How Much Feedback Does Your 11+ Tutor Provide?

[roses2]

My DS is about to sit 11+ exams. He has a Math tutor and an English tutor in person who come once a week. They're both super positive, says DS does great etc but don't give me quantitative data eg he is scoring x%, this is what he should be scoring for these schools, this is where we need to work on etc. I feel like I have to guide them based on what I am doing with DS on the week end to highlight his weaknesses otherwise they seem to take an unstructured approach and neither set homework. Both are from the same tutor company.

Do you get feedback from your 11+ tutor to help understand performance vs benchmark? Do they take charge and say this is where your child isn't doing well and can you as a parent can help in-between lessons?

I think it depends on the tutor. My dd had an online group tutor session. The tutor only mentioned the marks once. Her very first test was not great, but that was more because dd never took an exam like this before, the very next test she scored well. The marks were never mentioned again. The first few sessions the tutor gave hw...after that nothing.

I recommend Atom learning or alike - a lot cheaper than a tutor and give you a very good idea of where your child scores compared to others in their cohort. Also you can put in your preferred school in and it can show how your child compares to others competing for that school (obviously, not everyone will be using Atom - but it is still helpful imo)

DD had a group tutor for a year before the exam. We never received any kind of individual feedback but we could see how she was doing on her practice tests, so I'm not sure it was specifically needed?

She passed comfortably

Thanks all, super helpful and it seems the consensus is that performance feedback is not the norm.

What about homework? Should a tutor be setting homework to reinforce what was learnt in the lesson with them?

I am using Atom Learning and this is the only way I have to quantitatively asses my child’s performance.

I am slightly baffled if tutors are not giving performance feedback. I have not used one - only used Atom. However, I am a teacher and if feedback about performance and areas of weakness are not given how can your dc work on these areas to improve for the exam - how do you measure progress and whether the tutor sessions are beneficial and worth the money? Also I would definitely expect homework maybe not every week but every other week or monthly.

Our tutor gives a maths and English homework assignment each week - probably 1 hour - 90 mins worth of work in total. Not too onerous as my DD gets very little homework from primary school. Then she marks that and goes through corrections etc in the lesson

We didn't get much feedback initially, although tutor had said if they had no chance she wouldn't keep on tutoring them so it was positive we kept going!

When they started doing past papers (after learning what NVR was, VR detail and how to approach the papers etc) then we did get more specific feedback on results.

Always had homework - initially working through the books/examples and then moving to past papers, c1-1.5hrs pw

I find it odd that you are getting neither homework or feedback from your tutors. We are Yr 5 so just started, but have a great dialogue with our tutor. DS gets weekly homework which I receive back marked and he even talks me through the errors.

When you say he's about to take his 11+ exams, are you referring to independents? If so, it's very late to be querying this now, so probably need to trust the process.

If he is Year 5, and you've got until next Autumn, I would be questioning this approach and discussing with the tutors.

The exams start in three weeks. I had a lengthy call with the owner of the tutor company yesterday and she said that the two tutors should be sharing feedback with me and setting homework. We've got 2 more months so let's see if the feedback filters through to the tutors and if they improve. We only started using them end July and this was our first time tutoring so didn't know what was normal.

But yes I agree they should be setting homework and giving the parent feedback so I can help them in-between sessions. That's my expectation on why I pay "tutor rates".

A tutor will drop you like a hat if you push for constant feedback and homework. Good luck finding another after that. They charge for the lesson, not the trimmings.

@ampletime let them! There are plenty of tutors out there - I know many being a teacher, who will happily take on children and do the job properly!

And actually they should charge and include preparation time in that hourly fee - which is planning and marking work. If they don't they don't know what they are doing!

You're right - we did get dropped by the math tutor. Two weeks before the exams start. And this was after asking for feedback just once on what he is doing with DS and what can we do to reinfornce any learnings from his lessons.

We have found a new tutor already who is a maths student at a university (and half the cost) but it was totally unprofessional and I'll be writing the tutor company a poor review when this is all over. Surely a parent is entitled to some feedback of some sort otherwise how am I supposed to help inbetween lessons to reinforce the learnings??

When it comes to DS2's turn I'll be taking a very different approach. The £60+ tutors were absolutely not worth the money compared to the Atom Learning tutor (£50/hour/set homework & emailed me detailed feedback weekly) or university student (£30/hour).

@roses2 that’s terrible! Sounds like good riddance even if it was at a very inconvenient time.

When I’ve needed a tutor I have tended to pick people with teaching experience. But that’s not always necessary university students can be great too. But I would expect to pay more for someone with a teaching background.