Super selective grammars - what is the standard?

[VarioPerfect]

I’ve got a year 3 DS (May birthday) - he’s alway had greater depth in all his school reports for all subjects, but I don’t think he is exceptional.

We live in East London and I don’t love our local secondary options, can’t afford private so considering grammar (and would move house to facilitate that). I dont know though how and when to work out if it’s worth putting DS through the ordeal of tutoring etc if it’s a waste of time. His school (state primary in East London) don’t have a track record of students applying for grammars so (though I will ask them) I’m not sure they will be much help.

Is there any kind of benchmarking test I could do that is reputable? And/or workbooks that it’s worth looking at/using to benchmark ourselves?

For context, DH and I both have first class degrees from Cambridge so can definitely support DS well in the process, but also - we were both absolute nerds at school, massive bookworms etc whereas DS most definitely is not. Not sure if this will come more with maturity as he’s obviously still only 7!

Non Oxbridge professionals here. We supported our son into a super selective without tuition per se. The entrance exams for the school were online for practice. We saw a couple of gaps in his maths because he hadn't been taught those topics and we simply looked at how those topics worked/were taught and taught him ourselves.

The entrance exam was in January and we did a little each day over the Christmas holidays (obviously not over Christmas itself).

It seems to me you would be able to do similar.

This is simply my view, but the majority of grammar students are not exceptional, but have been tutored to pass the 11+

My DD goes to an independent prep. The majority of students are there to secure a grammar place. The school has a success rate of 60% - because the children are taught by the school to pass the 11+

These are top 10 grammars in the country, so highly competitive. If you want a grammar place and you think he’d be a good fit for the school you have in mind then find a good local tutor and begin for year 4 latest.

Your DS state primary won’t do anything to help with 11+ because they’re not allowed to, unlike prep schools parent are literally paying for their child to be tutored to pass it. So you are kind of on your own. It also depends where you’re thinking? Kent grammars or moving to Bucks etc? They have different exams… some just do maths and English, others (ie Kent) also inc VR and NVR which do needed familiarisation time as your DS will not come across this at primary. Also bear in mind the maths usually covers things only right in yr6 so again check carefully what knowledge gaps there are. And finally timing. The 11+ is a fast paced text. Both my DC needed practice working at speed and being accurate at the same time! Try Atom learning maybe as a starting point or look at the grammar school websites you’re thinking of, they may have sample papers. Good luck, it’s doable, just requires a bit of commitment in the 6 months to a year beforehand.

Yes well as I say DS is not exceptional - he’s bright and in the top handful of his year but not the top, not massively ahead of his peers, quite slapdash and would rather play outside with his friends than read a book.

He would probably accept being tutored but (unlike eg me as a child) certainly wouldn’t do workbooks for fun. I just don’t want to put him (and myself) through what seems likely to be a stressful and potentially expensive process if he isn’t going to get in…but I assume most parents are in this position!

We live in east London atm so I was thinking of the Essex ones and potentially Latymer/DAO (though not in catchment, could move). My understanding is that they’re all extremely competitive.

Oh and I didn’t mean asking his school
for help with the prep (sorry) - I meant asking them to help me benchmark whether he might stand a chance of getting in.

Year 3 seems pretty early to me, but people on here say you need to start tutoring in year 4. I think the key thing to work out is not whether he could or would pass the test, but whether he'd be happy at school there.

Maybe ask yourself:

• does he like a challenge?

• does he like spotting patterns, such as how to win at various games?

• has he tried chess, and did he find it fascinating or boring?

• when he reads a story with new vocabulary, do you hear him using that vocabulary afterwards? (would he even enjoy a story with new vocabulary?)

The standard is incredibly high because of the sheer level of competition. I have friends whose children have successfully got into north London grammars and the amount of prep they did was absolutely huge. I’m talking no holidays for a year, daily work, intense tutoring and missing school for 11+ courses. They went to state primary.

Of course you will hear of children who got in without this, but I do believe they are the exception, not the norm these days.

I would always say give it a go because what do you have to lose, but I’d be cautious of moving house and banking on it in any way. The situation might well be different in other areas, I only know north London. Year 3 is quite young but you could perhaps try Atom Learning and see how your DC gets on with the practice tests.

We gave it a go and DD didn’t get in but we don’t regret trying and she was in no way scarred by the experience. She’s now very happy at secondary school.

I don’t love our local secondary options, can’t afford private so considering grammar (and would move house to facilitate that)
If you would move for Grammar then why not move anyway, to an area with acceptable secondaries?

That’s ok, but does your school offer a meeting in yr5 about where you’re thinking of for secondary? Because I’m in a grammar area where the majority of parents will put their child in for it the school have meetings with parents where they gently suggest where they think your child will do well based on their current working level and previous year’s work. Mainly to avoid 11+ disasters I think, tempering parents expectations etc. If yours don’t do a meeting like this as standard then I would just ask. They’re in the best position to say yes we think your child’s standard of work is grammar school level or no it’s not but they can’t say yes he’ll definitely pass.. which I’m sure you know anyway, it’s a massive game of chance having been through it twice with children who on paper were “dead certs” but actually one flew through the other passed by a whisker! One now at a super selective the other at a non-super selective grammar. Both had “light tutoring”, more familiarisation with test style than anything else.

For DAO you could move within 300 metres of the school and get a catchment place - I.e. get in without having to sit the exam. IIRC there are 22 catchment places - but double check on the website what the distance has been for the last few years. You’ll pay a premium to live there but I know plenty of families who have done it….

@Jumpingthroughhulas that sounds absolutely awful and what I feared. Apart from anything else, I work full time and I don’t want the limited time I have with DS (and DC2!) to be spent on cramming for years.

@Melarus Id probably answer yes to all of those. He’s very competitive with his friends (pack of rowdy boys) - always trying to be top on times tables rockstars etc. I don’t doubt he’d thrive in the environment, but he’d be 11 by then, whereas losing your free time to prep at 8 seems a bit unappealing.

@senua I haven’t found one that we like enough for all the upheaval to be worth it. Our local comps are fine, and I don’t know any within London that are materially better than fine.

DAO is insanely competitive and you’d need to start tutoring soon. Tutors in the local area can assess your child (online if too far) and tell you if they have a chance but even then DAO is such a lottery after sacrificing holidays, hours of tutoring and hours of prep.

If you want to apply to both Latymer and DAO you need to look at catchment carefully. If you live in EN6 you aren’t able to apply for Latymer.

Bond 11+ are the books you want,

They do English, maths, Vr and NVR.
i can’t comment on the standard as it varies from grammar to grammar.

https://www.bond11plus.co.uk/

I had this dilemma and settled on moving to a place where the comps were good. Getting in is only the start of the journey and I wasn’t confident that a super competitive academic environment would be right for ds. Some kids can thrive like that (my dd would have) but I didn’t want ds to struggle to keep up and need tutoring /support for years.

@Twilightstarbright that also sounds terrible…what actually happens in these tutoring sessions - going over the curriculum/teaching ahead/just loads of practice questions?

@Snorlaxo where did you move to?

@VarioPerfect its not for the faint hearted! Im not sure i can face putting my own DC through that. I think tutors do a lot in the VR/NVR space as thats not taught at schools but I would assume they would do the curriculum too?

As a PP mentioned, you can buy a house in the DAO catchment but we are talking maybe 300m away? Also DAO have tried but failed to change the criteria that if you get a catchment place you must also attend a handful of schools. They failed to get it through but I dare say they’ll try again and if it does they you’re effectively losing 100k from the value of the house as that’s the premium you pay for catchment.

The whole thing is a complete mess really and gone very far from being an academic environment for local children who would benefit from it.

What about Bexley Borough? They have 4 Grammar Schools, and while not as competitive as the Super Selectives they are still good schools.

Is gammer right if he is more outdoorsy and not the top of his school?

We did 11+ last year with no intention of a super selective. I joined a few groups to help support DC. From what I could surmise there is a large contingent of batshit crazy very very driven parents who will drill their DC endlessly and get the scores up. I'm talking 90 minutes practice tests every day for 2 years, tutoring 2-3 times a week etc. I think this makes the pool far harder to break into if you are grammar material but not insane. The response is often that these children will surely fail once in the school because ultimately they are not grammar material. But people forget about the batshittery that continues throughout school. The target just moves.

However, this years test had a hard english component that upset the apple cart a bit because most people focus on maths and non verbal tutoring. It's harder to tutor comprehension beyond exam technique, although some will be memorising lists of vocab to help comprehension. It often still doesn't help people get a sense of a text.

So I'd say overall it is possible to get out of catchment scores for the super selectives without going batshit. But I would take it as a nice surprise rather than something you are pinning all your hopes on.

Our experience of the outer london grammars was majority of kids highly tutored and very hard workers, pushed by families and tutoring continued once there. A small minority of more relaxed families. It's a different cohort to state grammars elsewhere. Ours had tutoring in y5 and worked hard that summer, but -unusually- didn't do well once there.

Our DS sounds similar to yours and got into a super-selective near you without tuition. We did do a lot of practice at home though. I started by getting him to do a practice paper at home at the start of Year 5 with no time limit, just to see how he got on and gauge how much work we’d need to do. We then used a mixture of practice papers and books from WH Smith (plus we paid for a mock test that you can attend locally to us - which he failed). It wasn’t insane amounts of work but the summer before the test we probably did something every day. I was always very careful to make sure he understood that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he didn’t pass and he actually would have preferred our local comp at that point because that’s where his friends were going. He ended up with a good pass and decided that he did want to go to the grammar. He’s got on really well and enjoys it now he’s there.

If it helps, I have academic children and decided the whole circus and game of chance with the 11+ was too mad for us. We ended up just sending them to our catchment comp which was undersubscribed and Requires Improvment.

They have thrived.

Oldest has just got nearly all 9s in mocks, nothing less than an 8.

They have lovely friends, have been in the plays, choirs, sports teams and student council etc. They have done DofE and been on loads of trips.

I have no regrets about not spending loads of their carefree primary school years on tutoring and tests and stress and pressure.

WC and IC have cultures where the kids are routinely
attending tuition once at the school, it was very much the standard within the school and due to the demographic of the students. I transferred to one from a non-selective and left because of it (still ended up at Oxbridge, not many there did).

The amount of tuition kids had meant the actual teaching wasn’t that great as it didn’t need to be. One classmate said “it’s cheaper than private school, that’s why our parents do it”. Not sure if this is the same with the grammars in other areas but wanted to share re. those schools maybe not being worth moving for if they are in the running. Things may have changed, my experience was <10yrs ago.

@sashh yeah that’s what I’m trying to work out. I’m not asking anyone here to tell me what they think of his chances, I’m asking how other parents knew that it was worth a punt (/years of hard work) for their child.

It sounds like tutors do assessments, but are they honest with potential clients?

@clamshell24 do you mean they didn’t get in or they didn’t do well there once they did get in?

@VashtaNerada did you do it as ooc or in catchment? Eg I’ve seen that some of the Essex schools have lower (still high) scores for people living in catchment, so I’d also really like to know whether it would be worth a move IC or not.