Tuition from year one and grammar school chances

[squashpie]

Couldn't think what else to call this question. DS is in year 1. He seems to be in top third in the various subjects. A few of his classmates have tuition/ kumon, which I'd always been dead against. Now I've discovered today that two of those tutored/ kumoned kids have extra maths to stretch them because they are clearly excelling.

We live in the London area and competition for grammar schools is fiercer than fierce and the local non-selective state schools are dire. It is our dearest wish that, if he were capable, DS would get into a grammar school. But how much of an advantage are the tutored/ kumoned kids getting. Will they be that far ahead when it comes to 11+? I've read on here that pupils level out but I can't help thinking that those who are so far ahead they are getting extra maths because they are already ahead of their year group are just going to maintain that lead. Do non-tutored but bright kids get into grammar school at 11?

Sorry for long post.

I don't think anyone wants a Tiffin Tutor at age 6. But, I do think a lot of parents sign there kids up for and extra 15 minutes a day to supplement the state school system where they percieve it isn't really up to par. For example, our school does very well with reading and writing so I'm happy to leave it to them. In math they are not very good. It just isn't very important and too many teachers seems to think it's for boys. This voctorian view horrifies me. So, we sign up for Kumon which (hopefully) ensures my DD gets a bit of a push in something I believe she can do well.

What Blu said (except that I know what Kumon is).

Squashpie, I for one would hate for any government to provide more grammar schools. They are divisive, unhealthy and a very bad thing IMO, or at least they are when a grammar or sec mod is the only option. (I went to such a one)

I don't know the system where you live but if people "apply" to go to grammar school then it's a bit different from my former bit of South Lincs (where you get in or not, but don't apply). Doesn't sound much better tho.

You can get a massive range of Kumon workbooks, etc from Amazon. Personally, I think that the class fees are a rip off. I decided that whilst I was happy with my YR1 DS's reading, I couldn't say the same with his numeracy. DS did 2 sheets daily over half term (takes him about 5 mins!) so hardly arduous. Why am I doing it? The same reason why I help him with his reading at home because I want to help him learn. Just buy the worksheets/workbooks off the internet and do it at home.

From what I can gather Kumon doesn;t use qualified teachers as tutors, and there is very little one to one tuition. It is just a case of here's a worksheet, sit and do it and then I will mark it. The "tutors" are often university or sixth form tutrs, with one or two more experienced staff on hand in the room.

Kumon also places children on very simple worksheets for their starting position I am sceptical as to why. Maybe to enable them to write in their literature that Kumon children develop xx number of levels in their first 12 months?

I saw no evidence of concepts and understanding behind maths being taught - just a case of lots and lots of repetitive worksheets, eah with similar tasks on, with the goal beingto complete them all correctly as fast as possible. The emphasis on speed and mental arithmatic was massive, with little working out, showing logical progression on paper, etc. there.

I was very disappointed.

That's interesting Hula.

I looked at the price and was put off! Is Kumon something you were considering for DD then?

tutoring - 1 of dd's friends was heavily tutored, x 2 a week from yr 4 - got 230 total across 3 entry tests for the Kent test (max possible is 420 - minimum to get in (in theory) is 360 - waste of money because all the money they threw at her, she just isnt overly bright

ANother of her friends, tutoring x 1.5 a week since year 1!!!!!!!!!!! Scored just enough to get into grammar school - heavy coaching on papers - now her mum is panicking because the grammar said in the open evening that they don't take any child under a 4 in teh sats tests. Her dd is in the mid to high 3's in lit & reading comp. low 4 for maths. - money well spent because she's got her in the grammar but jeeeeeeeez she's likely to struggle

My dd - tutored x 1 a week from mid yr 4 - scored 373 but because 1 test was 1 under we have to appeal - but she is low 5's for sats.

All 3 of course affected by school fire and acknowledged extremely poor teaching in yr 4.

Out of 17 girls in her class, 15 were tutored - I have no idea what my point was!

Ah but it's late QOD and most interesting and you've usefully distracted me from boring work deadline
That poor girl who got in though. How sad that she's got such a struggle ahead.

QOD, how did the two who weren't tutored get on? And how many of the tutored 15 did get in? Any ideas?

As it was explained to me kumon starts easy so that children gain confidence and experience early success & develop the routine of doing the sheet daily when it's not too difficult. They are therefore expected to make more levels of progress in the first year than in subsequent ones. It worked well for one of my dc who had real difficulties remembering the number bonds & tables & who needed the repetition to drum them in, but who quite possibly did 'get' the general principles of maths OK (though kumon builds up so gradually and is so thorough, it really does need very little or no explanation from stage to stage).

It didn't work for my other dc who was very good at maths & begged to do it, but only lasted about a fortnight! That may be that he was rather older than most when he started & really wanted to be doing complex abstract stuff not being drilled in mental maths.

I would agree that it's very expensive though & if you have the discipline to actually do the sheets without going to the weekly session and can get hold of them cheaply then that would work out better.

I am interested in Strix's idea that tutoring a young child increases their brain capacity. I suspect it maybe true to an extent for the right kind of tutoring, but suspect that endless drilling in verbal/non-verbal reasoning from year 1 probably is of limited benefit. Better to exercise the brain in other ways like learning a musical instrument and/or a sport I think.

i was reading some random googled argument earlier that said 25 % of those who got in the grammar schools were not in the right place....
most kids here ( yorkshire) are tutored but where we live we are out of area which makes it slightly harder to get in... not sure about in area kids but pretty sure tutoring goes on...

nvr and vr tests are diffucult to pass 'blind' but i do think a lot of kids are over tutored..

be careful what you wish for ..DD all girls grammar is not what we expected and we now stand no chance of moving her without paying..

I have a dd who loves maths, her idea of fun is to sit and do sums. I would never send her to a tutor but we do sit and do maths with her.

Can you not sit and do some maths with her?

QOD is that a level 4 in yr 6 SATs you are talking about?

What kind of grammar school is this? I am against them as you may have gathered, but surely the idea is that they take the top xxx% of pupils - in what world would this be children achieving just a level 4?

Kent is around 30% go to grammars I think clary, so even if the test accurately selected exactly the top 30% you might expect some 4s in there.

Of course the test isn't perfectly accurate and it is supposedly selecting on raw ability rather than current achievement which is what SATs measure, so you wouldn't expect a perfect correlation between the two sets of results anyway.

well but QOD said the girl was mid to high 3s for reading and low 4s for maths; that's my DS1 actually!

I am lol-ing at the idea that he is grammar school material. He is on the SEN register and has an IEP.

Sorry but does the top 30% really include yr 6 pupils scoring 3s in literacy? That would honestly be virtually all of my DCs' school.

Grammar schools are nonsense anyway IMO, but this smacks badly of something else altogether.

top 30% would definitely include plenty of 4s, though most would have 5s in some subjects, I'd have thought. I agree with you about the 3s though, it seems unlikely and a further indication that the 11+ doesn't always select the correct group of people. But just maybe that child has had poor teaching in English so that her English attainment is behind where her potential would suggest it ought to be (I am offering this as a possible, but not a likely scenario).

(not at you snorkie but at the whole grammar school system as it seems to exist in some places).

I'd go as far as to give the grammar system a personally clary.

Snorkie, see Preparation for Key Stage 1 SATS for some interesting debate on innate ability vs. learned development. Some posts on this thread explain it better than I can.

DS1 started tutoring from Christmas in Year 6. I refused to tutor him from Reception as some of his classmates were. Interesting enough, 2 of his year group who were tutored ( early Kumon and specific 11plus tutoring) did not get in. I did not do extra work with him after school.

My point is, early tutoring does not improve the chance for the child.

My DH and I decided to give him extra tutoring, firstly because we genuinely thought he had a good chance and also to familiarise him with the papers.

My DS went to a average state primary. To be honest he would not have stood a chance without the tutoring. The Maths tested was at least a year of what was covered in school, the English are often GCSE text (eg. Tess of D'urberville and Bleak House) and verbal reasoning is not covered in school at all.

He is now in the grammar school, got in comfortably. The year in populated with private school children who incidentally were given private tutoring ( which shocked me!)

I honestly think we made the right decision with him.

But perhaps the tutored kids did better than they would have had they not been tutored. And surely the non tutored kids would have done even better if they had been tutored.

If tutoring and studying has no effect then why even go to school at all?

Strix, I cannot deny that but we are discussing tutoring for the grammar.

Unless we want our children to be tutored all through their secondary schools, we need to be sure that they will cope well with the school system that they get into.

My son tells me some of his classmates are really struggling to keep up. I really feel sorry for these kids.

If school is all about striving, where is the fun and enjoyment? Are we not interested in the mental health of our kids?

Some children are naturally competitive and thrive in a school like a grammar. Some, however will be broken by the weight of expectations.

I have a DD in year 4, and a DS in year 3. I also live in Kent, so the grammar school issue is very much alive and kicking.

After a lot of thought DH and I have decided the only preparation we'll give our DC for the Kent Test (what the 11+ is called here) is a couple of trial runs on the papers at home. We've made this decision for two reasons.

1. If our DC are not bright enough to pass without enormous amounts of coaching they'll be at the wrong school.

1. If we spend a small fortune and an enormous amount of time on extra coaching, our protestations that passing the Kent Test is not the be-all and the end-all are going to ring somewhat hollow.

Of course, we may come to regret our decision in the future, but it seems right to us now.

We live in a grammar school area and wanted/expected our DS's to go to the grammar.

Ds1 is top third of his class (yr5)but not top groups, and a very unconfident boy. we started him with a tutor at the start of Yr4, but stopped after 6mths. He found just the pressure of being tutored, pushed, extra work and test looming in the future, to be too much and we realised this wasn't the right path for him.

We are lucky though as our (Catholic) comp is well regarded and we hope he will do well there.

Ds2 is only in Yr2, but is strugglng with literacy, so we've taken him out and put him into private, holding him back one year (sumer born). He will proably now stay in private all the way thorugh.

My point is kids don't fit into the boxes you presume they will when they're born.

Your situation is compliacted as you don't have good comps around you. So what will you do if he doesn't get into the grammar?

I'd advise tutoring around Yr4, but ask the tutor for a genuine opinion on his ability to pass the exams cope in grammar. If you are pinning your hopes on only a possibility then take the pressure of yoursleves and the child and decide then to either go privete for secondary or move to an area with a good comp. Don't put your child and yourslves under years of pressure and anxity where getting inot the grammar has become the be all and end all of life.

Give him afew years then make a judgement yourself about what you feel is right for your child.

I'm with Strix,
"If tutoring and studying has no effect then why even go to school at all?".
That sums it up for me. While it is not necessary to start tutoring early, unless a child is clearly falling behind, I don't think it does any harm, and in fact it does good. The child's confidence in their abilities will increase and they will grow to like the subject as they see how able they are. They also learn that they are capable of solving problems, however hard they initially seem. They learn to persevere and not to give up.

There is no guarantee that any amount of tutoring will obtain a place at a top grammar, but you will have a much better chance than if you didn't have any tuition.
Even if you don't get into a grammar, you will still have learnt a lot more than otherwise.

I don't buy the argument about tutored kids struggling at grammars. You are unlikely to struggle in every subject, it doesn't matter if you struggle in a few, as long as you are good at others. If you are tutored for maths and can understand the concepts involved and get a good mark in the 11+, then you will have no problem keeping up with maths at grammar. To be able to pass 11+ maths means that you are intelligent enough to understand the concepts. This means that you will be intelligent enough to understand the concepts when you receive quality tuition at grammar. If you are unlucky enough to have a crap grammar school teacher, then you may need to get some private tuition again. Either way you will be capable of doing well.

Kumon also places children on very simple worksheets for their starting position I am sceptical as to why. Maybe to enable them to write in their literature that Kumon children develop xx number of levels in their first 12 months?

Exactly my point about DS's 'predicted grades' for the end of year one (let's just say they were very low indeed and he smashed them in weeks) and thus what I see as a 'flaw' in the NC. . I know that isn't how it works and these are minimum levels etc BUT...

Before I signed up for the school I was shown a scattergraph of 'predicted' Grades and SAT scores etc and actual, achieved grades. The results looked incredibly impressive, you see my point.

All the recent studies seem to show that intelligence is learnable, there is no ceiling to ability (unless there are learning impairments) - just as you said Stix. What one person can learn almost everyone else can learn (albeit perhaps at a different rate). See Claxton's 'The Intelligent child: old beliefs and new science' (What's the point of school) for details. Also Carol Dweck has done some highly respected research which also points to this.