Tuition for learning 11 plus interview technique: necessary or ridiculous?

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Please experienced parents whose DCs got into selective indies advise if tuition for learning 11 plus interview technique is necessary? My DD is preparing for selective indies. Some of them charging upto £150 .

Well, we didn’t use an interview tutor, and dd1 got in to the two selective indies at which she was interviewed. I did get her to practice making polite conversation with adults as a general life skill from quite young - so asking for her own drink or food if we’re out, asking at the library desk to order a book she wanted, getting her to talk to her grandparents on the phone regularly - stuff like that.

I know that there has been less opportunity to do this stuff due to lockdown, but now things are opening up it should be doable again before the interviews happen this year.

We avoided did any paid tutoring, just home based and achieved 6 offers; this approach is time consuming and requires a plan, and commitment from child and parent. Use your time now for grades to secure an interview; then perhaps 30mins over tea.. just open questions and encourage general chat / and ease of chatting is all that is necessary, for example learning to about a themselves, family, achievements what the are proud of. Q&A can also include testing knowledge ( maths/ comprehension/ morale based - eg what makes a good friend ? .. other types may be simply opinion based..

you may want to prepare areas of discussion; but avoid being over scripted, schools can discriminate between those “prepared” vs natural.
Good luck

DD did her interviews earlier this year during lockdown. After a bit of googling, we got a feel for typical questions, and our daily lunchtime walk for a couple of weeks became practice around those questions - not particularly high-pressured, but discussion around why she liked the school etc. She got a place at every school she applied to, so not worth another £150!

But a word of warning - you can practice too much. E.g. DD was asked how her friends would describe her - fine, we'd practised how you would describe yourself. And then she was asked how her teachers would describe her - well, she'd used her practised adjectives, so was completely thrown. A daft thing, but we had a couple of examples of schools going "off-script" which made us question our approach - maybe it would have been better to have had less practice so she was more adaptable.

It depends on the child some confident children are almost naturals but shyer children may need help giving more than short answers and with things like body language and eye contact.
There's also a knack to swinging the conversation around to what you want to talk about.
If you have a tutor they can probably do a bit of practice during the lessons if not some of your adult friends could help.