DD Year 8, struggling at grammar

[BaconAndAvocado]

Had a heart to heart with DD earlier this evening. She feels that she shouldn't be at grammar school as she finds it really hard. She sad that her recent test scores have been very low.

We haven't had any feedback from the school recently (for obvious reasons) so I don't know how she presents in class etc.

Before lockdown she had found it hard settling into Year 7 and had friendship issues. All seems loads better on the friendship front but now this!

I'm not sure whether I should contact the school or accept that she may always find it hard.

Shameful thread de-railing on this thread that does not help or support the OP.

OP: I would be focussing in her social stability and security. She has had a hard time, finding it hard to settle followed by massive COVID disruption.

Tell her her tutors have confidence in her.

Also check whether test scores are fine against the complete curriculum rather than only the areas studied. After some low scores in Ds’s tests we discovered that these were in old GCSE papers or for the whole year, fir which they had not completed the curriculum.

bacon so sorry your DD is having a hard time but glad she felt she could talk to you about it. The week before Oct half term and the couple of weeks after are ‘known’ as being really tough. The honeymoon period of the new year has worn off and Christmas seems so far away. Dark mornings/eves it’s tough in any year, let alone a pandemic one where all the fun bits of school are missing.

Talk to the school and get an idea of whether she is really not coping or whether this is a pandemic related blip. The workload does up quite a bit from Y7 to Y8. Perhaps monitor it till Xmas. Can anything be done to make life easier - commute wise etc - surgeries in particular subjects at lunchtime to build confidence?

In the background, get an understanding of your local state and indie offerings (don’t share this with her at this stage!). If you plant the seed she is leaving it’s hard to retract it and you don’t know what places are available/suitable.

The easiest time to transition is y9 (13+) before GCSE selections etc. She (and you) may feel this is too long to wait, but try not to be knee jerk/reactive. (Easier said than done when we feel them hurting). Kids can be incredibly resilient and her reaction might have been a product of being tired/run down/acclimatising back from lockdown etc. She may feel differently after a weeks rest and some perspective.

I think I’ve waffled a bit but hope this helps.

Sjane48

I realise a lot of people have very strong views on the 11+. Some of it has been quite interesting!

I totally agree with you re the coaching/tutoring route. We all want what's best for our children. Political ideology takes a back seat, as I mentioned up thread.

RainingBatsandFrogs yes, I agree with you about focussing on her social stability and security. Unless this area of her life is more positive, she will find learning difficult.

Her Head of Year had a chat with her yesterday (which she wasn't very pleased about!).
But she said he was very kind and caring and told her not to worry. I should be talking to him today on the phone.

Agreed. But with people who have the income, the Genie is out of the bottle. You would have to ask parents to make a declaration re tutoring on the forms. Even then they would lie as they do over home address.

I would love to know what percentage of dc in grammar counties get full marks, even with tutoring. Interestingly when DD took the 11 plus the ones in her class (3) who got full marks and her with 1 mark under, had not been professionally tutored. The parents didn’t believe in it! Including me. 28/66 went to the grammars that year. That was a very high number and it was a bright cohort. Normally full marks was considered boffin territory! One a year if the school was lucky. But the tutored ones didn’t get it.

The key is to somehow even up chances. Making more pp places available at county wide grammar schools does nothing if these dc don’t get help to pass. Helping the deserving pp dc get exam savvy would help. However I think general knowledge and wider reading is also a big help due to a much bigger vocabulary. Schools must promote that.

DC who scrape through due to tutoring are the ones who struggle around here. They have taken the places of others who have just failed and have had no advantages.

Superselectives are a different beast of course.

stircrazy thank you for your helpful comments.
Yes, I guess this time of year isn't great and she's just had a week of tests to contend with.

Unfortunately the secondary school possibilities are not good where we live. The only good one is a faith school and we're not church goers.

As a result of communication with her school staff and Mumsnet (!) I do believe that, for now, moving schools wouldn't be the answer.

I know she is a clever girl and I think things will improve.

Absolutely @BaconAndAvocado! At the end of the day our DC live in the imperfect system as it is and we have to do what we can. My DD is also Year 8 and it’s been a weird term finishing with a solid week of back to back assessments. No wonder your DD feels under pressure. Mine has been rather more blasé but we’ve noted so far she’s only given us the results of the tests she’s got flying colours in - the overall picture might be more interesting! I don’t know about you but we’ve not got a Parents evening until Jan, it would be good I think if our schools could update us on how they have faired and where they might need support before then.

Sjane48
DD's results will be sent to parents the first week after half term. Ah, to have a child who is blasé about anything! It sounds like your DD has done really well.

Because of lockdown, we haven't yet had a Parent's Evening as the Year 7 one was supposed to be in June. And now, who knows when the next one will be.

DS2, at the same school, is in Year 9. I'd imagine the whole Options experience will, sadly, be very different for everyone too.

Guymere your post reminds me of my nephew who also got full marks in the 11+.
He's just started a Sports Science degree at a non-Russell Group university. He's very happy with that but it's maybe not where everyone expected him to be. He worked quite hard at school.

Conversely, DS1 didn't pass the 11+, but transferred to grammar for 6th form, achieved a 2:1 in Chem Eng at a Russell Group uni and has just started working for one of the big city banks. He worked extremely hard at school.

The moral of the story is that, in the end, no matter what school your child is at and no matter what their scores were, it's about attitude, application and what they want to do. My eldest is testament to that.

Yes, I imagine the whole Options selection nightmare will be even more so this year so best wishes!

I’ve just asked DD who has a inset day today if we will receive the assessment results and if she has had her Maths and Science results yet - I got a raised eyebrow, a ‘I don’t think so’ and a ‘we haven’t had those yet’. Which makes me a little suspicious! She’s a bright girl but far stronger on the Arts, Humanities and MFL sides which oddly enough are the only results she’s told us! At least you’ll get your DDs but it sounds like from the conversation you have had she is completely on track and the issue is confidence and not ability.

Thank you SJane your comments have been so helpful.

I think you're right re her confidence. She, too, is much stronger in the Humanities. Whereas her brothers are the opposite. What a cliché!

:-) i think that might be a whole new debate @BaconAndAvocado!

@BaconAndAvocado it’s often the kids who are humanities-orientated who struggle more (or think they’re struggling) at selective schools. I think in subjects like Maths and Sciences it’s very obvious if others are picking up concepts before you and you’re struggling to get ‘the answer’. It can feel very stressful. Whereas those who are weaker at humanities don’t have the same experience- maybe their essays get lower marks, but they don’t have to sit struggling to find the answer, understand the method in the same way. Anyone can waffle! Also, some grammars are very focused on STEM so it can feel as if your ability in these subjects is what’s important.

My dd went to a very selective girls school and did suffer with lack of confidence. Things seemed to turn around in year 10 when she started to get very good marks in history,RS and geography and she realised she was able. I think by that stage they realise each subject is one GCSE so no more or less valuable. She also started working harder at the subjects she found difficult and made good progress. Ultimately I think it’s quite helpful that she knows she’s just ordinary, not some sort of genius as lots of people talk about having that realisation at uni and getting a shock!

Guymere KCC publish a whole spreadsheet of how many children get every mark, which areas they live in, and whether they go to state or private schools. It makes interesting reading. Sorry, can't dig out a link as I'm at work, but if you look on the 11+ forum website it will be linked on there somewhere I'm sure.

That's an interesting point crazycrofter and hi lights how the sciences and humanities are perceived too.

OP DD was in your DD’s situation around the same time. Breezed into grammar school with ease with familiarisation but not tutoring. It started getting harder in Y8 and she floundered. We got to the bottom of it that she just wasn’t used to trying and it was alien to her to have to try. She went from top maths to bottom and was convinced she was stupid compared to her peers. We worked with the school and we and they helped her realise how to learn not just absorb and regurgitate. This can happen to lots of bright children. DD is now doing so well she will be sitting Further Maths.

I think that there is a whole other method and any old waffle really doesn’t get you far in Humanities, even at GCSE level.I completely get what you are saying about method to an answer @crazycrofter in Science and Maths but as someone with a Humanities degree, certainly the further you progress it’s all about knowing about argument structure and realising there are many possible answers you can give, you just need to argue them well! I do remember at school various of my peer group who were stronger on the Science and Maths front really struggling with this and putting in a lot of work (and waffle) for mediocre results. There is a formula to it, much like in Science and Maths and once you grasp that formula, tackling questions is pretty easy. I’m sure by degree level many of us who have Humanities degrees will acknowledge that we more than once submitted essays with totally spurious arguments that we probably didn’t believe in ourselves but as they were well argued & backed up, we received good marks on them.

Oh yes, I know that waffle doesn’t get you far @SJaneS48, I’m a humanities graduate too. It’s just that in KS3, Maths and Science (languages too) can feel really hard if you’re not a natural - at that stage in education, I don’t think the humanities feel the same to those with a science-bent. By GCSE stage, they’re perhaps starting to find those subjects hard - but they may only be doing Geography (plus English) so it doesn’t impact them quite as much as finding Maths and Sciences hard does.

@crazycrofter, fair point if DC were only doing Geography but I suspect English at even Year 8 might be the beginning of a headache for a child with no natural bent for creative writing, reading or dissecting text to do more than achieve an average. I was quite taken aback by some of DDs English work during homeschooling which included the likes of finding 5 instances of the Sublime in a Shelley poem and then detailing what he was actually describing!

No child I know (and I appreciate some may but I’d suggest they are a minority ) who was put in for the 11+ without tutoring has passed it.

Picked this up from first page. I completely disagree! In complete contrast, no child I know had any tutoring at all.

The tutoring issue isn’t really relevant to the OP’s issue - but my children both passed without tutoring. Although we did 2 months prep at home with ds (practising papers).

@Baaaahhhhh, with respect you can’t disagree with my actual lived experience! I live in Kent and of the 23 kids I know currently in a Grammar, I know all had either professional tutoring or they were coached at home with purchased books by their graduate level parents - timeframes from everything from the start of Year 4 to a couple of months before. I accept all the children you know at grammars had no coaching (even if it really surprises me and most definitely isn’t the norm around here!). Of the kids I personally know (5) who were put into the Kent Test, none of them passed. That’s my direct experience.

‘Put into the Kent Test with no preparation’ that should have read.

I also don't know a single child who has ever passed the 11plus without about 2 years of tutoring AS WELL AS doing tons at home with parents. It is a shockingly middle class system and in my mind so much worse than the state / private issue as tax payers are paying for middle class children to have a better education than working class children who often don't stand a chance (but might well be brighter.)

We didn't do anything until year 5 and neither did anyone I know. Most kids went to one after school group lesson a week and did a bit of practice at home. I think the Kent test is probably pretty hard to pass if you've never seen those sorts of questions before.

I think the system is mad though. How can it be that half the secondary schools in a county require passing a test which no primary schools are allowed to teach? Bonkers.