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 most people do a certain amount of extra tutoring whether it's with an actual tutor, books or with a parent. It doesn't matter be really proud of her. All my kids went to highly selective schools with a once a week tutor helping them before the exams. However, if I'd felt I'd have to hire a tutor for my kids numerous times a week long term to get them into these schools I would have chosen different schools, I've seen the fallout from this when these kids can't keep up or the parents have to tutor these kids constantly for them to keep up - huge amounts of stress for everyone! Makes miserable kids and parents.

my twins are at Grammar school, they attended a tutor for a few sessions to work on timing for the 11+ and to boost confidence, both very academically able and both achieved all grades 7-9 for all their gcses - I do know a friend started with the same tutors however dropped out when tutors advised parents they would struggle in a grammar. Another friend was extensively tutored (daily 1-2 hours after school) passed the 11+ then floundered in grammar and had to be removed. Equally I know a child who flew in year 6, top of the class, wasn’t tutored and in fact failed the 11+! The parents removed them to a fee paying school.
I think it’s a case of knowing your child and finding the right school for them!

@Ladybowes I suggest you get Sutton mock tests. These are inspired ( alike questions) by past exams to Sutton Tiffins. Compare it with what your child will be doing/is doing in Y5. That will answer your question

I would say it makes sense to tutor vs not tutoring?! Even an able dc would probably benefit long term from tutoring on the basis they'll still find things like exam technique handy even if everyone is sure they will pass. I think if 11+ didn't exist all this silliness would go away tbh.

It doesn't really matter if someone thinks a dc 'only' got in because of tutoring. They got in because they got in. If tutoring helped that's that. The list important thing is dc cope while they're at the school.
Having been to a grammar school I really wish they'd be abolished. It's an artificial segregation of dc based on one test at a very young age.

Some very valid points in this thread - the 11+ is sat at age 10 and of course puts children into a stressful situation - in highly competitive areas it’s not surprising parents tutor - the standard of education in a grammar is much higher locally and compared to the price of local fee paying schools even a few £k spent tutoring over a year makes it a much cheaper option! Of course some children just pass the test- a mixture of good academic ability and luck possibly at play alongside practice papers. It is possible to find a lot of help online (or pay a few pounds to a local child nearby who had a tutor and passed)!

The format of these exams is something your average state school child will not have seen. So I really think the % of those without any preparation who got in just be absolutely tiny.

We are on a grammar school area in the midlands and loads that I know tried out and most did not not get a high enough score. Some tutored some not. DS did and is doing well at the grammar.

I think there is an old fashioned attitude that children if children are tutored they will struggle at a selective school. Of course some will, but most, if parents are realistic about their ability, should be fine.

I also think the child's attitude comes into play. DS1 was prepared to put the extra work in without too much of a fuss. DS2 however! Whole different ballgame despite also being a clever child and toward the top of his class (and tutored!) We will see what will happen!

It's a pretty rubbish system and I do feel guilty to an extent for perpetrating it. But then I also want the best for DC.

I actually think explicitly teaching a child how to take an exam is one of the most useful things you can possibly do for them. Most people have to take them at some point and for most people the outcome will be important in one way or another, whether that is making sure you get passes in GCSE Maths and English or getting good A Level grades for further study.

Practice of walking into a school with hundreds of other exam sitters is also good and makes the ones that matter less scary.

The Sutton exams are good for this as so early.

And that one gender schools 🤦‍♀️. This puts the kids from grammar behind in terms of social skills with the opposite gender

Where is your evidence for this... I simply don't believe it. Children who go to single sex schools often have siblings of the opposite sex and I sure they are more than capable of interacting with them.

Whether or not single sex schools are a good idea is much debated and there is some evidence that children perform better in there GCSEs if they have been to single sex schools - but social skills never seen that before.

This is nonsense. And these schools are not single gender. They are single sex.

My daughter is starting at TGS in Sept.

The fact of the matter is that the exams for Tiffin and the Sutton Grammars cover the whole KS2 curriculum but are sat at the start of y5.

Most state primaries will introduce some content beyond y5 curriculum to the kids working at greater depth but are extremely unlikely to be teaching so far ahead that a child at the end of y5 will have already covered the entire y6 curriculum in school. Prep schools might have done but the state primaries in my local area (in the catchment for both Tiffin and Sutton grammars) definitely do not.

Even the brightest child will need to have covered the curriculum to stand a chance in the exam. They aren't going to be sitting there deriving the area of a circle from first principles in an exam- they need to have seen the formula before.

Not all of the exam will be y6 content, but certainly in the exams sat in oct/nov 2022 for both the second stage of Nonsuch and for Tiffin girls a good proportion was. A child unfamiliar with that y6 content wouldn't have passed no matter how brilliant they are.

You can either cover the curriculum with them at home yourself (self tutor) or use a tutor to cover the curriculum. On top of this, there is time pressure and a lot of the other kids sitting the exams will be heavily tutored, so it would be worth doing a bit of work on exam craft and timing - just being familiar with filling out the answer sheets can help with time. For the multiple choice exams, they need to answer each question in under a minute.

I find people are not that open about how much preparation their children have had for these exams. A lot of people who sneer at you for using a tutor turn out to have done hours of prep on their own at home. Other parents go a bit mad, a friend of my daughter's was attending a tutor 6 times a week. She's got in too, and is a clever girl. I don't know that she "needed" that much preparation but the lack of transparency can send people into a kind of madness... It left me wondering if the once a week tuition we were doing was going to be enough or if I was going to send her in terribly unprepared and knock her confidence.

We sent our daughter to group tuition once a week in year 5 with a tutor who was very familiar with these schools. She is an avid reader and consistently worked at "greater depth" throughout primary. The tutor set additional homework that took about 30 mins each night and in the holidays we did extra practice papers to try to speed up her maths which was solid but slow.
She's a bright cookie and hard working but I wouldn't delude myself that she would have got in without the additional work, her state primary wouldn't have got her anywhere near ready despite being in my opinion a very good school- why should they teach a year ahead after all?

I hope she holds her own once she's in- time will tell!

You can learn to be social with the opposite gender outside of school. Atm my dd goes to a mixed primary and she made the decision she wanted to go to all girls for secondary. She said boys cause disruption during class. I am not worried about her social skills with the opposite gender. She has a little brother 20 months younger then her, who has friends over. She has many friends with older brothers, one w a twin brother etc. She does tennis with mostly boys, one boy in her gymnastics class, her art class also has some boys. We also have close friends with boys the same age as my dd (ones that we holiday with or stay with when visiting). I am sure others have similar experiences.

@Ladybowes the headmaster did say they would be tested on the curriculum up to end of y5 and the admission FAQ on the website explicitly say the same thing. https://www.tiffinschool.co.uk/_docs/admissions/Year%207%20Admission%20FAQs%202023.pdf

Whether they tested on y6 stuff honestly I can’t say as I outsourced the entire thing to a tutor and have no idea what is even on the curriculum! I don’t think they would lie tho and Tiffin prides themselves on having an untutorable test and I don’t think they would do anything which encourages people to get a tutor (although obvs everyone did).

I would have preferred a Co Ed school but we haven’t got any coeducational state schools that we could get into. All our state options are single sex.

@Outnumbered4321 thanks for sharing. We did the 11+ last year and I agree in bulk park what your DD took is the average effort level that for a top set state school kid to stand a good chance to enter the superselective like TGS.

For private superselective only probably the effort can be reduced by a bit (from hingsight) but it is a different focus game.

For sutton mocks, one definitely some Y6 curriculum to cover the maths, the level state students learnt by starting of Y6 will be disadvantaged. But most importantly is the practice with speed and accuracy, it is essential.
For English it is hard to say, but judging from the vocabularies used in the text I think it is way beyond Y6 curriculum.

@Mangotime untutorable test for 11+ is oxymoron

I would tend to agree I think although I don’t know much about it…. But I’d don’t think they would say on one hand it’s untutorable but then make tutors absolutely essential by testing Year 6 stuff?

In the open day of 2 of the most selective private school we visited last year, when asking about 11+ exam contents by the prospective parents , both school encourage no tutoring is required.

For those exam questions, I have to admit I will not have a chance to pass unless prepare.

For those exam questions, I have to admit I will not have a chance to pass unless prepare.

I do hope you are joking.

they do exist on a very limited scale. some of the comps round us do assessments for language and art places and and so on. no-one seems to know what the content of the assessment is (the places aren't all that prestigious anyway), on the day it apparently relies on stuff that's been written or drawn on a blackboard at the front of the room. my eldest scraped a fairly borderline pass in one of these tests but I suspect in the end comfortably passed a test for a superselective on the back of what in the period leading up to the exam was a fairly heavy duty amount of parent led 'tuition' (multiple hours per week). a fair bit of the difference between performance in the two presumably boiled down to thoroughness of preparation.

For maths or MC English comprehension I might be OK, but not VR or NVR without proper prep for sure, not at the intensity level I have observed in some of the 11+ exam Im aware of.

Not for tiffin exams but I mentioned this in other MN threads before, I once gave some 11+ NVR paper to my colleagues to try out fresh with time limit (one from cantab, the other from imperial), the first attempt they have will put them at the bottom 30-40% of the exam cohort.

Extraordinary.

Re untutorable tests, the best I have seen is the SPGS comprehension paper. Everything you need to answer the questions is in the paper and it doesn't rely on any extra knowledge. You just need to be logical.

https://spgs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Sample-Comprehension-Paper-3.pdf

@BonjourCrisette SPGS comprehension paper is good one, my DD enjoys solving that. But before that one has to past the CEM pretest which you will need practice and prepare, even though the pass level is quite high compared to grammar stanndard.

From last year London consortium is doing problem solving kind of section which is some what similar to the style of the SPGS comprehension. But again it is not an untutorable format, and I am aware of some west london prep students attend those targeted tutor course before the exam.

For grammar, the is somehow constrainted by the curriculum to some extent so it is difficult to have things as such.

But before that one has to past the CEM pretest which you will need practice and prepare

I don't think you need that much prep, though I am sure it is possible to tutor for it and suggest strategies. Again, it's just logic. DD really enjoyed it.