Should I leave my child at his boys prep school until 13 or move at 11?

[SouthLondonMum]

My son's independent school prepares boys for the 13+ common entrance exam. It does not prepare boys for the 11+ and my son's teacher has told me that we will need to get a private tutor if we want him to stand a chance of passing his 11+ exam. He is in year 5 now and has only one year to prepare for the 11+.
We have three options.

1. He can stay at his current school until 11 and I can pay for a private tutor but the fees are very expensive already and he has lots of homework every night.
2. He could stay at his current school until 13 and sit the common entrance. This is not a great option as there is only one independent school locally with a large 13+ intake and I am not keen on it - there is a much greater choice of schools at 11 + entry and more chance of a scholarship.

However, he has had a couple of independent assessments recently and they have shown that he has a lot of catching up to do in his maths and english so I have my doubts about the quality of teaching at his school even though it is one of the top prep schools in London.

1. The last alternative is to move him to a much cheaper local prep school where they focus exclusively on prepping boys for the 11+ with very good results. He has been offered a place to start at this local school in January which would give him 3 terms to prepare. I am reluctant to move him because he has moved schools at the end of reception and end of year 1 already. Also he will miss his friends. Any ideas on what I should do would be gratefully received. Thanks.

You can't teach VR/NVR - they are measures of a child's inate intelligence. You can practise them, however. At the prep school my sons went to, this practise involved a single lesson a week to go through their Bond workbooks, in silence, without any teacher intervention. The pupils did these regardless of whether they were doing 11+ or 13+.

A tutor is telling you that your son needs tutoring/the school is trying to hang onto him until 13. Sounds like two sides of the same coin, don't you think?

If your son goes onto a 13+ school, he will have to do a pretest sometime around the end of Year 6 or beginning of Year 7. A pretest is basically a set of VR/NVR and maths tests and not unlike the type of tests that many schools use for 11+ entry. If they do the ISEB 11+, your DS shouldn't have a problem with these tests either - they are very similar to CE.

If your school is successful in getting boys into Eton, Charterhouse etc, then they probably do know what they are talking about.

You need to have a serious talk with them. You are not far off applying to senior school, whether it is an 11+ or a 13+ - the timings are not that different.

this practic*e

It sounds as if the school expects the scholarship group to go schools which pre-test at 11 and the rest to go to the local school (I assume it doesn't pre-test at 11).

I have never heard of a 13+ school that doesn't pre-test. Boys sit their Common Entrance in June of Year 8. This is too late for surprises and scrambling around for senior school places.

A couple of local ones don't pre-test at 11 as that is when they have their largest intake. They just add on a few more at 13 after the boys have sat the school's entrance test which is five months before CE.

11+ tests are taken in January, and it is normal to register for more than one school. If all goes pear-shaped there is time to do something about it.

13+ is a differnet beast, which is why schools need to be 95% certain (via the 11 or 12+ pretest) that all will go well in June.

Tonbridge , for example, pretest in October of Year 6 , for 13+ intake, so any child hoping to do this would be being prepared in latter part of year 5/ early year 6.

Charterhouse don't do a pre-test as such at 11 - they make selections based on the Prep Headmaster's recommendations. They then keep a beady eye on the boy until 13 just to make sure he can pass CE at the right level.

When I prepped a boy for Charterhouse, he had done a pretest.

All pre-testing aside, the job of a prep school is to know the level of the childs ability and which school is appropriate for them. They should know this by end of year 5 /6 just by their own methods. very unusual for a miracle between year 6 and 8 to occur regarding ability. Actually, I have seen it go the other way, where a bright boy hits adolescence earlyish and goes off the rails.

Prep schools which traditionally feed at 13 do work towards CE for the final 4 years, but the maths and englisg they are doing in year 5/6 should be up to the level of and 11+ entry.

Some boys at my sons prep who struggled were told they should try at 11 for less accademic schools as the 13+ entry would be too competitive.

The advice we were given is that it is easier to get children from prep schools into independent senior schools at 11 rather than at 13.

At 11, they are competing with mainly state school children and (apparently) the standard is therefore lower, whereas at 13 all the kids are from private schools, the pass rate is much higher, making it much harder to gain a place.

I know of two sets of parents who took this advice and got places at 11.

Interestingly, after seeing the calibre of kids who arrived at 13, both sets of parents feel strongly that their DS's would not have stood a chance at getting a place if they had waited till 13.

SLMum we would be very interested to know which school your DS is at as it sounds like we are in the same area and may be facing the same dilema. Our prep insists on staying unitl 13 which seemed to make sense but not so sure now ? is this a fee generator or does this method suit boys (these schools have been doing it for aons so you woiuld hope the later!)

Thanks again for all the comments. We've decided that 11+ is a much better entry point and we won't risk waiting until 13+ particularly as our child is not strong academically. We now just have to resolve whether we try and prep him in the evenings for the 11+ whilst he stays at his current school or move him to a school that is focused on 11+ prep and has good relationships with the senior schools that I want him to go to. He is keen on rubgy and so I would like to see if we can get him a sports scholarship at 11.

not sure being keen on rugby will lead to a sports scholarship? most of the schools near us want candidates to have 2 sports - with one to county standard?

Agree he'd need a proven track record for sports, probably playing in advance of his age group for the school and beyond, and even then the academics still have to make the normal entry standard too.

Have you spoken to Hampton? They take and 11 and 13 and have scholarships. Might be worth a chat.

I'm beginning to think that 13+ entry is just a way for schools to extract two years additional fees out of you unless you are aiming for a school that only allows 13+ entry.
I chose my son's school because I thought my son would be more mature by 13 and have an additional couple of years before stressful prep starts. However, it's just the opposite - year 5 is like a secondary school, with different teachers for every subject and loads of homework. He is also studying most subjects at year 7 level (except of course maths and english as these would enable him to pass the 11+).
Also, I've researched all the schools that boys from my son's school go on to at 13, and almost all of the schools that do 13+ entry require boys to take a pre-test at 11 and the exam is similar or the same as 11+. The few that do not pre-test want a confidential report in year 6 or very early year 7 from the headmaster. I assume this is because boys don't sit common entrance until the May/June of year 8 and that is way too late for this to be used to determine suitability for a school. Also, if schools give conditional offers based on the pre-test at 11+ and deposits are paid then they will be able to get parents' commitment early on.
I've also discovered that almost all of the schools which take on a significant number of boys at 13 are incredibly expensive.
So it seems that resting on one's laurels until the age of 13 is not really an option. Not for me anyway.

I agree with gladders about the sport scholarship: they will need to be at County standard. Unfortunately this is very difficult to prove for Rugby for Y7 entry because the County system does not start until Y8!