Is it too early to start a 2016 girls 11+ W/SW London thread?

[orangina]

What do we think? DD is sitting 11+ for various consortium schools in January 2016 and I am slightly desperate for a thread to compare notes, pat each others shoulders etc..... I lurked on last years thread, but it didn't start until much later....

Just booking up open day places and filling in my registration forms now.....

Kuppenbender, one of the things I liked about Emanuel was whoever showed me round seemed equally proud of the fact that amongst it's alumnae was Tim Berners-Lee and the Rumble Strips

(I used to have a castle in my name btw in case anyone is wondering who this weirdo is turning up at a thread like this making random comments.)

As I have previously mentioned, I work in one of these schools. It is middling in the 'sought after' list in SW London. So you should be able to guess what we are not, Ie. SPGS. I just want to say that when the girls arrive in a Sep, some of them and their parents are thrilled to be there as it was their 1st choice. Others just have sensible parents so are also happy to be there. However there are always some who let the school, and worse, their own DCS know that this was not their first choice of school and they really think they should have 'done better'. This has quite a negative effect and I have seen pupils really struggling to settle in as a result. So my plea to all parents is not to talk any school down.

Parents of 11+ children please listen to Jeanne as she speaks such sense. We did the 11+ two years ago and although it ended up with DC getting first choice school, it was a gruelling process. Two things - one is that your dcs will recover faster than you from the process, especially if you adopt the line that "we only applied for schools we are happy for you to go to" therefore any school on that list is a good result. The second is to try try try to have faith in the selection process. ..we may get blinded by the opinions of friend's and league tables, but often children end up with the best "fit" for them. And finally, you have my sympathy if you have to do it again...and no, it doesn't get any easier, nor do I feel I got any better at the process....

Harlowcar I do agree with Jeanne. The problem is you don't always end up with best fit. Sadly that is from personal experience.

I think that part of the problem is that there are just not enough of the middling schools for perfectly bright and lovely children but not too uber set geniuses! And those schools which might have been that are now just as oversubscribed and are also selecting the most able. So inevitably an average all rounder lovely child ends up feeling that someone they are not good enough! My DD came out of the first consortium exam saying that the maths was just ridiculously hard so clearly the bar has been raised again as the numbers swell... So I know that we are not finished and have yet to heat the outcomes but I am doubting whether it is indeed right that they all end up somewhere right for them or indeed even somewhere!

My fears are closer to crazy and almost done. Harlow while you speak from your positive experience we are all aware that not all outcomes are positive for exactly the reason that Crazy has identified - Alleyn's just 10 years ago is very different from what it is now. Emanuel is getting ever harder. Ibstock which gets middling results relative to the uber academic schools has become really difficult to get into. While some schools will be uber selective wherever they are located (SPGS, WESTMINSTER, etc) some have become very selective simply because they are a London day school and fewer parents move out or opt for boarding due to economic or other reasons. I do agree though with Jeaane that whether you as a parent is happy/unhappy with the outcome, it will be SOUL DESTROYING if you let your DC think they ended up in a mediocre or bad school. My view is that my DD is an absolute rock star for having the forbearance, patience,, discipline, self reliance and sense of humour dealing with this absurd situation!! Regardless of where she gets in, I am so proud of her for slogging through all the exams and interviews (not to mention all those bloody boring practice papers when she would much rather be out doing a zillion other things) so regardless of the outcome I have been telling her that she has been utterly fantastic and her dad an I couldn't be prouder of her as we are now

So my purpose for lurking on this thread was to glean some intelligence about a Consortium 1 school my DD applied to this year. Our area normally stretches to the City of London schools and no further, so I feel like I've been out on my own with this one and wonder if the school not 'knowing us' will have an effect on whether DD gets in (albeit marginal.)

Across the other end of the A406 we too are seeing record numbers of applicants and those of us who have paid for preps are wondering atm what we got for our money given the scale of the tutoring. When you are first enrolling PFB at 3 you don't think to ask that question - how much of the track record is the school's and how much of it is the parents running a parallel curriculum at home!!!

BUt I also think things have moved on massively in the past five to six years but the schools themselves may be doing just what they've always done, which could be a risk.

There are some families at our end who have only applied for the three 'historic' feeder schools for DD's prep - and they are bricking it. One of these schools has had positively astounding numbers relative to previous years and it seems to me that central Londoners are also piling in. DD saw a girl there who had taken the Consortium 1 test for the school we're keen on, which I reckon is a high water mark for how competitive some of the schools 'in town' have become.

The other thing is in our area, the children who sat the 7+, the idea being they could stay at the new school through senior school, are sitting the 11+ anyway....as if they'd never left. And the schools with senior schools have expanded their preps, thereby reducing numbers too.

Not sure the schools themselves are working any harder for our their money, but definitely enjoying being able to pick, at their leisure, the cream of the crop.

I am trusting a lot in the idea that DD will end up in the place that is the best for her!!

There is a lot more competition for the London girls schools and the 11 plus is only Maths and English (i.e. no MFL/Latin) so pupils at state primaries are not at a disadvantage if they do a bit of exam preparation. Indeed many state school parents like us have upped their game in recent years in terms of intensive tutoring for their DC, taking the view that as they are not paying prep school fees they don't mind spending a few grand on tutors for the 11 plus -one state primary school pupil I know had four tutors. I don't think all the preps-or their parents- have fully responded to the increased competition due to complacency on the part of the school or parents.I know plenty of perfectly bright prep kids who have recently failed to get into schools that they would once have sailed into.

Surely any child having four tutors to succeed is likely to end up being hot-housed into a school that's not a natural fit, state school or not? The one bit of inside knowledge that I have from one of the top sought after indies mentioned in this thread is that they are really on the look out for over-tutored children.

....and not to offer them a place, in case my previous post was misleading!

always I am not sure they can tell at the exam stage but I'm guessing it could emerge during an interview. I really don't know how much they care around our way, if the outcome is that their the GCSE/A level exam results stay high.

There is a huge amount of tutoring amongst prep pupils (though usually only admitted after the event, or discovered because classmates talk to each other).

I've never seen even the slightest whiff of complacency.

Parents calling up admissions and asking if they could send in a tutor's reference as well as a school one are a bit of a giveaway

This particular school said they have changed the exam a lot in the last couple of years to try and make it tutor proof. Who knows how successful they have been, it must be hard.

I also think it's absolutely nonsense that over-tutored kids will be spotted and not offered a place. I think the schools say that to try to stop parents tutoring too much but I've never known it to happen. At my DD's non-selective (prep) school, almost all parents tutor to some degree and the kids that get the best/most offers are always the ones who have had the most tutoring.

It's a vicious circle in my opinion. There's no incentive to unilaterally step back and refuse to participate. In our area there simply isn't a state option, so you know you simply must get your child into at least one private school.

When there are between 5 and 20 applicants for each place it would take nerves of steel to not tutor and only apply to 2-3.

So the children are stressed, the parents are stressed and the whole process escalates. I don't think the schools want it to be like this but they have no particular incentive to change it either. Being over subscribed by increasingly able children who are paying large registration fees isn't exactly a disaster.

I think the system needs to change - perhaps along the lines of the Uni application system or the introduction of a London wide consortium system.

But who will initiate the change?

I totally agree with Shirley. Schools say don't tutor but they pick the children who do best in the exams and that is all that gets you an interview or a place. Everyone is tutoring - I've heard incredibly scary stories of 4 to 5 hours in the Xmas holidays!!!! So as the numbers grow the schools make the exams harder and harder to try and work out who is really able and the. Everyone tutors even more!!! What a crazy cycle! Anyway my DD is showing much more resilience than me and I should learn from her and be calm!!! But it does annoy me!!!!!

Goodness, this thread has been busy since I last looked! Congrats to all those with interviews and so sorry to those who haven't - it's all so stressful and I think all that parents can do is keep that stress away from their children as much as possible (even if you are awake at night worrying about schools, your DC shouldn't be!).
For those with Latymer interviews this Saturday, they most certainly do not only take the most outgoing and verbal children. I think they are pretty good at spotting which children the school will be the best fit for and in my DD's class now there is a huge mix of children. Yes, they are reasonably bright but some are very extrovert, some are quite shy, some are a bit geeky - what I do really like about LU is that as far as I have seen since DD started there, children can be themselves and don't need to fit into any kind of mould in terms of personality or interests (or the way they look). My DD is slightly old-fashioned in a very sweet way, has some unusual interests and although a lot more confident than she used to be, is not an uber-extrovert. She settled in really quickly and has made some lovely friends, who like her for who she is. My advice to her before the LU interview (and I really wanted her to end up there but hadn't told her that, of course) was to be herself and to help the interviewer out by adding detail to what she was saying eg rather than just saying she liked birdwatching in her spare time, to add where she likes to go and what her best sighting was recently - stuff like that. I told her the more she talked, the easier the conversation would be and the fewer questions she would get asked and that anyway, if she didn't get an offer, she would never see that person again!

Hope that helps a bit - best of luck to all!

Have to also agree that its absolute nonsense to say that overtutored kids will be spotted and that in reality its normally the overtutored kids who get into the best schools . Furthermore as the 11 plus is only English and Maths is there really anything wrong with improving these basic skills as much as possible and learning to do exams within a set timeframe? I would however have to disagree with AnotherNewt that no schools/parents are complacent. Although DD is at a state school I know quite a few prep school mums who were led to believe by their school that their DD would get into certain schools who then regretted not tutoring more when their DD failed to do so.

OK.

You clearly know more about preps than I do.

(And I stuck my foot in it earlier in this thread too).

Apologies again.

The question of how the preps are responding (or not) to the market conditions / huge competition and the use of tutors is interesting and for us completely connected. Can't speak for all school but having observed what DD was being taught in year 5 and taking a look at a Consortium paper I did wonder when and how the gap to be paper ready was going to be closed. I waited. And then realised that it wasn't going to be closed and so as I wasn't prepared to send DS in to one of these papers, or equivalent, not fully ready I felt I had no option but to get extra help. She has always been within top few of her year and so I didn't feel she was being hothoused. I am very irritated with school - notwithstanding it is a primary objective of a prep (and no 1 point on school website), the fees don't come that easily to us. They then happily post "their" results. I don't know answer is. Even if rules change, someone will cheat. Classic cartel situation. It's London and money talks.

My DC were at a non-selective prep and I'm pretty sure there were industrial levels of tutoring going on. Some closer friends told us outright. Also DD said after the exams her maths teacher asked the class to close their eyes and put up their hands if they had tutoring. She peeked (that's my girl!) and said it was only her and one other child without their hands up.

I would love to say that the tutoring doesn't help but certainly DS had some classmates who were very heavily tutored and did very well. The prep school just says "we don't think it's a good idea or needed but we can't dictate what you do in your own time".

Yes -I think it is odd that some preps say they don't think tutoring is a good idea; this is like saying we don't think you can improve your English or Maths unless its done in our classroom which is rubbish. I would have thought they would be better off recommending particular tutors (including current members of staff who want to supplement their income and know the kids already).

Btw plenty of tutoring goes on in these independent secondaries, particularly in y11 on key subjects, to help boost GCSE grades!

Are there any others out there who didn't get latymer interview ?

From reading various MN and 11 plus forum threads, there are some parents who deliberately go for a DIY approach and their DC succeed in getting offers from highly selective schools, including the likes of NLCS and SPGS. What's the thinking behind those who buck the trend of resorting to (sometimes, multiple) tutors?

The arms race that is the 11+ in London is getting a bit ridiculous... If everyone just calmed down, stopped making their children sit gazillions of exams and stopped tutoring everyone would be a lot happier - especially the poor, stressed 10 and 11 year olds who are bearing the brunt of all this collective parental angst. I've had two children go through this system, 6 years apart. Each of them sat for just two schools and neither had any tutoring. Ds, who was at a very ordinary state primary, did a couple of practice papers in the Christmas holidays to get familiar with the exam format and we left dd's exam preparation entirely up to her very good prep. It was fine. Oh, and the numbers sitting for schools weren't dramatically different for dd's year, 6 years after ds so it's not that things have got much harder in that time.

It's so easy to get sucked up into the madness around the whole process but come September there won't be hordes of feral 11 year olds wandering the streets of London because they don't have a school place ...