Eleven Plus Prep

[Brownbeaut]

Hi

I am thinking of sending my 8 year old child to a grammar school for Year 7. I live in Bucks.

What time of the year do you think is best for starting to prepare him for the exams?

Can someone list for me the steps involved, e.g.

1. Look for schools in August
2. Ring school/council in ....
3. ..............

Thank you so much.

I heard that the process is long and hard.

Hello. I do not live in Bucks so do not know the local procedure there. We started looking at schools when DD1 was in Year 5. We were looking at independent schools that were academic including a private Grammar. There are no state Grammars in our area.

There were open days in the Autumn term, mostly in November. I looked at websites, talked to parents and visited the open days. In the Summer Term our DD went on taster days at the 2 schools we liked the best.

The exams were in January of Year 6. Applications for local state schools had to be completed by mid october and Dd had to be registered for entrance exams to the private schools by xmas.

The exam was the 11 plus (verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning), an English paper and a Maths paper. Plus an interview with the head that consisted of a presentation on a topic of dds choice. Also they requested a report from her head teacher.

We had to wait 2 weeks to hear if she got in. She starts in September!

We did not use a tutor as I firmly believe that if she was able she would get in. I did go through some practice 11 plus papers with her in the xmas hols as she had never done anything like verbal or non verbal reasoning in her state primary. Also helped her with the timing of the exam so she knew what to expect. Four friends also took the entrance exam and they all had tutors so plenty of people use them.

This info is probably not much help to you but not sure how different it is in other areas.

Good Luck anyway!

Hi, our son goes to a Grammar in Bucks. (he's going into yr11 now).

I didn't hire a tutor but bought him some practice papers (Maths and Verbal reasoning) a year beforehand. They took the exam in the October of yr6 but I think that may have changed now, so:

October yr 5 bought practice papers
September yr 6 the schools hold open evenings
October yr 6 he took the 11 plus
November yr 6 we had to make the choice of school
December yr6 we were told he'd passed
February (ish) yr 6 we were told he'd got into his first choice of grammar.

So to summarise, at that time in Bucks we were in a situation whereby we were choosing the school before we knew whether he'd passed or not.

We put 1st choice - mixed grammar
2nd - boys grammar
3rd - out of catchment (Henley) comp
4th - in catchment secondary modern.

Don't bother ringing the school, they have open evenings where about 500 people are shepherded around.

We made the choice (jointly with ds) on the visit based not so much on the academic stuff (tho' that is outstanding) but that it was a lovely summer evening, the school was founded in 1640 & was beautiful, the rose garden in the central quad, the headmaster's golder labrador padding around the grounds 0 it just looked so idyllic compared to the other grammar. We didn't look at the non grammars on the basis that if he didn't pass the 11 plus there wasn't really a choice as such.

Good luck for yours.

BTW I eased himinto the practice papers, but in the month before the 11 plus he was doing 3 timed papers a week. He was a bit pissed off about having to do them but not stressed out or anything. He's very glad he got into the 1st choice grammar and is doing very well academically after a very lazy laid back yrs 7 & 8