal and tell him he’s not under any pressure to get in.

There seems to be some misconceptions about passing the tests. Like Flamango above, my DS had tutoring once a week from the start of Y5. He was not a stand out at primary school or even in the top 1-2 in his year (that depends on who else is there!) but was always ‘greater depth’ for maths & English.

The real difference was enjoyment factor - he loved doing the harder work with his tutor and hated doing anything he perceived as easy (or anything being repeated) at primary school. It meant he would do the practice questions and tutoring homework without any moaning. Hes also been an avid reader for many years.

He’s heading to Tiffin in September - but without that enjoyment factor I don’t think it would’ve been the right school (and I don’t think he’d have got in).

When you have hundreds of extremely clever children to chose between, the exam has to be hard to be able to distinguish between them.

I have heard rumours the maths is designed to be unfinishable, as otherwise lots of them would finish and become hard to distinguish!

My son passed the Tiffin exam last year. My understanding and my experience is that the exam does keep to year 6 curriculum. It is very challenging, but more because of the time pressure and the difficulty of the questions, not because it tests anything outside of year 6 curriculum.
Tiffin don't release the exam papers, so it's hard to be sure how close the sample papers we tried match the real Tiffin exam. But I had a go on the some of the maths sample papers and I can tell you that I would not get in - and it's not because the maths is too advanced, it's because my 40+ brain is way too slow to get through enough of the questions in time.
Exam approach/technique plays a big part - understanding which questions to spend time on, how to spend your time, and when to skip a question. I don't think anyone (except a few maths geniuses) will finish all the questions (my son certainly didn't). So having a strategy for which ones to pass on/skip is essential.

It is impossible to say 'how hard' it is to get into Tiffin without knowing a child’s natural ability and academic potential. The experience is completely different depending on the student's baseline.
For a child with CAT 141 the entrance exam might feel straightforward and within their natural reach. However, for a child with a CAT 110 it would be a massive, perhaps unrealistic, stretch requiring intense tutoring.
Success at Tiffin depends on whether the school is the right 'fit' for the child's innate pace. If a student has to be pushed to their absolute limit just to pass the test, they may struggle to keep up once they are in.