Tutoring and the 7+ / 8+ exams

[User44444]

What do you mumsnetters think of tutoring for these exams? I am following a 8+ thread here and another debating tutoring for 7+ Bute exams with interest.

My son just sat the 8+. He is at a pre prep that prepares boys. Although I had some serious concerns over the quality of teaching and preparation for the exams, which wasn’t great, I stuck to my guns and did not tutor. He is a bright boy and he works hard at school, we did all the homework and over the Christmas holidays in particular got our heads down with additional work using resources like Bond papers.

He did well, got invited for interviews at all the top 3 schools applied. One rejected him outright and he is currently on the waiting list for 2 of the schools. Not the outcome I hoped for but not disastrous.

Looking at the boys who were offered places none are particularly bright but all have been subjected to hours of extensive professional tutoring every week - for months! Some have hired so-called “super tutors” at sky high fees and even former headteachers to coach their boys. When money is seemingly no object....
I guess I just feel disappointed in these schools who make a big deal out of claiming not to want tutored children but year after year cannot see through the tutoring and seem to pick mostly heavily tutored applicants. It makes me wonder if they actually care or pretend to care.

Totally agreed Twochildren ! As much as the judgey set want to believe that all tutored children struggle to keep up in the competitive schools, the truth is most actually excel and thrive - with the odd few exceptions. I think most kids who try for these types of schools are bright and full of potential - and the differences in “natural ability” ( with the exception of a few outliers ) are essentially negligible.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies for perhaps not getting the complete picture before posting..but I'm finding some of the stuff I have read rather worrying. Not familiar with 7+ or 8+ - it seems nuts to put such young children through this kind of competitive assessments. I have done the 11+ and I found it pretty brutal. Agreed it's impossible to do these kinds of entrance exams without any kind of coaching at all. My own child did have some extra coaching but there is a balance to be struck here. She went to a weekend class with 2 hours of group working, I did some work with her myself and of course she was at a school where everyone was being prepared for the exams.

I believe there is definitely a natural level of intelligence that everyone possesses. To pretend otherwise is perhaps burying one's head in the sand. I also accept you can take a child with average ability, pile them with tons of coaching and get them into a top performing academic school. At 11+ some of the syllabus is so complex that some children will never be able to gain entry to top schools regardless of how much coaching received but this sort of over coaching is possibly more feasible at 7+ or 8+ when the subject matter is relatively straightforward. I think there is a price to pay though. Head of the school she is joining in September has said the girls who join at 11+ very often do better longer term than the 7+ joiners. I believe the over tutored 6 or 7 year old child will have to spend their school lives peddling faster than others just to keep up because they didn't get into the school based on their ability but the amount of time and money their parents spent. I'm not suggesting self harming etc and all those sensationalised extremities occur but I do think children should be able to feel comfortably able in their day to day school life for good self esteem but how can they if the coaching methods used to get them there in the first place is over and above "normal" for them?

I agree that the the 7+/8+ scene in London is surreal. In my time in London I have observed and experienced different stages of these exams, and really wonder where the trajectory is leading. The elder brothers of the boys who sat the 7+/8+ of my elder son all have no/light tutoring to get in (circa 2006/7). By the time is came to my elder son, weekly tutoring for a year, principally to strengthen writing and reasoning practice was not unusual (2010/2011). By the time my younger son came to take 7+/8+ the intensity of tutoring and the hysteria was such that 2years of biweekly tutoring was not unusual (2014/2015). It sounds even worse today.

The numbers applying to the schools has increased, and parental competition to outfox other candidates has only led to more tutoring, leading to higher results, leading to the schools having more difficult decisions in the admissions processes so more challenging exams are created, leading to more intense tutoring.....

TBH, a small number of the candidates are the ultra bright/genius level, the majority are simply bright. Once the boys start school, the small number of extremely bright children continue to be top of the year group and the rest do just fine. They are not having to peddle any faster because most boys went through exactly what they did, so they are pretty much at the same level. There are a few who struggle and have continuous tutoring on the side which keep them in the school, but does them no favours when it comes to the upper years of the school.

Flyingby and Momintrax very interesting posts and quite spot on. The “outfox” comment is so true with some parents openly admitting to upwards of 6 hours private tutoring per week.

Schools could use more initiative in the tests eg is the creative writing piece which is often full of previously learnt similes and metaphors etc necessary? The maths paper for example could include more problem solving logic type questions that test a child’s intelligence and problem solving skills rather than just predictable arithmetic. SPJ is probably the most innovative school when it comes to testing mathematical ability as so many very able boys possibly tutored (some with offers at WU and Kings) dont manage to achieve the pass mark for admission but even SPJ fall short with their predictable composition paper which is a bogstandard story, one area all boys would have been well coached for.

If this was a conundrum in the business world a solution would have been found. Schools can and should do better. Slippery slope exams getting harder and harder and children being dragged through it. I am wondering what kind of parent feels the need to keep their child at a school which requires them to take on extra tutoring just to cope there!

As much as the judgey set want to believe that all tutored children struggle to keep up in the competitive schools, the truth is most actually excel and thrive - with the odd few exceptions.

this is so true. if most kids got in without tutoring, then yes, of course a kid who had to be tutored to get in would struggle. But what people don't understand is that tutoring is the new baseline, if you don't do it you're asking your child to start the race a few hundred yards behind everyone else.

"At 11+ some of the syllabus is so complex that some children will never be able to gain entry to top schools regardless of how much coaching received but this sort of over coaching is possibly more feasible at 7+ or 8+ when the subject matter is relatively straightforward."

That makes sense to me.

I mean, an educational organization can select at age 17 (ie for university), or it can select at age 3, or it can select at any age in between those two extremes.

But in the manner of a sliding scale, I would suggest that the younger at which an educational organization tests, the greater the extent to which this is going to become a test of how on-the-ball the parents are, and how good the child is at obeying adults (and how fast a maturer they are--which does not necessarily mean everything, long term), and the less likely it is that you are unearthing actual bona fide genius. By the time you get down to the 3+ threads, with parents coaching their children on some bizarre everyday skills, it does start to look like a bit of a farce. Personally, I think 11 is the earliest point at which it becomes possible to select in the hope of unearthing actual genius, and even then it is probably hit and miss.

I was watching The Gathering Storm last night, and it reminded me of the biography of Winston Churchill that I read a few years back. Public schools were not really selective (other than on the basis of money and class) in WC's day, which is just as well for him as he would never in a billion years have passed the equivalent of the 7+. Very difficult boy, a slow maturer, with lopsided abilities, and generally a bit of a member of the awkward squad....

I only decided to enter my ds for 8+ when the vast amount of 11+ summer prep came home with dd last summer. Dcs are at a non selective, though quite academic prep. Dd was not tutored and having sat the 11+ has had acceptances at 4 of the 5 schools she sat for. Ds had never seen a VR/NVR paper before July. He didn't have an English tutor. We used bond books for reasoning, he has always read a lot, so I encouraged him to keep reading for improved vocabulary and imagination. School covered the composition & comprehension. For maths he had a tutor once a week for 3 months to cover the syllabus. He did a few timed maths 8+ papers that I bought online. That was sufficient and he's going to SPJ in September. He placed well in the exam, no idea about percentages in maths/English/reasoning as the Hm did not mention these results to us. Ds did report back to us that 1 of the boys in his interview told the Hm that he and the 2 other boys had been at interview practice on the Saturday morning. There was no way I could make a 7 year old do hours and hours of prep. I had to pay him to do papers !

Genuine question as I have never been through the 11+ process - how complex could the syllabus be? Most top schools have dropped reasoning, so I am told, and maths is maths and English is, well comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and writing. I would expect the maths to demand solid foundations and comfort with pre-algebra and simple geometry (when I mean simple, I mean not doing proofs or trigonometry).

Mominatrix 11+ for some schools is changing to reasoning only next year. My dd had one reasoning only exam with a critical thinking task that involved discussing women's rights. Another school exam was maths, English and reasoning followed by an interview if you passed the exam. The others were maths, English and a general interview. In terms of maths, there's a lot of quite tricky problem solving, some of which include algebra. Hth

Rosered if the first one is WHS it was always just reasoning only. It isn't a new development since the changes to the consortium etc. The new head introduced the critical thinking task as they clearly weren't getting enough insight by just testing reasoning!

giardiniera yes it is WHS and I believe the Hm has pushed for the consortium to follow suit. I'm not convinced that it's tutor proof though, dcs will just start reasoning practice at an earlier age 😣!

The 11+ is not complex! The hardest element are the comprehensions as of course interpretations of text can vary and be very subjective. The maths is at a higher level than covered by state primary, a bit of algebra, nothing that a bright child couldn't handle with a bit of guidance and direction.

Only thing I would add which Njshore and I covered is the definition of tutoring

If you are sat with your child working through exam papers, supporting with work in addition to home work say by DCs current school then this is tutoring. It’s misleading to say that your child passed the exams without tutoring, eg they just rocked up to the exam with no preparation other than the curriculum followed at school.

What you actually mean is you didn’t hire a third party/professional tutor for you child.

When I hear of schools setting ridiculously difficult entrance examinations and then tut-tutting about parents tutoring for them (and insisting that they are successful at weeding out these parents), it calls to mind those guys you sometimes see, who have incredibly high standards for physical perfection in women and berate/mock women who aren't beautiful enough, but also insist that they want to see "natural" beauty and that they hate it when women use makeup or other beauty aids....despite the fact that the standards of beauty that they consider acceptable are literally unattainable without quite a bit of help.

There is no way to make a test tutorproof, seriously. If schools are serious about stopping tutoring getting ever more extreme, they need to bite the bullet and do a two-step process that involves a lottery. A basic exam (not ridiculously hard), and then those that pass (who will be many times more numerous than the number of places) will have the opportunity to put their names in a tombola and 10% of them get selected. The advantage of this is that at least you would get some variety and diversity among the kids and parents.

Then again, why should schools do this? They are businesses, and they make their jobs a lot easier by ensuring that they get the most gung-ho, heavily-tutoring parents using their schools (because it virtually guarantees good results, regardless of what the school itself is doing).

Kokeshi123, I can't stop laughing at your simile

I was so shocked when I first read this thread a few days ago!

I put my ofsted good state school educated boy to try for one of the top 3 boy schools last year, thinking that we will do some DIY preparation and see what happens. That was in the September before the Jan tests. My boy was one of the top of his year, we worked quite hard at home but didn't get through to the interview stage. Luckily he flied through the 7+ of a more local, top 50 type independent and is now happily there.

After the exams I understood we were underprepared but this thread make me realise we never really had a chance. I have never heard of £300 per hour super tutors before this thread, nor could I afford or justify it. I didn't know people start their preparation a year or more before for 7+/8+. He was not in a pre prep which needs to get their boys in to sustain its leavers destinations list. I have no access to past papers, never mind marking scheme! And I absolutely agree with the PPs who said the schools are not actually interested in non tutored kids, just the highest performing ones.

I did thought about trying again at 11+, now I am thinking there is really no point. That sort of competition wouldn't fit our family, and I suspect my boy will not be happy there.

Roserevelvet your son is a good example of boys who should be getting into the top schools. He’s bright, he’s had some preparation (because let’s face it no one can claim a child can turn up with no coaching whatsoever and expect to get into one of the top 3) but you didn’t go crazy, you didn’t have hours of tutoring every week and you didn’t hire £300 per hour super tutors if indeed they exist! Sounds similar to the preparation we did for my DS.

I think a genuinely bright child will get into these schools without rampant coaching but some schools are better at spotting untutored talent than others. SPJ do it primarily through their reasoning paper and at interview. I’ve heard of boys score very well in the written papers but turned down at interview because they couldn’t cope with the think for yourself problem-solving type tasks given to them. Head also told me the English writing bit is just to check the boys can write something, it is a periphal part of the assessment because they know they can teach the boys how to write when they arrive. Maths, reasoning and comprehension she said is more indicative of a child’s future academic success.

Paying for interview practice must be the biggest waste of money. Schools can see straight through pre rehearsed answers and know exactly how to get round it. At the SPJ interview head asked one of the boys with my son - how do you like to spend your free time after you’ve finished work with your tutor! The boy had not previously mentioned he was tutored but bluttered out how hard his tutor makes him work and so Mum let’s him watch an hours tv after he’s finished!!

Onebusymother1 the boy who told the Head about his tutoring would still have been offered a place if he did well in the written papers and interview. Actually the boys I know who got into SPJ are heavily tutored so they are as bad as any school when it comes to this issue. Perhaps the right approach is a reasoning test plus interview for 7+ and 8+. Scrape all the written stuff.

User44444 I agree ALL the schools take heavily tutored kids. I don’t think SPJ or any school can pat themselves on the back to declare their entrance exams are tutor proof.

No exam is tutor proof, and practice will make any result higher - even the reasoning papers. To criticise the schools is not really fair and exudes a whiff of bitterness. What choice do the schools have, really. The bulk of candidates are very similar in intelligence and strengths/weaknesses and choosing 20-50 boys amongst that group is really a task which must be frustrating. The majority are bright, hardworking, sparky in someway but there are only so many spots available.

I don't scoff at heavily tutored boys getting spots - they certainly have worked hard for their spots. I am dismayed by the parents feeling they must buy in the tutoring to obtain the spots. However, the parent population purchasing super-tutor time, despite it not being necessary, and leading to the rise in heavily tutored candidates are only reflecting qualities they themselves have - ultra competitive, super-ambitious, and results driven. These are probably the qualities which have allowed themselves to be in a financial position to send their child to schools like the ones we are talking about. For those who are aghast at this sort of culture and are upset their child missed out on a spot at one of these schools, do keep in mind that these sorts of parents do set the tone at the schools and perhaps not getting a spot at the 7+/8+ is not such a bad thing. Better to wait for entrance to the senior schools where parents are really kept at arms length and thus the tone of the schools is often different to the junior schools.

Mominatrix, very well said! Totally agree.

Mominatrix you say it’s unfair to criticise schools but what about the Heads who stand up at Open Day and openly criticise parents for tutoring only to make offers largely to children who have been heavily tutored? I’ve had the pleasure of the 11+ this year and listened to the Head of one of the top london girls school give an anti tutoring lecture. Results are just out - guess which girls got into her school?

All sides can take some responsibility here. No exam can be “tutor proof” of course but schools can bring in more problem solving tasks, longer interviews to really get to know a child and take away a lot of the predictable stuff. Avoid stories by 7 year olds that read more like something out of an adult fiction book!

You don’t need a supertutor to regular tutor to access past papers . A simple search on google will reveal a wealth of info. That’s how I found exampapersplus which was a fantastic resource that will not only provide sample full length and subject specific exams but also answer guides and marking schemes . For £14 you get 4 full exams to work through - there are also additional maths problem solving papers, grammar as well as verbal and non verbal reasoning .
Also many schools ( habs, nlcs, kings, Highgate, etc) will have past papers available on their sites for prospective parents to access for free. So really the external tutor cost will pay for the research as well as the hours working w a child a parent has no time or desire to do, not open some mystical doors to secret treasure troves of exclusive study aids .

Onebusymother I concur. Well done to your boy. My ds's English composition would certainly not have been full of metaphors, similes or pre learnt openers. I did not want to take the risk of overly tutoring him and then him fail to gain a place at the age of 7. He is a spring baby and very sensitive, I didn't want to damage his self confidence. It was a case of, if you get in great, you won't have to sit the 11+, if you don't, you'll stay with your friends. Do the majority of parents keep up the tutoring once the child is in one of these schools? The problem with testing at such a young age is that some children won't have hit some of the developmental milestones required and as another OP stated, they won't be emotionally ready. Still it's worth a go as entry is definitely easier at this age than the awful 11+!

Sorry just reading through this post, now!
Keepcalmteach could you please PM me details about your teaching? Thank you.