Schools -exams - confused

[Hope4life]

I would really appreciate your help as I am really confused with the school exams in this country. My son is starting y1 in September and I can see so many people looking for a tutors for 7+ entry test. What does it mean? Also at what age should I start looking to get a tutor for my child and is tutor needed on the first place? Thank you

Hi
Is your son going to a state school ?? Are you thinking of private at some point.
If at state and planning to stay in state people get tutors if they feel that their child isn,t making the grade, is struggling or being badly taught.

If you are going to a state school and are hoping to transfer to private at some point eg age 7 or 11 . people get tutors to either cover gaps in learning(different school different expectation) or to practice exam technique.

If you are in private and changing to a different private school some people also hire tutors to bump their childs chances.

If at state school and hoping to move to a state grammar school most people tutor as the exams are very competitive and almost everyone sitting is clever.

If tutoring for age 11 most people start about a year ahead. Not sure how long for age 7

At our large local state primary school I don't know anyone who got a tutor for their 7 year old at all. The only children who went private during the junior years (7-11) did so because they were dyslexic and their parents felt they didn't get enough one to one support. A few parents got tutors at age 9-10 as they wanted their children to do the Tiffin grammar exams or go to very selective academic secondaries e.g. LEH. Several got into private schools like Kingston at 11 with no tutoring. My next door neighbour's son who is bright but not a genius got into Tiffin, Hampton and Kingston with no professional tutoring just a bit of practice with his mum. They chose Kingston as it was more nurturing and he is very shy. I would be very worried about sending a child to a school that they needed a lot of tutoring to get into. My friend's husband teaches at Tiffin Boys and he says that every year it soon becomes obvious that there are boys there who shouldn't be who got in because of tutoring and it does them no favours.

There is a lot of truth in that, yes, but I tutor English in the Hampton area and have taught there for a long time, and the exams are becoming so insanely competitive that someone who knows the exam techniques and is a trained teacher will always give borderline kids the edge. Moreover, I can extend the children's knowledge with wider reading, book projects, interview technique, and all the things school teachers and busy parents don't always have time for. Parents can help by nagging their offspring to complete homework, take sensible breaks, undertake wider reading and maybe work through NV and VR papers together. But scholarship level literacy and numeracy does benefit from one to ones. It's my job, though, so I'm biased!