11+ interview techniques

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DS has an interview at a super selective secondary coming up. He’s desperate for a place as the school suits him perfectly & friends are also likely to be going there. He stands a good chance of passing the entrance exams, but he’s feeling nervous about the interview (he’s ASD, which the school are aware of, and gets quite flustered speaking to people he doesn’t know). Does anyone have any tips or any ideas of the sorts of questions the head might ask? The school have told us to ensure he’s up to speed on current affairs, well read & poised to talk about his interests (which he’s likely to do at length…) but no other info.

You can google 11+ interview questions. The main thing is to be able to explain why he wants to go to the school, what aspect of the facilities he is looking forward to, what extracurricular activities he does such as sports or music, any leadership skills such as being on the school council, what his best subject is and which subject he would like to improve, any new subjects he is keen to learn, what book he is reading at the moment and what he likes or dislikes about the main character (choose a classic children’s book, again available online), etc. You can practise this in a way that doesn’t appear rehearsed. Also, teach him to smile, shake hands, wait to be asked to sit, sit on the edge of his seat and use eye contact if possible. If he doesn’t know the answer to a question, he should be honest and say something like he would look forward to learning about that at the school. Get him to think of a question to ask them. They need to know that as a family you’ve done a bit of research and whether he would be a good fit.

@MadKittenWoman Brilliant advice, thank you.

I’ve only just seen this but when I see a post re 11+ interviews I try to mention a book that really helped us. I don’t know how to do a link but if you look on Amazon for a book by Anna Wheatley it’s called something like School Interview Practice? Something like that. It was really good because it had questions and then a set of answers for each question - example answers. So one not good answer, one good answer and a brilliant answer together with a commentary explaining why the answers were rated good, bad etc. My son actually really enjoyed looking at the book and he’d had a massive block before about practising any interview style questions at all. So we were relieved to find something that worked for us! Hope that helps!

Best advice I had was to do a mock interview with a friend who was well briefed - someone DC didn't know well...

It really helped, and was great prep