11+ entrance exam tutoring/ practice for not very selective private school

[Flockameanie]

DD is going into Y6 in Sept and I've very belatedly decided to apply for the local private school. Our local state is fine, and will probably be where she ends up. But there is a sweet local private school that is, I think, not terribly selective, but might provide DD with a more focused and calm atmosphere. She's bright (aren't they all!), but easily distracted.

The local private has an entrance exam, which I expect she'd pass without any prep. However, there are scholarships on offer for those that do well, so it seems foolish not to prep her at least a little bit.

So, two questions:

• have we left it too late?
• If we haven't, what's the best way to prepare her for the exam? Online tutoring, etc, all seems geared at selective grammars. There's also a bewildering array of books available (Bond, etc). Basically - I don't know where to start!

Do you know the format? Comprehension, creative writing, maths, verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning etc?

Bond books are good for V and NVR, and those are probably the ones she'll struggle with if she's never had to do them better.

The school might also sell past papers which is good because you get to see a "real" one before the exam, so the font and layout isn't a surprise.

Oh, and practising under exam conditions. That's the sort of thing that could throw her if she hasn't had to do it before.

It says there are three exams - English, Maths and Verbal Reasoning. I'll ask the school about past papers when they open again after the holidays. But I was hoping to do some light practice with DD over the summer to see if she how she finds doing those types of exams.

I think you need to start with the entrance tests that they will actually use.

My DD applied to 2 schools, one had maths and English sample papers online, plus a description of their verbal reasoning test. The other did cat4 and then other papers with no samples available.

We got a tutor from about now (to Jan entrance tests) to focus on maths and English, primarily focusing on the types of questions shown on the first school's website. He established that her maths was fine except for a couple of areas that had been badly taught at primary. He also discovered that she had never had to write creatively from scratch at primary school - the teacher always seemed to provide the whole structure to a story. So she needed to learn to plan/structure her own writing and write within a time limit. I really think she would have been disadvantaged without that bit of the tutoring. Her tutor trawled the web for other schools' sample papers that were similar enough to practice too. The other thing the tutoring did was to help DD with her interviews - by chatting to an unfamiliar adult.

The cat4 and verbal reasoning we covered ourselves with books and an online cat4 practice thing. They say you can't practice/improve this kind of test, but that is clearly untrue. Spotting patterns, particularly ones that involve maths patterns, require knowledge of those patterns (e.g. square and cube numbers).

I'm not sure how much help that is for you. You might not need to do as much - my DD ended up at a fairly selective school.

I think unless you’re in a wealthy area where pushy parents go in for the top schools most kids will get into a low key private now. Around here the entrance exams are mostly for show, they
dont turn people down. We’ve already had about half the local private schools close in the past decade so I don’t think the remaining ones can afford to be very choosy!

It's a tricky one, I too wasn't fixated on DS going to that school and any bursaries are means tested so I took a relaxed approach. The school sent a past paper and he did that in the time they said, and I left it at that. My reasoning was if he got in then he would be able to cope with the school academically rather than coached then out of his depth, and that has been the case. They will have done lots of SATS prep so should be fine .

Yes, I don't doubt she'd get in. It's more that for her to go we'd need a scholarship to offset some of the fees. Scholarships are determined by performance in the exam. Hence prep...

The entrance exam is in November, by the way. So not sure how much SATs practice the primary will have done by then. And is verbal reasoning tested in SATs? I have no idea... Her primary is nice enough, but communication is rubbish

No Sats practice will be done by November. Verbal Reasoning is a particular skill which also requires excellent SPaG and vocabulary. Unless your child is especially gifted, she is unlikely to get a scholarship without any tutoring whatsoever.

I'd definitely try some verbal reasoning exercises as a priority. If she isn't at a school that preps for entrance exams then she probably won't have done them before, and it isn't the kind of thing you can middle through.

They aren't exactly hard, but you need to be familiar with the format and what it's asking you to do.

*muddle

While you are waiting, maybe do a search on the 11+ forum to see if there's any more info on there? It cover's independent schools as well as grammars
Plus it has lots of free resources

DD's went to a very selective school which never issued past papers, so I just spent hours on google downloading and printing practice papers for the same age group from independent schools.

Good luck

And I agree with practising VR as it takes a while to get your head around it if you've not done it before.

No info on the 11+ forum, unfortunately. I think it's probably a very low-key exam and not that competitive to get in...

Good tip on searching for similar independent schools' past papers though, thanks

I would recommend using Atom Learning over a tutor. We use both a tutor (started last week) and Atom Learning. We got the tutor after DS started using Atom Learning because we got to a point where we understood his level, improved his performance a bit but he wasn't improving enough to get that last 10% improvement needed.

Atom Learning is the only one that can tell you "your child is scoring 110" - you need to know this benchmark to understand your childs level. A tutor will go through past papers with you but I find Atom more specific in knowing the actual score and what he needs to focus on.

Scholarships generally go on performance, but often aren’t worth very much financially. At most schools you’ll need to look at bursaries if you’re hoping to have a large financial discount

Sign up for Bofa or Atom Learning, that will give her all the practice she needs. Just make sure not to waste time with non verbal reasoning if it isn’t in the exam.

(We’re also prepping for senior schools.)

There are three schools near us where scholarships can get 50% off (and bursaries can get another 50% off).

Most schools will base their papers either on CEM or GE exmas and you can buy papers on Amazon for both systems . If you email the school during the holidays to ask them which system they use, it’s very probable that the admissions team will be there for at least some of the time and can answer your questions . I would recommend signing up to ATOM as well so your daughter can sit down and do it online over the holidays (only if the school is doing NVR). I would also ask what the scholarship would be. Around this part of SW London, I don’t know of many schools that offer more than 15%
Good luck!

Sorry GL not GE !