SPGS and extreme tutoring for 11+ entrance exam

[Rockylady]

I wondered how much people do really tutor their girls very intensely to get into SPGS and how much the "no tutoring please" message is just a screen for what parents really do in practice.

Recently I was at a prize giving end of year event at a school in London with my best friend who was in town visiting, her goddaughter attends this school which is one of the top 5 'feeders' for SPGS (and the school had outstanding results this year in that respect).

There was this senior girl who received so many prizes across the board - academic and otherwise and has an offer to go to SPGS. The girl must be clearly very bright and focused, but I learnt today (rather by absolute chance) that the girl was ultra tutored to prepare for the SPGS exam..... she was tutored every day of the week, and for many months/years!!

Is it me or this sounds really crazy? is that what it takes, even when attending one of the feeder preps?
Parents from Glendower, Falkner, Bute House and Ken Prep and so on please chip in.... anyone from Hampden Gurney too.

This is crazy & not necessary. There are a couple of regular MNetters who often contribute, 1 has a dd at St Paul's & the other has a dd joining, they both had their dds in the SW London state system. You can seek them out - @FlumePlume & @Glaciferous - by following the entrance exam threads in Jan 19 on the secondary education section.

Hello! Yes, definitely not necessary. It's a choice some people make but tbh I can't really understand why. DD found the process of application quite good fun and has had a lovely first year. She came from a very ordinary state primary, and had about 6 months of tutoring mainly aimed at exam technique.

PS I meant to say, the tutoring was 1 hour once a week and nothing in the holidays, as have just realised that it could sound like we spent 6 months doing stuff every day or for hours at a time.

No experience of SPGS but when it comes to extreme tutoring, parents want to feel like they’ve done absolutely everything. Some tutoring is beneficial not only for exam technique but also to fill in any potential gaps and revise in time for exams.

Glad to hear Glaciferous.... I just felt there is a whole world le there I was completely unaware of!

I don't know what others did. Maybe there was a lot of tutoring from other parents and I genuinely don't know because I have not asked. For us, I felt that DD was a) v clever and could deal with the exams on her own merits (esp the weird comprehension paper which specifically presents the girls with something they won't have seen before and which she apparently did very well in), and b) I did not want to inflate her attainment beyond her ability to keep up because that way lies misery. The pace is fast. It's not a school for someone who is just good at academic things. It's a school for someone who is genuinely hungry to learn. A child who isn't genuinely hungry to learn probably won't enjoy the experience.

If they need that much tutoring to get in to a school how are they going to cope once there? Ridiculous amount of pressure to put on a child.

Verbal and non verbal reasoning is not taught in schools. So some tutoring is needed. You need to learn exam technique. You need to fill in the gaps for everything not taught at school. You prepare as you would for any other exam.

Over tutored kids however, tend to struggle. Would only consider tutoring an already bright child, or one you think would cope/do well at grammar.

If they need that much tutoring to get in to a school how are they going to cope once there?

With more tutoring, perhaps? Some people genuinely don't see a problem with this, even unto A levels and possibly university...

Sorry to be so late to this @Gingercat1223, I never got the @, weirdly.

Anyway, dd has just started at SPGS. We did about a year of home preparation - no expert tutor, only working on 11 plus stuff once a week (with a few exceptions eg in the days before the Tiffin exam).

She had good foundations at her SW London primary school, but needed to learn some more maths and to develop her exam technique as she had never done an exam before. SPGS doesn’t really have a VR/NVR paper (the stage 1 has a bit of it, but not much). In retrospect, we should either have done more NVR or not applied to WHS - but that’s a separate issue.

It’s an age old discussion with no answer.

Of course anything that can be described as ‘extreme’ is unnecessary and can be damaging.
However - there is no one definition of tutoring and no child is the same.
For example - if a parent does extra work with a child - say extra practice with exam papers, or reading and discussing something - it is NOT considered tutoring.
However - if it’s done by an non-parent - it is.
The end effect is the same - child is enriched and gets a little extra over what they get at school - yet one is frowned upon.
I would say that in schools like SPGS - most kids have done something extra to what their school (any school) has given them. It could have been in a form of very involved parents and various educational activities, conversations, experiences, clubs, etc
Or it can be a really curios and intellectually self-driven child who pushed herself to get to extra depths on a lot of subjects;
Or it could be in a form of some extra tuition - because not all parents are capable or have the time to do extra work with their children...
However - in the end of the day - any form of tutoring can only do so much. No tutor can take an average-IQ child and have them fly at the exams at a top school.
What a tutor can do is to help a naturally bright child fill some gaps, and cover some extra material that hasn’t yet been covered at school.

So - the girl you have seen at FH (bumper year indeed for them) - in all likelihood is naturally bright as well as tutored. Who knows if the extra hours she spent studying end up benefiting her. They might. Or not.
What she would find at SPGS is that there are a lot of other very bright girls just as well.

No experience of SPGS, but we live in a grammar area with a super selective grammar for boys.

DS and his friend were at the same prep school, both achieving at similar levels at the start of Year 4. His friend was heavily tutored and did many hours of extra work in the two years that led to the state superselective grammar entrance exams. DS didn't pass even the first stage of assessments (he has just started at a quite academic independent). His friend was offered a place at the super selective. I have no doubt at all that the extensive tutoring (think 7 hours a week with a tutor plus more than that in homework each week, set by the tutor/parents) as well as the prep they'd done in school and the homework set by school led to him being offered a place. Of course how well he will do there is another thing. DS wouldn't have coped at all with that much pressure in the two years leading to the entrance exam.

Some parents will invest huge amounts of time and money in this and the child will get the results that they're hoping for.

Hope your DD is having fun, @FlumePlume

Please do say if she needs someone older to ask about anything. She could find DD and they could swap numbers or just have a chat.

@MMmomDD
well said, can't agree more.

@MMmomDD you have missed the point. The question is whether you do need to do extreme tutoring to get in.

Of course whether that is good or effective for your DD is beyond the point as all depends on real aptitude in the longer term.

The question is whether you have to do it anyways because others less worthy than your DD of gaining a place are getting in nonetheless - mainly because of extreme tutoring and all the resources put behind them. Which by the way the school is unable to distinguish from true potential at the moment.

@Rockylady

I didn’t miss the point. It’s more that you question can not be answered really.
Has everyone who got into SPGS been tutored - No
Does your specific child needs tutoring - Impossible to tell
If your child gets a lot of tutoring would she get in (‘extreme tutoring’ by your definition) - impossible to tell
Does tutoring make a difference - yes for some, no for others as not every tutored child gets in
Do exams weed out tutored kids with no potential - probably not completely, but probably only at the margins as most that come in have CATs of 130+, an indication of high end on IQ scale
Is there such concept of which child is ‘worthy’ to get in - not really...
You do realise that in addition to having the brain to get in - those kids also have to actually demonstrate that that one day when examinations happen.

The other point I was trying to make is about tutoring in general. Both the definition of what is considered as such. And about whether tutoring actually makes a difference.

And finally - take what other parents talk about in these competitive schools with scepticism. Parents tend to be competitive among each other and like to put others down.
That girl may be smart on her own accord, not just tutored. Or maybe she is. Point is - you don’t really know.
My Dd always did well and pushed herself all on her own. I did a bit of extra work with with her over the years, read and took her to interesting events and places. Most people assumed she was tutored, and didn’t believe me when I told them what I actually did with her.
She is at SPGS.
But if she weren’t - she’d be at another school, doing equally well. And would be just as OK.

There is no answer to your question.

Well you are missing the point again. Not interested in answering a theoretical question, just interested in making a decision. Of course I will never know and the same does not apply to every girl.

In other words, would you tutor your bright DD in the extreme just because it is needed and you may be at a disadvantage if you didn't? (And I said may not 'will'). Decisions, not an answer is what I am focusing on. As you say, there is no answer to the question but you still need to make a decision about what to do.

Rocky
No - I am not missing a point - there is a no answer.
No parent decides to tutor their child to an ‘extreme’. They do what they think is needed.
If you have a daughter - i can’t tell you if you need to do much or anything with her. And if it would make any difference.
Most parents don’t want to take a chance and do nothing extra, so they do do something. Certainly in Y6. Possibly in Y5 as well.
If your kid is top of the class in a highly academic school in the area you mention - the ‘extra’ I am talking about is doing some more practice tests, in the summer before Y6 and up until the exams.
If your child is middle of the class in those schools - you can try to pull them up with more math in Y5 and more English. And certainly a lot of reading on wide variety of subjects.
There are tutors that can assess your child and advise you where their knowledge is shaky and what can benefit them.
If you are in a state school - i’f definitely do some extra work consistently in from Y5. Just because they’ll be up against prep-school kids. I’d practice VR/NVR too because state schools don’t do it and it’s useful for both SPSG pre-test and consortium schools.

As I said over and over - it’s a rare child who gets into that school with being exposed to nothing extra academically. What that ‘extra’ mean depends. You know your daughter and decide what it means for your specific situation.
Her underlying IQ; her drive; her ability to absorb information; her schedule of other activities; your ability to engage her in extra work as some kids resist ‘parental nudging’... Then make a decision what you think she needs

OP I agree with MMomDD - your question is a bit ‘how long is a piece of string’. Only you can decide what you think is the right level of support / tutoring for your dd.

I think that what I (and the other SPGS mums on this thread) have demonstrated is that girls do get into the school without the type of ‘extreme’ tutoring you described in your OP. What I don’t know is how many (as a percentage of the cohort, or of those that apply) are tutored for more than one year, more than once a week (or however you want to define extreme). And how you would also account for the prep schools doing a lot that would, if done by a tutor for a state school child, count as ‘tutoring’.

Personally, I decided it wasn’t right for me to try to make dd sacrifice any of her much-loved extra-curricular interests (or her sleep!) for tutoring. So that set the level of time (an hour or so a week) that was available, and that’s what we used.

I do think there are declining returns on extra time spent tutoring though - there’s only so much exam technique to cover!

There’s is absolutely zero chance of getting in to our local schools (that do entry exams) without tutoring. Our local schools focus on mainly non verbal reasoning. Google 11 plus non verbal reasoning papers if you’re not familiar with them, no child (or adult) has a chance of passing these without tutoring. I had my dd tutored for 4 hours a week for 6 months before the exams. The school she got into had only 13 places, 850 children applied for them. My dd got in, but there was no chance she would have done without the tutoring

thanks FlumePlume and Raphael34, interesting to know from first hand experience the approach you decided to take. and the last paragraph of MMmomDD rings the bell too, thanks.

I think extreme tutoring is unusual even amongst Paulinas. I know of one in DD's year who owned up to it at least! - she is still thriving and top set for maths a few years in - so she probably would have got in anyway... Many had nothing or just a bit of parental practice. We did some exam practice as DD's junior school went to 18 and didn't prepare for the kind of skills required. Just because the girl was super tutored doesn't mean she needed it. It may be that she has determined parents who are sure it's the right place for her and wanted to feel they did all they could.
What is surprising is a prep that gives out a large proportion of academic prizes to one girl - most are rather more fair minded these days and tend to share them out. So does SPGS in fact.

If you are in a state school - i’f definitely do some extra work consistently in from Y5. Just because they’ll be up against prep-school kids. I’d practice VR/NVR too because state schools don’t do it and it’s useful for both SPSG pre-test and consortium schools.

DD is at SPGS and came from a (very average and not high-flying) state school. We didn't do much tutoring and only really in the 6 months or so running up to the exams, with breaks for holidays where we did nothing. The tutor I got, which I did for the sake of not having to argue about it with DD, told us we had left it FAR TOO LATE (obv not). We only applied for two schools that I felt would suit DD and I would have happily sent her to the local state school if she hadn't got in to either of them. It was not a high stakes process for us.

So we did a bit in Y5 (last couple of months) and a bit in Y6 (until the exams) and nothing else at all. We didn't do VR or NVR at all. I know there's a bit of those in the pre-test, but DD is quite logical so it never really occurred to me that she'd struggle with this, and she didn't. I personally love that type of thing and consider it fun and DD is quite like me. I definitely don't think I'd need any tutoring to pass an 11+ paper on either of those! I asked the tutor to concentrate specifically on exam technique, how to take a multiple choice paper etc.

So no, not all parents choose to do mad levels of tutoring and I think that you don't need to and if you do it's your choice. I thought it wasn't worth it. SPGS is wonderful in a number of ways but DD would have done just as well anywhere else. The main reason I wanted her to go there was curriculum rather than thinking she would do badly if she went to the local comprehensive (specifically languages, it's DD's thing and she can take four at GCSE if she wants as opposed to two at the perfectly OK local schools).

OP - if you are applying to west London day schools - your are in a very competitive area and up against a lot of very well prepared kids from local preps and with highly driven, and well off parents.
No matter how much people don’t like it - given the binary nature of the 11+ entry point for the girls people get stressed and try to do what they can to compete.
Boys at least have a few entry points - 7/8/11/13... For girls - this is it, and they all have to find a place somewhere.
So - people don’t like but end up,
possibly doing more than is strictly necessary. Just because there isn’t a do-over. Like it or not, just how it is.

So - some parents get away with little work. I was one of them as I was lucky with my D. She just was a naturally studious kid and in an academic school.
If she were less, and were in a different school - i’d have done more. And if she weren’t open to doing it with me - i’d have hired someone.
I didn’t have a secondary state choice for her that I was happy about - so, i’d Have tried to maximise her chances of getting into a good private school in the area.
I don’t consider a few extra hours a week in Y5-6 - an extreme level of tutoring.