Does anyone have any eleven plus advice?

[Nora1978]

Dd goes to a lovely village primary but we live in an area with a dreadful local comp so I do feel a bit anxious about getting her into a decent secondary school and feel that she will need to have a go at the eleven plus in the hope that we will have more options.

There is a local girls grammar school that lots of her year four classmates want to go to and they’re getting extra tutoring. We haven’t done this with dd as it feels too early and with everything they’ve all gone through, we’ve made her mental health the highest priority. She is a very bright but sensitive child and hates extra work and I don’t want to put pressure on her so I’m looking for ways of getting her gently prepared from next September when she’s starting year five. I can’t afford tutoring but I just wondered if there are online apps or programs that are more like puzzles that might help prepare her for the eleven plus in a more gentle fun way?

I hate the thought of all this intense studying on top of school work but perhaps I’m being naive and it’s the only way to help her? I would really value some common sense advice from those that have been there as I’m surrounded by very competitive parents who make me feel I’m not doing enough! Thank you 😊

You can buy work books from WH Smith’s or online and work through them together. No matter how bright the child is, being familiar with the verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning questions before the exam is wise as they almost certainly won’t have done anything like it in school.

I teach in a prep school and we run 11+ classes. Some of the children also have tuition outside school. There are some who pass with no extra tuition (though they do attend my familiarisation classes, which is a form of tuition in itself - though do some kids just a workbook and a parent would do the same job), some who have loads of tuition mostly unnecessarily as they’d pass anyway as they’re mega bright and have been pushed at school, and some who have tuition and it’s a waste of time as they are never going to pass. To get in a child really has to be working quite far ahead in maths and English. If your child is more average (and there’s nothing wrong with average!) she probably won’t get in, especially if she is reluctant to do extra work and is easily stressed by exams and things.

Might be worth a conversation with the teacher abou what they think of her chances,, though state school teachers may be less inclined to comment. Alternatively you might be able to get an assessment with a tutor, just to see what they say. If they say she’s unlikely to pass, you can save yourself the worry/stress and focus on somewhere else.

I think it's more about familiarisation with the questions/paper than learning new material really for a high achieving child. When we went through it with our son, we bought various "practice" books which he worked through in the year before sitting the 11+, doing maybe just a page or two per week. "Slow and steady wins the race!" We didn't put pressure on him or make him spent a long time.

My worry re your opening post is that your DD may not be suitable for a high pressure grammar school if she doesn't like doing extra work and gets stressed etc. Grammars aren't inherently better than comps nor do they have some magic teaching skills. They get better results because they push their pupils harder.