11+ prep

[tescosbutterchicken]

So when do kids start prepping for their 11+ and when do you have to book for a tutor if you choose to go down that route?

I overheard a conversation that they tried to book a tutor to start in 2022 but were told they were already fully booked!!

Mine is in year 4 and haven't even started planning.. what do people plan to do with their kids' 11+ prep who goes to a normal states school?

Hi - I am in the London Borough of Croydon and had no idea there might be waiting list for tutors. If anyone has any recommendations I would be very grateful to hear them.

Thanks all so much for sharing. It's crazy that some tutors are fully booked years in advance.

To those who have had their kids tutored - what was the process, did they get an assessment at the start to see where they're at or did they dive into the questions straight away?

Did the tutors work through workbooks that you can buy on Amazon or did they come up with their own worksheets?

My Son (y5) started tutoring in Sept. We lost our first tutor (which in hindsight is a blessing as she wasn't very nice and not a good fit for our son). By chance a friend of my son had decided against further tutoring so a space opened up for us. This was perfect as the only other tutors with spaces were either inexperienced or only offered group sessions.
We've gone for 1 hr a week and to start with it was in a group of 3 as the exam in our area was delayed until early Nov so she still had that cohort to support.
He started 1-2-1 this week. Mixture of tutor set work and workbooks (verbal reasoning, English, Maths - all from Amazon and the ones suitable for our area's test). No assessment at the beginning but just had a maths one this week. We don't want to over tutor as it's one thing passing the test, and quite another to be able to cope once there.
There are others who have been tutored to death which have pushed up the pass mark in previous years.
So far 1 hour a week with some homework is working for us - we have asked the tutor to be candid with us if at any point she thinks he won't be able to pass etc.
She messaged me last week as her diary is filling up and have just put my current y1 daughter on her books for 2024!

We've tutored from yr 4 for several reasons: a) I am not confident doing it myself and - particularly with my youngest - I struggle to get the best from her. b) their primary is pretty bog standard c) the state secondaries near us are below par (we know because our eldest went) , so it's particularly important to us that they get into grammar to be able to learn rather than just dodge fights and knives!

There are some very different attitudes out there to what people are looking for from tutors. In our case, we were lucky enough to have a naturally pretty able and studious child. He didn't need a tutor to help him 'catch up'. We weren't in a situation where we needed a crazily high score for a particular school. We're degree-level educated and knew that we could do the preparation at home if necessary. But frankly we knew it would be a headache - there would have been quite a bit of arguing and negotiating over when DS did the work, we're not up to speed with all the recent maths techniques and so on, we don't have access to any resources beyond the Bond books etc. We used a tutor purely to outsource what we could have done ourselves. We went for someone laid back, who wouldn't push DS too hard or set too much homework, and who we were confident would be honest with us about how he was doing. We only needed to book him in about 2 months in advance. The result was that he actively enjoyed the weekly group sessions (which he did in Year 5 only), he did the homework without any fuss, he wasn't too stressed about the exam, and the whole thing was (relatively) painless. He sailed through the exam with a good score. If our situation had been different - if he'd been really borderline in terms of ability, or we'd been competing for an intensely competitive grammar - then maybe we'd have done things differently - either opted out of the whole thing, or tried to book in a more hardcore tutor. But as it was, the more laid back approach was perfect for us.

On your specific questions, no, there was no initial assessment - the tutor just got his measure as she went along. She used a mix of 'over the counter' resources and her own worksheets. She gave us lots of guidance on which books to buy for homework and for summer practice over the final month or two.

We used to live in Buckinghamshire. The tutor with the best local reputation was fully booked for DS2’s year group when he was still in nursery.

Crikey now that is planning!!!