DS failed 11+ very upset, angry and sad

[Ouchh1]

DS failed the 11 plus. He had been struggling for a while but wanted to continue like his friends, so we let him.

We weren’t expecting him to pass, and have been stressing to him that the exam isn’t important. But we are crushed at the result: he scored one of the lowest marks in the exam.

We were expecting a higher score given the effort he has put in.

He has worked hard over the past 1.5 years, study a little every day. He has had 121 tuition for over 18 months - including a separate English tutor since January, as English is an area he needed extra help with.

When I spoke to his English tutor this morning, she suggested he might have a mild learning disorder which has been masked from his teachers because of the study he has been doing for the 11 plus.

She said I should speak to the school’s SEN and ask for an assessment. Is this the normal practice?

Although he can read fluently, he doesn’t seem to grasp the text. This is why we hired an English tutor, and she assured me he was making steady progress.

I feel so sorry for him. He is going to be so upset when he finds out. I am holding off telling g him until Sunday.

I am furious with myself - I should never have tried to get him to do the 11+.

What we do now? I am starting to worry about his overall ability and how he will cope at secondary school.

Pretty much all are tutored. Many starting year 4 or earlier. If they have graduate parents they might do it themselves but all children are intensely helped round here. Not a grammar area but families ship out for grammars.

Exactly. And finding out your parent lied to you about an exam mark is much worse than learning the true mark at the time.
Telling the truth about the mark to a year 6 child is hardly "throwing them to the wolves" either. I've got adult children and a 10 year old grandchild; children can deal with disappointment in life much better than some parents on here seem to think.
I think the modern trend of many parents telling children they're fantastic at everything is doing them a disservice and not preparing them for life. Of course children should be praised if they work hard and try hard, even if their results are worse than expected, because those things will help them to succeed, but lying to them and pretending they did better than they actually did achieves nothing. Children of that age have worked out for themselves who the clever ones and not clever ones in their class are a long time ago already.

The 11+ is awful! Time it was abolished. It does no good and there are generations who have felt inadequate as a result (not me personally, I grew up away from them thankfully!). You won't be the first to regret your child sat it. Focus on the positive - I'm sure he will end up in a better school than the one that would have required him to jump through all those stupid hoops!

Silly reason to hate grammar. Need more of them in reality.

lol..using a sample of 1 to draw conclusions is probably the reason we need more grammar schools.

In reality, on average grammar schools pupils do much better than comprehensive students, and build greater confidence and resilience in young minds. A higher proportion go onto RG universities.

Having said that this is solely because it is selective entry, and it isn't the right environment for everyone, especially if you can't keep up with your peers.

While that is a noble statement, it's rather naive. Given that NVR isn't taught in primary schools, and more importantly it's the relative (rather than absolute) score that matters tutoring is imperative.

The 11+ makes me so angry. Not criticising you at all, OP - it's the system you're in and makes sense to play it. But essentially the poor kids doing it are getting started on the exam conveyer belt that is secondary school 3-4 years earlier than they otherwise would have to. That's precious time taken out of their childhoods preparing, being tutored, doing practice exams and being stressed that they could spend doing so many other, more worthwhile things. The way we've eroded childhood in this country is ludicrous.

But it’s meant to measure IQ (whether it does or not is by the by) so practice sure, but tutoring shouldn’t be needed?

anyway as someone who went to a grammar (with no tutoring) I fucking hated it and the teaching was appalling anyway.

This is such nonsense! Why would the score ever be thought of or mentioned again?!

Hilariously ridiculous

You want to introduce more secondary moderns?

Agree! there are 2 superselectives in my area... the NVR and VR are full of trick questions designed to catch children out. The results are age standardised too...I guarantee that 100% of the people who got entry mark were tutored. Tutored intensely over a long period of time.

It's meant to do a lot of things, but perhaps, as a thought experiment, go and find a sample CEM NVR and VR test and see how you fair. In my area, you need 80-90% to get in. Time yourself and see if you, an adult, with a high IQ, get 80% over both papers in the time limit.
I'd be amazed if you did.

really? did you read research in this yourself? or are you being anecdotal?

I saw this paper recently... https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/aug/no-evidence-grammar-school-systems-are-best-brightest

I failed my 11+. I went to a secondary school convinced I was dim. After my marriage broke up, I went back into education and passed GCSEs and A levels all at grade A. I then did a diploma, a degree and a master’s in education, all done as a single parent with three children. The 11+ is a flawed test that is meaningless.

I would start by telling him how proud I am of how hard he worked on this, that the most important thing is to work hard and try your best. With the testing versus tutoring it doesn't look good she didn't tell you sooner but there are some specific issues that show more under test conditions like processing speed. Also if she was explaining or interpreting questions for him then his receptive language might be the issue. The tutor might just be saying this to say they bare no responsibility or they may be saying it because they think something else might be going on. Most tutors wouldn't have experience with the various specific learning disabilities, there's not just dyslexia. I think it's worth a conversation with his teacher to make sure nothing else is going on.

Don't understand what you mean by 'fail'. Don't think that applies to the 11+. It's more like if you score above a certain mark point, you get to go to the next round, but if you didn't get into that next round, you just didn't score high enough, but you certainly didn't 'fail'. You need to reframe this in your own mind, not just for your child's sake but your own.

So glad we don't have this in Scotland, no need for that pressure at such a young age.

It's far from the norm in England - only 11 out of 151 LAs have a true grammar system. A handful more have one or two grammar schools and the vast majority have none at all.

I have seen some examples of it

reading passages, sometimes simple passengers, and not understanding what’s going on and coming out with some really odd explanations that make no sense .

I knew he wouldn’t get the marks to get into grammar school. I am not disappointed he won’t get in. I am concerned that despite so much tuition he achieved such a low score.

”I am concerned that despite so much tuition he achieved such a low score.”

Please do not be concerned about this. I have prepared 4 of my own DC for superselective grammars and they all got places. Despite the massive tutoring craze going on everywhere, I personally don’t believe you can gain many marks by tutoring, even for years. The child has to be quick thinking on the spot and problem solving at speed, You can’t tutor that. Nor do you need that for most jobs nor GCSEs.

The best scorers we know just did basic prep. It’s really just a craze to believe that huge amounts of tutoring is required or makes a massive difference for 11 plus.

I do suggest you keep working on inference and comprehension skills as these will stand him in good steed for GCSEs. There are lots of great Ks2 SATs books out there. He sounds like he is on track to do well. If he does well he will also go into good sets in secondary school.

Also OP please do understand that just missing quite a few questions in some of the tests results in a low score. For example, for the Kent Test you get two Maths questions out of 25 wrong and have an autumn birthday, that is it and you cannot get an out of county place anymore. It literally requires almost 100 per cent speed and accuracy. If you want further information you can ask some places for the raw score - as in how many questions were incorrect. The score could look very low as it is the “average” achieved by many kids.

Why did you put him through it if you knew he wouldn't get in? Makes no sense.

@Ouchh1 You still haven’t noted whether you’ve noticed any behaviours at home? Is it just not understanding certain passages of text? Have any of his teachers pointed this out for any subjects as all?

Of course you should take her suggestions seriously, but if there have been no other indication then it’s a massive leap from her.

What other behaviours have you seen that would suggest he needs assessment?

He wants to continue because most of his friends were taking the test.

We did try to discourage him but he was adamant he wanted to continue. I wished we’d refused, as we’d saved a lot of money, time and heartache.