Daughter no longer wanting to take the grammar 11+plus exam.. what to do?

[Zaina89]

Didn't know where to post this.
so my daughter is 10 (11 in September)
this is her second year she has been in 11+ 1-1 tuition.
she has been doing well, we have registered her for to take the exam this upcoming September.
me and my husband have never forced her into the tuition or taking the exam, when we noticed she was quite academic and enjoyed learning and school we talked about grammar school and when she was old enough we asked her if she would like to try the tuition and see how it goes, but that she isn’t being forced and she could stop whenever she didn’t want to do it or felt like it was to much for her.

she has been doing well and this is her 2nd year, the only problem she has is she is quite slow ( takes time to work things out etc) even though she has been doing well with the learning she struggles with managing the time. If I remember rightly in parts of the exam she has about 9 minutes to answer 22 questions, and it has now been changed, they used to do the entire paper at once and now it has been split into sections and some sections only have about 30 seconds to answer the question.

she recently did her first mock test, she only scored 37% and missed out 30 questions. Her tuition teacher didn’t tell my daughter her results from the mock and instead pulled me to one side and said she thought it was best we didn’t tell my daughter because she doesn’t want her to feel “devalued”.

when my daughter left from the exam that day she said she did find it extremely difficult in the sense she really struggled with the time and missed out so many questions because she didn’t have enough time.
my daughter knew something wasn’t right because the tuition teacher told her she would tell her her results but she instead told me.
she asked me to tell her, her results so I did and she got very upset and said she feels like it’s to much pressure and that she feels we are disappointed with her.

it’s been a week since her test and she’s still down about it, she’s been going through a lot at school as well with an issue of a girl being mean. I have been feeling awful but we decided that she would take the next mock test in a month or so and see how that goes. I asked her today to be honest with me and she said that she really doesn’t feel like she wants to do this anymore or go ahead and take the exam, that she’s very tired and she feels it’s to much pressure.

I honestly don’t know what to do for the best, I want to respect her wishes but at the same time I don’t want her to just give up easily. I don’t know whether she should finish the next mock and see what her results are and if she’s still at this mark then to leave it, or because she’s come this far to just let her sit the exam ( she’s due to take it this September). Or whether we should just take her out and not let her take the test and just put her back into normal tuition.

what would you do?
we do live in a area with good secondary schools, that’s not the issue.

she is currently doing a lot, learning Arabic after school 5 days a week for an hour, on top of schooling and then on Saturday’s 1 and a half hours 11 plus tuition. I feel like an awful mum and like this is all my fault for suggesting this.

We just dropped our 11+ tutoring. It wasn't making my son happy and I felt like I was stealing his downtime to just be a kid.

I went back and forth for a while but feel quite zen about it now. He didn't like the pressure and I am worried actually the grammar would be a lot of pressure if we did get him in. I don't think it would be good for his self esteem. I was worried going through to September would break our relationship together quite considerable as the study ramped up.

Well Arabic on top of cramming for grammar. Are you in the middle East and she will need Arabic at the school?

I absolutely wouldn't have done both the Arabic and the tutoring, but I agree that she will feel proud of herself for seeing it through. It can be a lesson in future that maybe you are undervaluing free time, which even at 10 kids really need.

She can relax now and I think rewarding her for her effort and determination is absolutely right. She'll get the message that you don't just value a result, you value the grit and hard work she showed particularly when it was really tough.

I won’t be going through it again with my other 2 children, my sons currently in year 5 but we didn’t start him with 11+ tutoring because we know he already struggles at school so we didn’t want to put the pressure on him.
only reason we put dd through the test was because we noticed quite early on in school she was quite academic. She’s extremely good at art and extremely good in maths and English, she finds school easy and absolutely loves learning and a challenge so we thought it would be a good fit for her.

it’s just these comments about how awful I am and even awful for rewarding her with “ lavish gifts”
if I would have completely dropped it I didn’t want to be seen as teaching my daughter to “give up” and at the same time teaching her to give up because with anything in life we need to put work in, I’m not saying that’s what’s happened with your child because at the same time I didn’t want to upset her and as she was so close to the test I thought she might as well take it.
after she took the test she actually said to me she was glad she did it and she enjoyed the experience of doing it.

i only bought her gifts because i want to reward her for trying her best and not giving up and going in there and giving it everything she’s got. I love her so much and I’d never do anything at all to hurt her or purposely upset her! Of course all this time I’ve only been thinking about her future! She understands very well this doesn’t define her ability to succeed and that she’s not a failure, I am constantly making sure I drill that into her!

The results were released two days early?

Yes was told will be on/by 16th and I received them this morning.

I don't mean to be unkind, OP but I've taught in grammar schools for years and organised the 11 plus tests and papers. I've also sat on boards to consider appeals.

181 is a score that would be expected from a 'below average' student at primary school, even without tutoring. I don't say this to be nasty, but I'm genuinely concerned at how much pressure you are putting on a child you keep referring to as 'academic' and 'finds school easy'. It's clear from her 11 plus result to me as a teacher that she isn't particularly academic, which is fine - but please don't put pressure on her to achieve excellent GCSE results. Based on this she's likely to achieve very average pass marks, even with hard work.

I'm sure she's lovely, hardworking and artistic. But she's not academically bright so please, please don't put lots of pressure on her to achieve high grades. It's not the be all and end all.

OP, where I live we have closed our grammar school for this reason entirely. Your daughter might scrape a grammar school place due to extra practice/tuition, but what for? To find herself struggling to keep up with the pace of learning in a school where academics are valued above everything else. The idea of grammar schools was to give children who find these tests easy without practice a different (but not always better) education than those who found them difficult. It was also easy for teachers to have a homogeneous group of learners.

Tutoring has paid for lots of nice holidays for those who do it but has not benefited children. Why would you want to send her to a school when you have proved to yourselves that it wouldn't suit her? Tutoring was the end of our grammar school system: we now send everyone in the same direction and it is definitely going better than ending up with a selective school with some able students and some who really struggle with both the learning and the self esteem of struggling who 'passed' the 11plus by the skin of their teeth. I went to grammar school myself in an era before tutors and practice papers. There were definitely a few people at my school who would have been better suited elsewhere and still lots of adults who talk about 'failing' that all important exam at 10.

Parents seem to think once you get a place at a grammar school or a private school you will automatically get great results but I don't see much evidence of this. Your daughter sounds to me like a grammar school would be wholly unsuitable. Please find her something extra curricular to do that makes her feel good about herself instead of tutoring. The whole point of the 11 plus paper is that it's hard to learn, so she will have had a very challenging time trying her best to get 'good enough', to little avail by the sounds of it.

But if this is correct, why is she in the top sets in school and in her maths and English she is at working higher than expected? In her revision work for the 11 plus she was doing fine and scoring 85-95%.
I’ve heard even the brightest children have failed the 11+. I’m not claiming you are being unkind but the tests that have been marked at school and put her in the top sets and in her school reports she has higher than expected standard. Are they just lying to me? My son is actually working below expected standard and he has that written in his school reports and from the tests he’s took at school and he is in the bottom sets for maths and English.

Higher than expected is still not necessarily particularly high. Tbh after 2 years of tutoring and still not passing, my guess is she is of average ability - which is FINE! I have one who aced the 11 plus with a mega high score, and one who didn’t even take it as we knew the likelihood was she wouldn’t pass (despite also being in top sets in primary) - it DOES NOT MATTER. let her be who she is. Most kids are just average after all!

I obviously can't comment on her work at her current school, or the set she is in. Perhaps she's in a class that has a lot of SEN children or pupils of weak academic ability or EAL students, which makes her one of the better ones. Perhaps she's an industrious and quiet pupil who is working nicely with a group of brighter kids.

All I can say is that the 11 plus mark she achieved is low, despite being tutored for it, and based on that alone I would not expect her to be in top sets at her next school or that her GCSE target grades will be higher than average.

I'm just offering a teacher perspective in the hope of taking some parental pressure off your child. You already have her being tutored in Arabic after school and I'm concerned that she's going to face a lot of expectations that she achieves excellent exam results. I've seen far too many teenagers' mental health crumble under failing to reach what their parents demand of them.

Yes but to say her results are of a “below average” student isn’t right, I do actually have a child who is below average and below the expected standard and my daughter tried explaining the 11+ concept to him and he couldn’t get it or understand it atall. She is most definitely not below average.

Sorry just saw the date of your OP!

as she is in year 6 the children who have Sen and children who are below expected are put into separate groups to prepare them for sats to give them extra support, she is in the top set out of 4 and is with all the other children in a class who also sat the 11+ exam. I’m not saying she won’t achieve average grades but she is most definitely not below average as I do have a child who is working below the expected standard and he couldn’t even grasp the concept of the 11+ and genuinely couldn’t understand how to do it. I’m sure a lot of children who do get into the grammar schools also receive average grades at their gcses.

The school could be terrible with teachers marking on an unconscious curve (best students in class get the top grades) instead of against standard national grade boundaries. Teacher inflation of grades is a big issue, usually only apparent when students miss predicted grades for GCSE or A levels.

@Hatty65's posts are kindly put and completely true. I'm sorry, OP.

You might expect the top 20/25 percent of a cohort to 'pass' the 11 plus. If there are 3 sets and your daughter is in the top set she will be in the top 33% of her year group but on the 66/70 percentile not the 75/80. There is quite a bit of difference. Her set tells you there are other children less good at maths, for example. It tells you more about other people's results than hers. Plus you don't know how her year group at her school lines up with the wider cohort.

I work in a primary school and we give very little comparative assessment data to parents other than working at age expected levels, below or, in some cases, significantly above or below. Most children are 'expected'. Within the expected group, there is a big variation.

She probably is above average. You are above average if you are in the 51st percentile but that isn't the 80th percentile of an easy grammar school place. 49% of children are technically 'below average'.

Nobody really knows how GCSEs will go until the results come back. Most prediction tools from SATS to GCSE aren't very accurate. You can do brilliantly in SATs and averagely in GCSEs, and often, the opposite. There are a lot of variables, effort and motivation being massive.

Education is a marathon, not a sprint and resilience might be a better predictor of 'success' than SATs scores. I hope DD hasn't taken any of this to heart. You can do really well at an 11 plus paper and do poorly in GCSEs. One is supposed to be a snapshot of 'ability' and the other is the application of things you have been taught and mastered. I bet your DD will be just fine.

This was the issue I had with the person ( teacher ??) who posted above.

My problem and upset was from what was said above that my daughter will only get very average gcse results, you cannot say because a child failed her 11+ she will get very average gcse results, I have heard a lot of stories as well from people who passed the grammar test and only received very average gcse results and people who failed who went on to receive very good gcse results, surely we can not judge from this one exam how a just turned 11 year old will do in her gcses and that she won’t do well in her gcses even if she puts in very hard work? If that’s the attitude of the teachers at grammar school setting your 11 year old up for gcse failure this early on then I’m probably grateful she’s failed and won’t be going there. however the gcse results was not why we was thinking for grammar school, part of it as well was wanting her to attend a girls school plus I thought she would do well there.

my daughter is ok, We’ve just come back from an absolutely brilliant parents evening, I’m very proud of her regardless of how this has gone.

Kindly, and I say this as an 11+ tutor, if she finds the work and exams so difficult and stressful, grammar school is not for her. Stop the extra pressure and start looking for a school that is right for her.

A dyslexia assessment is a good idea because if she gets a 'diagnosis' she will be entitled to extra time in exams going forward. I suggest thstyou stick to your word and let her drop out of the 11 plus plan now as you said before she started it.

A dyslexia diagnosis does not guarantee extra time. At my school this year, we had many dyslexic children but not one was granted extra time.