If I assume that prep school means no need to tutor, am I being hopelessly naive?

[fridayschild]

DCs are in infant classes at a good state primary, but state secondary provision is awful. We'll almost certainly go private for secondary level but lots of children are educated privately from age 4 here, and so that would mean tutoring the DCs for at least their last two years of primary. If we transferred to the independent sector now, would I manage to escape the pressure to tutor?

For what it's worth, I am not talking about tutoring to get my little darlings into the top schools in the country. My ambition is to get the right school for the child, where they will be happy and thrive. The dinner party chat here in SW London is that if one is eccentric enough to start in the state sector, tutoring is needed even for a very normal private school (whatever that is!)

Views please, oh wise ones.

LM - like you I am sceptical of the urban myth that children are tutored to a level that means thay cannot keep up with the pace at the secondary. That school referred to below - if it exists which I don't believe - is admitting to be lousy recruitment and substandard teaching. Where all the children are tutored - and here in SW London that is the norm for children applying to selective independents from state primaries - then the bar isn't actually upped, because it is is the same pool of children applying and getting in as would have anyway, but having had an extra boost of teaching along the way. If there were some magic formula by which a tutor could artifically boost perfomance for the day of the exam for an otherwise weak pupil (sufficiently to fool the school) it would be bottled and sold! Just not possible.
Selective independents in this neck of the woods (and I am sure elsewhere) are entirely au fait with the situation and do make allowances for difference in teaching at previous schools to ensure they get the children that will thrive in their environment. Frankly - they are the experts at running their business, they have done so successfuly for hundreds of years in some cases and there are unlikely to be any tricks a parent can think up that they haven't seen, heard and neutralised many times before.
I think the cramming of activities to boost a childs cv artifically to make them appear 'more rounded's actually worse than tutoring. How the admissions staff must howl with laughter at all the kids who tick the boxes of two musical instruments, some carefully chosesn sports, one oddball - like Sanskit club to make them stand out from the crowd...
When they get the kid in the interview the kid will either tell the truth or be coasched to lie - either way, a complete waste of time, and fooling no-one.

I know what you mean about urban myths - but the friend who told me is not gossipy iykwim. She's fairly straight down the line.
And she said she went to look around the school and during her meeting afterwards with the head she asked about the entrance exam and tutoring and he said she sholdn't.
That he couldn't stop people but it did result in some children entering the school and finding it did not suit them.
Whether they were asked to leave, or whether it was a mutual decision taken with the parents, I don't know.
Either way, it must be horrid for the child.

Similarly, and this I do know as fact myself, that some children who went to academic schools at 4 and found it hard to keep up have been tutored in order to keep up and keep their place. Some didn't manage it and it was suggested they should go elsewhere: St Albans High School. Berkhamsted Collegiate and Habs are three I know of.

Asked to go elsewhere at 11, I mean, when they would move up to seniors.

I had a friend whose dts's interviewed for an independent school last year. At interview the boys were asked what they did in the spare time. They said that they watched TV. They hadn't viewed that swimming, cricket, judo, mandarin, trumpet etc were done in their free time!

And frankly that example alone suggests why a mock interview is worthwhile imo!

LM

DD had a mock last week and it was pointed out to her that she had in fact broken a school record in sports not a world record

LOL the interview questions! And thanks for all the views.

So I think my risk will be that we choose a prep which on the face of it seems quite normal, able to send the bright to our local Long Established Academy for the Terribly Clever, but send the rest to other schools without making them feel they have failed before they are 13 - but then subsequently get caught up either in a year of hysteria or a group of parents who tend to hysteria. As long as I still trust the school at that stage I should be able to resist.

I think I will go off and hunt for a secondary school where the test for entry is proficiency in Lego. Then my boys can (a) be happy little fellows and (b) get scholarships and I will be able to walk down the street with my head held high...

Why don't you just keep them in the state primary, Fridays, and avoid the hype altogether? Not asking critically, just curious.I bet you anything they would get in to whatever schools you wanted at eleven plus. I've been told on pretty excellent athority that academic secondary schools are more lenient to state pupils in the exams and while there might be other reasons to send my dcs private, worrying about them ending up miserable in a sink school should definitely not be one of them. Good luck, anyway [smile}

Rabbit - the head at the state school tells me 11+ admissions have been appalling in London for the last couple of years. Appalling is her word. She recommended two state secondaries (one an hour's travel away in each direction), the 11+ (which would mean a different commute of an hour each way if we passed), assorted private schools and - oh - a weekly boarding school.

Our local state secondary has featured on the Today programme on Radio 4. They needed a piece on schools where fewer than 50% of students got 5 GCSEs and as there had been 5 head teachers in 4 years, they went straight there. We're not far from BBC HQ, and I am sure that would also have been a factor. But still....

I am a fully paid up member of the chattering classes. There is No Way I can follow your advice.

Does the prep school feed in to a secondary section (which is either part of the same school or which many of the children end up going to)? If so, then the school will spend a great deal of time preparating its pupils for entrance exams and the next stage of their school career. It would be pretty embarrassing if the prep school did not have an excellent success rate.

My kids go to a prep school which has a secondary section but entrance to it is not automatic. They have to sit the exam like everyone else. However, it is very rare that they don't pass. If there were any danger of their failing the teachers would have a quiet word with the parents a year or two in advance and tell them to think about other options.

There's no linked secondary. Actually that's part of the appeal for me - children obviously change a lot between the ages of 6 and 13, so I'd like to be free to pick the appropriate school for secondary education nearer the time.

FC - just one thing about 'nearer the time' is that mostly in our area, SW London - which I think may be yours also? - schools require 13+ candidates to do a verbal reasoning 'pre-test' at 11, and sometimes too, and then offer them a conditional offer related to their score in Common Entrance. So you may have prepare a 'short-list ' and be tested at 11 even if you go the prep route.

somtimes interview too

God, its like an arms race for sure. Its even spreading north...

DD did 11+ on Sat, while we were waiting we were chatting to a classmate's parents and it became evident she'd been tutored (though DDs school is on of the better privates in our area). DD hasn't been, other than us - mainly DH - giving her regular (though not too intensive) practise over the summer hols. IMO that, together with what the school has been doing, is fine. (DD and this other girl are at the top of their class.) DH however is now worried we may have let DD down by not tutoring.

Poor kids, they still need time to play at this age.

Grimma - totally agree about the playing! Practice is one thisng, cramming another. many years ago I taught in a school in Japan, to acheiveing school in Tokyo which each year gets many puils into Tokyo university - top Japanese University, and those kids went straight frm an intensive day @ school to evening classes with tutors... I decided then that my kids would never go that route! No school is worth cramming for.

What happens to all these highly tutored children when they get to 18?

When I was at Cambridge University, my friends had been to a motley collection of schools;

(good state schools, bad state schools, strange religious schools, academic public schools)

It didn't seem to matter what we had done aged 10. (all I did was read books and make bows and arrows) I could imagine that too much tutoring prevents you from playing and therefore your imagination never develops properly.

Please let your children have a childhood and allow them to develop their own imagination and thus intelligence.

They're not "highly tutored". They spend an hour a week with a tutor for around 40 weeks. 40 hours out of their entire childhood will not damage their imagination!

I'm of the same view as Pagwatch, that if they need tutoring to get in I fear they would then struggle continously whilst at the school.

But this may be a naive view as my children are not at that age yet.

it is a naive view. Tutoring is not a magic elixir that gets the child through an exanm and fools the admissions staff, if that child is not capable of learning when it gets into the school. Schools are not so easily fooled.

thanks MrsGhoul, havent even thought about schools admissions/tutoring yet.

Had breezily thought it wouldnt be needed.

But had better start saving.....

What is with your name

At the Junior school attached to the private school where DH works,any children who are thought not up-to-standard are flagged up well in advance before the entrance exam.

MrsG - thank you for that comment, and yes we are SW London too. I hope that one advantage of the prep school is that they would help us identify 13+ schools, and so we would not miss out on pre-selection at 11, if that was the right sort of school for the boys.

Arms race is a good metaphor. Depressing, but accurate.

FC, please do not be alarmed - although it appears a bit of an arms race when you are in it the child's qualities are evident to admissions staff, and certainly looking at my DS1's contemporaries they all did get into the schools you could have predicted obectively would be the right level and culture for them (tho' the parents are not always objective and assume their liitle geniuses should get full schoarships to Eton!) I have a little secret bet with myself, looking at the boys in my younger son's class (don't know the girls!) as to where they will go too, that I will put in an envelope and open in 2 years and see if I was right Any amount of tutoring, expeditions to Everest or signing up to extra curricular Quantum Physics or Ancient Greek to 'impress' the schools between now & then will not make a ha'porth of difference to their chances.

Thank you for that. Although my neighbour has a different story about the boys from her DS1's state class at 11+, sadly. She says it was obvious the ones who were a bit dim were going to have trouble finding a place, but was taken aback by the trouble the bright ones had finding a place. Just naturally a worrier here I think!