SW London boys, 11+ grammars and independents

[Jumpalicious]

Hello, I know there’s an excellent thread for the girls. Not sure if there’s one for the boys? Anyone want to come on board? I know we can’t divulge details of round two grammars since there will be late sitters, but was thinking more of a support thread. Any takers?

@FlyingPandas
Agree that CATS is certainly a pre-requisite for 11+ and 13+ entry, but only aware of CATS being done in prep school.. I am not aware of state schools doing CATS?! so not sure if this weights in on interview selection or not for 11+ ?

Wish CATS were taken into accounts in State Grammar Schools, as my DS scored high in these ... sadly they don't !

@Sterou I didn’t mention CATS, the poster after me did

I don’t think CATS can be part of the selection process for 11+ because as you say they are largely a prep school thing. States don’t do them as far as I know? (We are state(. We got CATS done privately for DS, purely to see if Hampton was a realistic proposition for him, but they were just for our interest.

I guess the school may have given more significant weighting to candidate school reports than they might have done in the past I suppose.

CATs are a completely different type of test to 11plus - ds had high CAT scores but he found 11plus a completely different ball game. I really wouldn’t get too hung up on them.

@JustJuice187
I don't disagree that 11+ and CATS differ.

Because DS comes from a prep school, Hampton asked that we provide his CATS results for past 2 years as well as school reports.

@FlyingPandas and I wondered the criteria for interview selection, and what is taken into account above and beyond ISEB, that's all :-)

Hampton's Admissions department are really doing a great job engaging with the parents and children from what I can see. Their Christmas newsletter and the 2019-20 highlights were just excellent.

DS is really excited about the interview now!

Hi all,

Congratulations to those of you whose DSs have interviews at the schools you're hoping for! We're applying to Reeds, Halliford and Claremont for DS. Reeds and Halliford are interviewing all candidates, so though DS has interviews at both, we can't infer anything about his exam performance from that. In fact, his Halliford interview is before the entrance exam day.

DS is pretty shy with people he doesn't know well, so we'll definitely be doing some gentle interview prep over the holidays. We also need to do some practice on the VR and NVR for the Halliford exam, as we've not looked at those v much since doing the ISEB in early December. However, I think he needs some time to chill and decompress after a long Autumn term first!

Those of you who've done this before, do you have any tips for maintaining momentum over the Christmas holidays?

@GrammarHopeful totally agree, Hampton admissions have been great.

@NeverEnoughCake2 my older DS sat Halliford and Claremont years ago (he's Y12 now) and we concentrated on little and often in terms of Christmas holiday prep. Don't overdo it, as you say they need a break too. We did literally 10 minutes a day, first thing in the morning after breakfast, and then cracked on with Christmas holiday fun stuff. From memory the Halliford exam is near the end of January so there is plenty of time to gently up prep a little once back to school.

I don't know Reeds at all but in terms of the Halliford and Claremont interviews - they were fairly gentle and informal interviews and really what the teachers wanted to get a feel for was how much he wanted to go there. They talked about favourite subjects, favourite sports, favourite hobbies etc. Halliford also asked him to name five authors whose books he particularly enjoyed. But at the end of the day the exam will be key - these schools are not going to make offers unless exam performance hits the desired grade unfortunately no matter how amazing a child might be at interview.

I think the key thing in terms of interviews for all of these schools is to bear in mind that they are very very used to 10/11 year old boys. Some of whom will be a bit too chatty (this will be DS2 ), some desperately awkward and shy. Some will be horribly over-coached and over-prepared by the tiger parent types. They will have seen it all before and know how to deal with it. My DS1 is on the autistic spectrum and was at the time incredibly awkward with people he didn't know but the Halliford interviewer was great at putting him at ease, so please don't worry too much about a shy boy. I am actually far more worried about DS2 coming across as silly/cocky/arrogant in his Hampton interview (which can be his default way of dealing with nervousness).

I hope that is helpful BUT please bear in mind DS1 was interviewed for those schools a good few years ago so things could have changed in the interim...

Hiya. Hope you don't mind me jumping on. My son is going for an indie up North but although competitive, there aren't many forums for those that I can find.

So we have re- signed up to Atom and down the tests but what kind of scores should we be looking at?

I can add to the reassurance on the Halliford front (haven't had any other interviews yet!). The head is great, and took time to reassure DS that there were no right or wrong answers, this was just to find out a bit more about him etc. DS was quite happy afterwards and said it was much better than he was expecting so a good first experience. I'm expecting Hampton to be a bit more intense!

@Sterou - interesting - I think that’s the first time they are doing that. Both my DS went to preps I don’t think anyone ever showed any interest in CATs up to now.

Re interview at Hampton - little bit thrown re academic questions - again I think they are doing that this year for first time as it looks like they are then doing a second interview for academic scholarship?

The Hampton yellow box has arrived!

Skittles were meant for a scientific experiment!

@GrammarHopeful oh that’s funny re the skittles... btw anyone else wondering if on site interviews will be cancelled in light of tier 4?

Hi all,

Thanks for the reassurance about the Halliford interviews. We've done a bit of prep over the holidays, but tried to take a balanced approach - we definitely don't want him to come across as over-coached.

We've just had an email to say the Halliford entrance exam is moving to online rather than in-person, which seems very sensible given the current state of the pandemic and the imminent announcement from Boris. It'll be interesting to see how they adapt the format to work online, particularly for the written English component.

KGS is expecting parents to have to scan the written work by taking pictures on the smartphone within 10 minutes of the exam finishing (by authorising using QR-code).

Emanuel expect us to pick up sealed papers, break the seal on camera over Zoom, then seal them at the end and deliver to the school next day.

Joining the thread after lurking for a while. Anxious times ahead waiting for results/ interviews. I’m not sure being able to hear DS on interviews is great for the nerves. I found KGS quite stressful with the scanning.

Anyone else looking at RGS? We also have our Hampton interview.

I’m not sure how this year will pan out as I think ISEB/online testing has made things hard to predict.

@Growupsofast I feel your pain on the KGS exam. We ended up emailing scanned copies of both scripts as well, as I wasn't convinced the photos were legible - who knows what they'll use, but at least I've tried. Although I have to say, the KGS approach is the worst of the schools we're sitting, which has put DS off it slightly - the others just seen more friendly - better comms and exam arrangements, Christmas cards etc. Little things, but they matter when you're 10!

We've also got a Hampton interview in a couple of weeks, and after that it's a waiting game to see what else comes up. The problem with lockdown part 3 is that I'll now be home every day when the post comes - I'll be a nervous wreck by half term!

@BookShark I didn’t even think about post. But Feb feels an age away at the moment!

Still good news for you with the Hampton interview, I think it is some positive feedback that the ISEB went ok.

This is stressful for everyone involved, I feel for the admission staff as well.

It’s a real shame the Hampton exams have been delayed so much (although of course I understand it’s been hard off them) - I am so keen to have everything done and dusted at this point! Is anyone doing any specific preparation for the interview?

No real interview prep other than the "Why Hampton?" question. DS has had a couple of other interviews already (schools that are interviewing all applicants) and so he's got a vague idea of the kind of questions they ask. But I'm not really sure how you can prepare - and I suspect Hampton may be more academic than some of the others anyway.

Thanks @bookshark was hoping someone would say that as we are all so desperate to burn all
the remaining practice papers! I’m aware some people pay for practice mocks but I’m inclined
to just let my son be himself. I just wish he wasn’t so SHY! Every school seems to want the sparky, extrovert kids!

@NoToMisogyny what did you mean by the delayed exams? We might be talking about different things - we had the Hampton school exams scrapped and replaced by the ISEB pre-test. We had to take those at the end of November - it has been a wait.

In terms of interview prep - I showed DS questions on a forum on here I think and left him to look at them. No point rehearsing.

If we ever get to a point of getting to choose between offers, not sure how much about the schools we will really know. I had hoped DS would actually go to Hampton for the interview but that is off the table as well. Not anyone’s fault but hard to choose.

Definitely not practice papers. Ours were ceremonially binned after KGS on Wednesday! Honestly, based on our experience so far, there's very little we could have prepared for. And we have the opposite - DS isn't generally shy, but for some reason he goes incredibly formal in an interview, taking about "my mother and father" instead of "Mummy and Daddy". It's quite funny - I'm just hoping everyone else has their quirks, otherwise he'll look like a complete nutter!

Oops sorry @Growupsofast, I means delayed interviews 🙈. Thank you for the advice - we are yearning to bin the practice papers so will probably go ahead with that ceremony tomorrow as originally planned!

I wish DS was more confident with adults, but he isn’t, and not going to change in the next couple of weeks. Just got to hope he can pull it out of the bag on the day - and if not, so be it! I wonder if it’s all down to the interview at this point or if they still include the ISEB/ school reports in their decision-making

Who knows what they look for! Surely they look at exams results still but maybe not. I don’t feel there is much we can do to affect the outcome now anyway - just let them do their best and not get them stressed about it.... ie hide mine!!

@BookShark I can totally relate to "my mother and father" comment and putting on a slightly unnatural voice: no idea where he got this from, as we haven't told him to do that.

As for the prep, we did a very light "role play" of the Qs from the forum here, and went through the SPGS comprehension paper (he wanted to do that one for a while anyway). Plus he had his with Emanuel, who interview everyone.

He is disappointed he isn't going to see Hampton himself though. After all, according to him, the main thing that attracts him there is "luxurious premises"