Could any child get into SW London Grammars with tutoring?

[GeorgeSpeaks]

My child recently got a place at a grammar school in SW London. I'm very proud of her and she worked hard to pass the exams when none of her friends were sitting them

The thing that pisses me off is that when I tell people which school she has been allocated (I only mention when asked) they always ask if she's been tutored. One even went as far as saying she hadn't put her kid in for the exam but they would have passed if she had.

Do any kids get places without tutoring? Our primary is a state and achieves below average results compared to others in the local authority. The tutoring was an hour a week plus a few past papers in the run up to the exam.

Am I wrong to feel pissed off at this attitude? I'm probably being over sensitive!

I think they say they don't believe tutoring is necessary rather than the exams are untutorable- the exam is based on the curriculum alone- none of the NVR which other 11+ exams include- just maths, English and writing.

Nonsuch website says whole KS2 curriculum and while TGS website says end of y5, this was not the experience of my DD who sat them for Sept 2023 entry.

Anecdotally, Tiffin is more selective than the Sutton grammars, I don't know if that's definitely true but my DD found the TGS exams harder and more time pressured than Nonsuch.

CEM pretest definitely need to prepare, it is logic but with time constraints so strategy and mechanical practice is important, especially you are competing against a lot of other students that with a lot practice.

I honestly think most qr or vr tests would give a non tutored, state primary educated, child a vastly better chance than that would. needs a lot of time management and a lot of practice tailoring answers to the number of marks available per question, skills that are totally unknown to most 10 year olds.

Both format , with proper guidance and practice (call it tutor or not), can and will make good improvement.

In an ideal world, you might want no preparation or specific practice to have a fair playing ground among all students. But in reality, when something can be improved by efforts and preparation those who can afford (time or money) will do it.

They are obviously not looking for 'most 10 year olds', though. I think it's an interesting paper because you really can't prepare for the content, though obviously exam technique is teachable as I said earlier.

It is looking for certain kind of pupils. Compared to Grammar exam it is easier (at least I feel) as it is not testing something probably a lot of student would know how to do it with time if curriculum is covered but you just need to handle pressure and accuracy to stand out.

I wonder both quality is those superselective looking for as they will deliver good exam results for the school in the future anyway.

DD thought Tiffin was much easier than the SPGS exam.

For the London consortium new problem solving section if you are prepared for the other sections, you should be fine to do it. My dd said it was not difficult. We did nothing to prepare for it. Although, someone suggested a puzzles type website a week or two before the exam. But my dd was mentally done with prep by that time so we decided not to do anything from the website. I am sure now there are tutoring companies that have come up with ways to prep for that, but you don't really need it. But nothing wrong if dc want to try and prepare for it.

I agree @BonjourCrisette that the SPGS Comprehension paper is probably the best I've seen in terms of being tutor-proof - it suits girls with strong processing skills, ability to absorb and analyse a lot of information, and make unexpected connections as well as testing for logic and often elements of spatial awareness and codes. Either a child has that kind of brain or they don't. Of course you can always improve on exam technique / speed that's useful for all exams but I think that one probably is very revealing for them.

The Consortium exam I'm less enamoured with from the familiarisation materials - as one teacher said to us, to what level are you really testing creative thinking and analysis when it's multiple choice? Also, it's so short - 15 mins is very little.

On the subject of curriculum (and how much children need to cover) every indie school head I've heard speak (who has stressed that there's no need to tutor, as they all do) has said that the exam will be "based on the Y5 curriculum with opportunities for stretch for the most able pupils." I don't think anyone need do lots of 11+ inference papers to read between the lines there.

I know SPGS is in a slightly different league, but you only need to look at the sample maths papers to see that those aren't Y5 national curriculum papers (esp the third one). Maybe those kids getting offers with no additional tutoring beyond exam technique really are geniuses. Maybe the pass mark is very low, and they just make the paper hard so to identify a handful of stellar students to give High Mistress awards to. But it's not a Y5 curriculum paper, and with maths, if you have never seen an algebraic equation before, even a bright student isn't instinctively going to know how to tackle it.

And from everything I've ever read on here, the Tiffins maths paper is notoriously difficult so I find it hard to believe that it doesn't go beyond the Y5 curriculum.

not "most ten year olds", sure, but there are a lot of learned skills being tested there, some sections more than others. like e.g. of the recent c two thirds of the Oxbridge intake who were state educated, most of those comprehensive educated, I'd be astonished if more than a handful of the 10 year old versions of those kids would have been able to pass a test like that.

@SamPoodle123 Both consortium and SPGS type of test, there are bespoken tutoring course, and you can guess how many West London prep students, whose parents specific target (obsessed) for SPGS school etc from age 4/7, will do it to maximize the chance.

I agree there is no need for those paid tutor really. If the child have time to practice those exam Questions with some help from parent, their chance will definitely to be higher, but again this will take time and effort.

And compared to some other Grammar 11+ test I have seen, these question are easier in the sense that I think myself can do well in these type of test unprepared, I also belive my colleagues, who failed miserably in the NVR test, will be OK at these kind of test even without prep. But still I'm not comfortable all we can be better than a bright 10 year old kids with proper preparation.

But again, the tests, as well as VR or NVR are just identifying certain type of thinking, for a 10 year old with tutor and practice will improve the chance. The difficulty or style of the paper has little correlation on the difficulty of actual getting the offer from the school. For the same level ability, with similar level of prep, the actual reliable difficulty level is application to offers ratio (note not application to admission).

Hence, in general London super selective grammar is harder than top selective private.If the entire cohort of the grammar students, stay to prepare and take the private 11+ exams, a lot of them will probably do better too.

Probably the single most useful thing you could do to make a test prep proof and a test of raw ability would be to change the content and format drastically every year. But that would also bring about many downsides such as starting to become very expensive to administer, to pitch at the right level, to generally make 'fair', and so on.

You might really try thinking out of the box, e.g. one year devote quite a bit of effort to testing reaction times [which are generally quite well correlated with intelligence, though only to a point - e.g. a mongoose might well ace certain formulations of such tests but i daresay perform less well in A level further maths], another year testing memory [e.g. remembering sequences of colours or objects], another year focus on getting to grips with made up languages, yet another year getting kids to from scratch learn & win at an obscure, very tactical, board game [e.g. mahjong equivalents], and so on.

But I'm not really sure where the drive for real tutor proof-ness would come from - Ofsted? prospective parents? local residents? school governors? The status quo , whereby strength of prep is key, seems to suit most of the involved parties quite well.

@puffyisgood out of thinking question or sth similar, will make the selection more bias. I don't bevelive at age 10 level, a general purpose untutorable exam exist.

But again, all these schools have strong interest to take on students that can achieve good result at GCSE and A Levels, which also required strength of prep as key skills (and party involvement too) , I can see why they all happy to just use existing format.

you only need to look at the sample maths papers to see that those aren't Y5 national curriculum papers (esp the third one). Maybe those kids getting offers with no additional tutoring beyond exam technique really are geniuses.

DD, who got an offer with a bit of tutoring, is not a genius and is in the lowest set for Maths. She did not finish the Maths paper when she took the exam and had not even covered some of the primary national curriculum (ratios in particular is the one I remember but I think there may have been other things too). She found the Tiffin Maths paper much much easier and did finish it.

there are a lot of learned skills being tested there, some sections more than others. like e.g. of the recent c two thirds of the Oxbridge intake who were state educated, most of those comprehensive educated, I'd be astonished if more than a handful of the 10 year old versions of those kids would have been able to pass a test like that.

I'd be astonished if someone clever enough to end up at Oxbridge wouldn't have been able to make a decent stab at that paper - the main barrier is probably psychological rather than to do with the difficulty. I think it is fun for the type of child they are looking for (probably fairly similar to the type of young person Oxbridge is looking for). I also think that as long as you don't get scared it is perfectly possible to answer this type of thing based purely on being logical and having decent comprehension skills.

@BonjourCrisette So that goes to my other point that perhaps the pass rate for that third maths paper is very low (I've heard 40% quoted on here) and they make it hard purely to identify that small handful of genuinely stand-out students (while some others, who manage to have a good stab at it, still get a place, or perhaps that place is awarded because they excelled in the English paper or the Comprehension paper - we'll never know...)

But the broader point - which you seem to be substantiating, given there were aspects of maths your DD hadn't covered at school - is that they're not Y5 curriculum papers.

yeah, i mean the state grammars have [broadly speaking] just the same amount of funding per head as the comprehensives, any significant resource that they were to invest in revamping the tests would have to come out of another budget somewhere else in the school, they now have a test that broadly works, it'd be a brave headteacher indeed who were to chance his or her arm on a risky new 'fairer' alternative in the name of inclusion. getting more pupil premium kids would bring in an extra grand a year per head, which isn't to be sneezed at, but the downside risks might be considered greater. no small number of upper middle class parents might bring in more than that through their involvement in fundraising events and so on.

and the financial model/existence of the private schools will of course always depend on the overwhelming majority of kids paying full fees, that's obviously a non trivial consideration.

@LondonMum20222 No, my point was that DD had not covered some stuff in the Y5/6 curriculum and still did well enough to get a place. I am pretty sure she hadn't covered anything at all more advanced than that. These exams were January and by then her primary had basically taught everything they were going to teach and were focusing on revision. You are right that she would have done much better on the English and Comprehension papers.

Agree and one can not underestimate the efforts takes to mark thousands of open format papers, for grammar the entrance is free so given the number of applicants most of the London grammar school has to use multiple choice to significant reduce the number of bright DCs into second round to properly assess the ability in a different form.

@BonjourCrisette I think we're broadly saying the same thing, just from different angles. Your DD did well enough to get a spot in spite of not having covered the full maths curriculum. But the fact remains that the SPGS exam does go well beyond the Y5 (and indeed Y6) curriculum. That doesn't mean that girls can't get in without having covered all that material. But the exam isn't based on the Y5 curriculum.

Also, if your DD's school had covered everything they were going to cover by Jan, and were just doing revision by then, surely she had done all the Y5 and Y6 curriculum? Unless the school were failing to teach everything in the NC.

plenty of scientific research is already in place?
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=single+sex+schools+impact+on+social&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

For some maths questions in those top private school exams (SPGS maths paper isn't hard) , a lot of them are perceived as beyond curriculum questions, but actually can be solved with lower level math knowledge with some tweaks - this is similar to IMO or PMC etc. However, if covered a higher level curriculum knowledge, solving those become easier especially under time constraints because those students has more tools in their arsenal.

For grammar schools maths, speed and accuracy is key so practice is important not just knowing the content - state school won't initiate many practices until SAT months.

Gender: Male Female

Tiffin Boys ( Male), Tiffin Girls ( Female), Nonsuch Girls ( Female) etc

I know many people who completed single sex, gender school and have been shy for some time after school towards opposite sex.

It is not like everybody has vast social life after school

Also, there is a lot of scientific evidence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6286141/

if your DD's school had covered everything they were going to cover by Jan, and were just doing revision by then, surely she had done all the Y5 and Y6 curriculum? Unless the school were failing to teach everything in the NC.

Got it. She went to a fairly low-achieving primary school with significant numbers of SEN and EAL in the class. They did not cover the whole of the NC. They were just focused on getting as many people as possible to the expected standard (understandably). And PreplexJ is right - the questions are often solvable with the application of simpler maths and some logic (I'm guessing they probably quite like this if they see it).

"SPGS maths paper isn't hard." Funniest (or just most absurd) statement I've ever read on here. 😂

@PreplexJ Given your rather relentless insistence on this thread that grammars are so much harder to get into than indies, we'll just all assume your DD is going to a grammar school. But you've been noticeably tight-lipped about where your DD is going in Sept despite being a very vocal poster on all the 11+ threads this year. Perhaps you'd like to elucidate?