Is it too Late?

[Matlow]

We live in SE London and having visited all the available secondary schools for my son I am getting worried that he will not get a place at any of our 6 choices. We are just a little bit too far away from each school and our 4 closest community schools are wildly over subscribed. My neighbours son had same list in same order and was not offerred a place last year but was allocated a really bad school she hadnt put down. For reasons I wont go into now my little boy would be eaten alive at that school so we are being drawn to the dark side and thinking about the possibility of an independent school. We would like co-ed and a nice atmoshere with a diverse intake of students. We think St Dunstans looks the most appropriate, however it is selective and our son has not been prepped for exam. He hasnt covered some areas of the maths sample paper and I have no way of knowing how well he would get on in the English. He is bright and will end up with level 5's for his SATS but he is not overly studious and certainly not a genius. Is it too late to get him up to speed for exam on January 13th? I dont want to push him into lots of tutoring over the next few months if he has little chance. I also dont want to worry or demoralise him.

What do you think?

I think local authorities expect parents to put down at least one school that they know their children stand a very good chance of getting into so if you haven't done that it is entirely possible that your ds may end up not being allocated a school immediately and then will be given a place in an undersubscribed school.

My ds did the entrance exam for Colfes which I think is similar to St Dunstans and I don't think he found it very hard. Certainly he didn't do any special prep for it. Remember independents like Colfes and St Dunstans, whilst being selective, won't be anywhere near as oversubscribed as grammars so it won't be as hard to get in. I can't remember the exact figures but I can remember being shocked when the head at Colfes told us what the ratio of applicants to places was as it was very very low compared to that for state grammars. I loved Colfes but ds got into a grammar school so we couldn't justify the hefty fees!!

Does your ds have any musical or sporting talents? Colfes offers bursaries for these and I presume St Dunstans does the same.

If you're going to go down that route, don't feel you have to make excuses. You're not going over to the dark side - you're doing the best you can for your ds. Colfes was our back up plan because there was no way I was going to let my ds go to the huge failing local school he would have been allocated if he didn't pass the eleven plus.

Thanks Longingforsomesleep. We have put an academy that is 500 meters from our front door on our list but must admit we are not enthusiastic. I assume that if your ds got a grammar school place he must have done very well on his 11 +. Did he have any tutoring or did he practice bond papers etc? I am worried that we won't have enough time to catch up.
My DS is very funny and creative but unfortunately no particular sporting or musical talent so no real chance of a scholarship or bursary. We can just about manage the fees though don't know what we will do about Dd!

I will have a chat with Ds tonight and see if I can get him to commit to really trying and then if he is willing try, work out some sort of study plan.

Any tips gratefully received.

Firstly you have my sympathies. It all seems very easy to say "you have 6 choices, make sure 1 is one you are sure of getting", but I know the horror of realising that actually, there is NO school that falls into that category. Our nearest school is the wrong church, our next 2 are over subscribed and there is no guarantee that we would get in on distance, and the next seems to run a lottery based on a NVR test (so they put the children into bands and take a random number in each). Once we go further then we have to see whether we are churchy enough for the church schools, or ds has to pass a aptitude test etc. In London it seems all too easy not to be able to get into your nearest 6 schools AT ALL!

In terms of last minute prep, IF your son is motivated, then you could certainly do a lot in a couple of months, and I wouldn't view this to be a waste regardless of what school he ends up at (and as I remind ds, her will definitely be going to a school somewhere!). St Dunstan's isn't the most selective of schools, and if level 5s are in sight, then really you just want to cover gaps and practice exam technique. Are you aware that St Dunstans run their own scheme to prepare (based on 3 or 4 Saturday mornings at the end of November)? Another place to look is Old Palace in Croydon. Although it is a girls school they are running an 11+ prep course in half term which might be useful. If nothing else I would expect that by the end of the week you will have an idea as to what he is capable of. If the courses don't appeal then I would recommend using the Bon "How to do 11+ maths, English etc". They seem to be quite good in working out where the weak spots are, so that you can quickly see what areas need to be covered. I'm afraid that I'm a great believer in practice, and I do think that just getting into the habit of answering these types of questions under time pressure leads to an improvement in scores.

If your ds hasn't done any mocks, then hopefully one of the courses mentioned will help. Otherwise you might want to sign up for a random aptitude test, just so that your son has the experience of going to a strange school and sitting an exam with children he hasn't seen before. Shirley High in Croydon has an aptitude test on Sat 9th Nov and you can apply to sit it until 21st October. There may be other schools which are similar but closer to you (I'm just conscious of those dates - many exams have already happened)

Dd passed her grammar with about thre hours prep with some papers off amazon. She is top in all subjects but not particularly studious. I don't think it's too late especially if you get organised quite fast x

Thank you so much Ladymuck that is incredibly helpful. I will look into the courses or at least the aptitude test at Shirley High. I have only just completed the registration form for St Dunstan's and have requested a place for my DS on the exam prep sessions but it says first come first served so I assumed that at this late stage we would probably be out of luck. I doubt he has ever sat still under test conditions for anywhere near an hour so I agree that getting some experience of how it feels could prove invaluable. I think practicing papers under time pressure will be very good for him as well as he is not good at planning his time when writing stories etc he will usually spend most time on the beginning, less on the middle and run out of time by the end! Our favourite state option uses a lottery system for allocation of places too but as only 2 kids got in from our primary this year the odds are not great.

Thank you also Bemused33. I suspect your dd might be a bit more academically exceptional than my DS but I will definitely get organised and get him to crack on with the practice papers. Maybe it can be done!

If the St Ds course is full then do look at the Old Palace one, or at least don't dismiss it because it is a girls school: boys aiming for Whitgift will sit it.

I would also be ruthless about taking practice tests under timed conditions. Let him finish the paper and give him a mark for what he did in time, as well as what he got when he had finished. As you track this over 2 months you, and more importantly he, will see an improvement. Whilst I'm not in favour of months and months of tuition, I think that the day a boy realises that his results are directly influenced by his efforts is quite key to his success in whatever activity he chooses to pursue.

We have also been looking at St D's. From what I hear it's quite easy to get into, not nearly as competitive as say the Kent grammars or Alleyn's. I would say if he's level 5 he will get in - just needs to do a couple of practice papers to get used to the format and timings.

I hope I'm right because that is what we are doing with DD