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?

I think you’re spot on @Growupsofast! We did another short interview for a school where they interview everyone and DS sounded really stilted and over-rehearsed. Which probably counted against him too! So probably best to stop preparing and let it play out!

Oh this is a relief to read. My normally (very normal!) kid sounded so stilted when I asked him a couple of questions about himself. Well, stilted or bonkers - take your pick. I imagine the schools must be quite used to this. Hopefully, after the first couple of undoubtedly stilted questions, they get a sense of the boys.

They will certainly be looking at the full package: exams, school reports.

Re shy children, in a school, different personalities are very important - imagine a class of 20 extroverts! (They will want mix of shy, outgoing, more mathsy, artsy, or musical, sporty, and so on)

Anyway, good luck everyone. We have interviews later today. Gin emoji, etc.

@BookShark re your son’s Hampton interview, have they told you anything about the format? Or the length of interview? Im at a loss about how these online interviews will work tbh!

DS also has Hampton interview today, and RGS next week. As I understand it, Hampton have pre screened via ISEB (I know that two of DS’s friends didn’t get through sadly) but RGS are interviewing everyone.

I’m planning to go and do some gardening once I’ve set DS off on his Teams interview as it will be so anxiety inducing actually heading what he says! I’d rather not know! Unlike some of your boys he will be more likely to tip into slightly silly and showy off mode - driven by anxiety, but it’s how he is - and I dread to think what he’ll say.

The only interview prep we’ve done is to try to encourage him to think of a question to ask about the school and fo think about the “why Hampton?” one too. DS is genuinely likely to say “I don’t really want to come here, I want to go to * (state option which is is his preference) with my friends but my dad wanted me to do private school exams.”

Last night he said he was planning to ask if there were any toilets (!) and whether there were ever chocolate chip cookies for pudding.

We’re doomed, aren’t we?

Good luck to all of your boys, and to you all too. I just want this over now...

@FlyingPandas 😆 oh I feel your pain! I cannot listen either. I shall probably be mumsnetting really sad threads about broken relationships and the like...

@Jumpalicious we've been told it's a be 30 minutes interview via Teams, but split into 2 x 15 minute conversations. And DS needs some paper and a pencil to hand. Interview will be a mix of Maths, English and general discussion. And that's all I know!

Best of luck to anyone with an interview today - will be good to get it over with! Ours isn't for a couple of weeks...

Oh, and @FlyingPandas, I don't know about cookies, but DS tells me he was given a massive sausage roll as a snack when he did the 10+ last year, so I'm sure that will get a mention at some point!

Good luck to your son on today’s interview @FlyingPandas. I would definitely ask about the cookies as they were a big hit with the 10+ candidates when they went for interview.

Totally agree with @Jumpalicious on schools wanting a mix of personalities too. Our more introverted child got an offer and the other children in our son’s interview group didn’t look particularly extroverted/alpha to me. They will also be looking at everything in the round including results, report, interview.

Be prepared for the “Have you been tutored?” question which is poor taste to ask a young child, but was definitely asked. 😳

• hearing not heading.

It really doesn’t help that he hasn’t had a chance to see either school properly. As none of our DC have, I know. It kind of feels like we’re flying blind a bit.

@BookShark - what you write about KGS doesn’t surprise me sadly. I get the impression their admissions team are not the most organised. Friends had a bad experience a few years ago when two DC applied for places who had the same fairly common name (think two Olivia Joneses, or two James Smiths, for example) and KGS got them muddled up when they did interview invites. Really crap. I mean yes, not ideal to have two dc with the same first and surname, but it can’t be unheard of in any school, and it’s surely not too difficult to make absolute bloody sure that dates of birth are checked!

Anyway, rant over. I do agree that the way some schools have behaved through this process will have a knock on impact in terms of how people view them. Hampton and RGS have definitely come across as being more organised, friendly and pragmatic than many others!

Good luck to everyone who has interviews today. We have our Hampton one today, just trying to keep everyone calm.

@Jumpalicious we were told the same as @BookShark. 2x15 mins with 2 staff involving general plus some English and Maths qs.

I’m sure you are all correct - I’d want a mix of people in my school, a school of 99% extroverts would be interesting, especially for the other 1% who aren’t! They are only 10 or 11 as well.

Best of luck to everyone having their interviews today! DS was supposed to have his today but there was a clash with St G exams so had to move it. Wish we were getting it out of the way today!! I can see how schools don’t want only extroverts, but if you’re too shy to communicate well at interview then that will be a problem. And I can see DS getting totally tongue-tied.

I wonder how many they’re interviewing if the interview period goes on for 2 weeks!

He hasn’t seen any of the schools, so it’s all totally abstract for him!

I hadn’t realised that about KGS until it was mentioned here - but true, they’ve felt very distant throughout all of this. No ‘good luck’ postcards or anything!

Glad to have found this thread. Agree with all comments on KGS. The test process and platform used really wasn’t great - just stressful, and the whole tone of the information received was pretty curt and did little to put my DS at ease in any way, so glad it wasn’t just us feeling that way.

This may be an irrational thought from having too much time to overthink - but bearing in mind the test scripts are at home, including maths with workings and 2/3 of the English tasks, do you think they change the questions slightly throughout the week? As I said, possibly an irrational worry and what will be will be, but seems a little open to abuse having children sit a paper on Saturday that has effectively been in circulation all week amongst their peers. Just curious what others think....

I’ve been worrying about that too - friends were asking me what was in DS’s paper on Tuesday and I wasn’t going to take the risk that they would be sitting the same paper at the weekend!

I think KGS has given the impression that you need them more than they need you. Just my feeling!

Surely KGS had different papers, crazy not to? Who knows - I think I preferred the ISEB for that reason - at least it was designed to be taken at different times

Hampton interview over - it was fine. Not going to overthink it, just moving on with the day now. Heart stopping moment when the video didn’t work at beginning, had to rejoin and everything was fine. Gulp - not sure I could have faced DS if I couldn’t get it to work.

Phew! DS's Hampton interview all done. He seems happy enough and I have to say the process ran like clockwork, very efficient. I only saw the first teacher briefly but she seemed really lovely and had managed to put DS at ease by the time I'd left the room, which was reassuring.

Two things that really worked for us:

1. For the DC - we did no real advance interview prep but had a very lighthearted chat in the 15 minutes we spent waiting to start the Teams meeting. Just about the kinds of questions they might ask (all the standard stuff people have suggested on here i.e. what's your favourite subject, what might your teacher say about you etc etc). DS was so nervous but I asked him to suggest first a silly and then a sensible answer for a couple of questions and that made him laugh and relaxed him. So for example for the 'favourite subject' question his 'silly' answer was 'lunchtime and going to the toilet' . But I found that giving him the opportunity to be silly just took the pressure off a bit and he then came up with some genuinely sensible answers quite naturally.

1. For you - do an energetic domestic task to keep yourself occupied whilst they're in the online interview, to stop you being tempted to listen outside the door! I went upstairs in the end and changed all the beds (apart from the teenager's one cos he's still in it ) and I've never been so efficient. Stripped and remade two single and one kingsized bed in 25 minutes

RGS interview next Saturday and then we're done and it's just the waiting game...

Huge good luck to all of your boys with their interviews and also to those who still have exams to do for St Georges, Halliford and others etc - hope all goes as smoothly as possible.

@Growupsofast OMG that must have been so stressful! I had to get DH come and sort the Teams stuff out as I couldn't get it to work at first either. Definitely worth trying to log on well in advance of your actual time just in case!

Just seen this thread in active and although it was 10 years ago now, KGS were not impressive even then. The interviewer came to collect my son and read out his name wrong both first and surname - eg Daniel Weston instead of David Watson type mix-up. There was no smile, no handshake and just a very underwhelming feeling all round.

Good luck to you all in these very trying and stressful circumstances.

Thanks so much for the advice re the interviews!!!

DS is in tears after his Hampton interview :(

I listened behind the door, and it's a story of two halves: I think he's read a passage brilliantly, described the picture shown well, and solved all the maths thrown at him, including the "tricky" ones, albeit slowly, as he does.

However, all the "soft"/"fit" stuff was pretty horrible. Couldn't string sentences together, interrupted the teachers a few times (the second one sounded positively annoyed by it), and when asked whether he is keen to come to H said that there were so many good schools to consider, so he wasn't quite sure :(

And they did ask him about he prep we did. He said he's been going to the tutor for two years :facepalm: In practice, he started a one hour group sessions in May-19 during term time only.

The other usual Qs about what he likes to do, what he's read recently, how his friends would describe him, etc., also made appearance.

Oh @GrammarHopeful Poor DS. And poor you. It's horrible when they're upset by this stuff. I've been lurking on the girls' 11+ thread as well and there have been a few in tears there too. This process is brutal.

BUT - being positive - it sounds like your DS aced the academics? Mine said the maths was hard...if he got it all correct and read brilliantly etc that's got to be good, right?

And I am absolutely sure they are used to 10/11 year old boys either being awkward or too chatty or interrupting them (or all of those at the same time!) when doing the soft chit chat.

(And let's face it your DS is correct, there are a lot of good schools to choose from! And they will ALL have been tutored. I would be amazed if they interview a single boy who hasn't)

I would also interpret the 'sounding annoyed' teacher as possibly just being a bit stressed and knowing he/she only had a very limited time to do the interview. This is so different to face to face stuff. As I said to DS this morning when he was panicking, the Hampton teachers will be nervous too. They've never done interviews like this before either. I work in a school (not a teacher, just in the office) and some of our teachers have found the online learning stuff really unnerving, despite the fact that they can absolutely breeze through a face to face lesson with a classful of 30!

Hope he feels a bit better after he calms down

DS having interview towards the end of the month .. worried as everyone seems to be on today!?
Trying to prep him by gentle conversation, but he is having none of it, he is not interested - just making up really articulate but jokey answers ( similar to ones above... latest being.. “Why Hampton? I don’t know really, since I don’t want to go, preferring state schools, less pompous and no Tarquins in sight ! ( he is in a prep at the moment) .. very funny but I need him to do well, as this is one of our back up schools. Any idea ? Should I bribe him to stop making fun of the process? Can’t even work out whether he is so blaze about it or annoyed of having to do one... was the yellow box mentioned in the interview as he has shown no interest in it ??

So sorry to hear your DS is upset @GrammarHopeful - if he answered the academic questions well, that’s brilliant! I’m convinced my son will go blank with those when put on the spot. And as for the ‘there are lots of good schools’ comment - I reckon they’ll appreciate the honesty! Pretty much every other child will parrot ‘yes’ whether it’s the truth or not.

The same re the tutoring question! That’s a really hard one as you don’t want to encourage them to lie.

Can I just ask is it literally reading a passage they have to do in interviews or is it more of a comprehension?

@NoToMisogyny glad I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Having spoke to friends this morning (briefly, don’t get me wrong, no cross checking answers or anything silly!) it does indeed sounds like they’ve had identical tests. At least in the English. Really weird and I don’t understand how they can’t be at least skeptical about the validity of Saturday outcomes compared to those earlier in the week. What can we do ?

So sorry to hear about the interview stress for everyone else. If it helps, my precious DS got straight in to his “stretch” choice 2 years ago, no issues, to our surprise. You just never know which way it will go...good luck and I hope your DS can find a way to de-stress and relax a bit now.

feeling for you all - went through this several years ago 9albeit in the real world rather than the virtual hell your ds's are now experiencing...)

just wanted to reassure that saying daft things is perfectly normal and wont necessarily harm their chances?

trying to remember his classics - when he was asked which clubs he went to he somehow thought that only related to after school clubs and said 'airfix' but as he'd only done it for 2 weeks the conversation was pretty brief (!) - he somehow didn't realise that was his opening to discuss karate/choir/football/clarinet! he did still get an offer though - so take heart!

@FlyingPandas @NoToMisogyny Thank you for your kindness!

He has ASD as I mentioned up thread before, so the normal chit-chat/small talk is not an easy thing for him to produce at the best of times, but he was also very nervous. He really likes Hampton, so he tried to impress, but I think this may have had an opposite effect. Well, we'll find out soon enough, I suppose.

Re reading: he had to read a passage out loud (he hates doing that normally), and then answer some reasonably straightforward comprehension questions about it.

I also take your point re teachers being stressed too. This would have worked much better in person, as H were originally planning, but nothing any of us can do about that, other than stay at home for as long as we have to this time :/

Thoughts turning to RGS interview now - does anyone know the format. Should we expect similar to Hampton.

I had thought the RGS interviews were more of a straightforward get to know you chat but have other things from parents