If you heavily tutored for 11+ but didn't get into a super selective...

[nightmarepickle2025]

How do you feel about it? Do you think the additional tutoring was good for your child or detrimental?

We've been told by our daughter's teachers that a decade ago she would have easily got into the nearest super selective but the standards are much higher now and essentially you have to get 100% in the tests. So it seems incredibly unlikely she'll get in. I'm happy for her to go to the local comp, which is a good school. . But she's bright, wants to do the exams and I think it's good to push her. I just don't want her to put in all that effort and then have her confidence dented if she's not successful.

So I guess I'm asking for positive and negative experiences of going through the process and not succeeding.

It's so sad that the grammars have enabled this situation in the state sector. Kids feeling they've failed and wasting whole summers just to avoid a terrible school (which shouldn't exist somewhere as wealthy as London frankly).

I would be wary of seeing 11+ prep as a (plan B) way of 'securing a top set spot' in a comp (as some posters imply). My DC were initially placed, correctly, in mid-sets for Maths and English but over time moved up (or up, down and up again in one case). The driving force behind their success was developing the motivation to work, becoming more self-organised and exercising personal agency (eg personally finding a topic difficult, recognising and addressing that on their own).

You are right that it requires a child to be self motivated to stay in top set but given children model the behaviour of the other around them then why wouldn't you do your best to get them into top set in the first place? Then if they don't keep up with the work and drop down you can at least say you and them tried their best.

Life is a bitch and the sooner your child learns the lesson the better.
Working hard does not guarantee reaching a given goal.
However, it is by learning to pick ourselves up after being defeated that we become harder and better equipped for the next challenge.

I think a lot of parents don't understand this, no.

I've had several real life conversations with people who are insistent that their selective school is better than the local comp, purely on the basis of getting better results.

And there are many posts on MN from people who assume that a school getting 90% of Grades 4+ at GCSE is intrinsically better than one getting 60%, is better than one getting 40%.

An interesting sub point to this is where parents pay for tutors so their child can keep up with (or better, exceed) the "expected level" at the school.

@sweetmelody best of luck with it all for you and your family. London is odd in that there are so few grammars they become 'super selective' really by default which means they can cherry pick the absolute brightest (/most parent-invested) kids so then their results look amazing and so lots of parents feel almost obliged to try for it. I wonder how much value they really add, and whether the results they get aren't largely inevitable given they gift themselves the top child in each primary school. I found it useful to try to look away from the grammar info and look closely at the comps available to us. There's nationally reported info but school websites often provide extra / more detailed info on their own webpages which can be very useful. For us, I could see a GCSE pass rate on the national site, but the school's site broke that down to show me the pass rates for different subjects, highlighting that for some subjects the pass rate was particularly high, and also giving the Grade-7+ pass rate for different subjects. Looking at that detailed info is another one of the reasons we felt confident to make the choice.

I totally empathize with the feeling that sometimes in London (particularly if your child is at a primary full of invested parents) it can feel a bit arms race-y. I also did think, wow if these guys are this invested in the kids' education - and yes most of the kids won't be going to the grammars - then we definitely will be fine in our comp high school, because all of these same parents will be there!

Grammars near us (not London) are selective but the expensive non-selective private schools beat them with the results every year. Funny how the kids who are mocked for not passing 11+ somehow do better than the kids who should be high achievers. Grammar schools don't always have the best teachers IME and they certainly don't have as many SEN pupils as the privates.

This was years ago as I’m in my thirties now but I did an 11+ for a selective and got in with no extra tutoring. As others are saying if your child needs lots of intervention then maybe it isn’t meant to be?

As others are saying if your child needs lots of intervention then maybe it isn’t meant to be?

Very few dc in London will get in without some form of tutoring because the competition is so fierce. I mean people do hours of work a week.

I couldn’t agree with this more about the London grammars. Those children are always going to get great exam results no matter where they go - the school can’t be adding much if any value. I’ve heard there can be up to 3000 applicants and places for only 200 children. If you’re the top 200, you don’t need that school to get you your A*, you’re getting it anyway.

I wonder if parents do it all so that their children can have a peer group of equally bright and pushed kids.

In my old area, these super selective grammars were an obsession.

Perhaps a status symbol?

Children are often influenced by their peers. If they are in a grammar school surrounded by other academic children, it will continue to motivate them. But some dc if they are surrounded by kids who are not interested in school, they might follow suit.

Or some dc need to be stretched more, which might not always happen. Eg my dd was in a primary and it was not so challenging so she was able to just coast along with no effort and doing well. Her peers were nice, but not very interested in academics. We decided to try for some more academic schools for secondary. Now she is at a more academic school and more motivated. She is being stretched and challenged instead of just coasting along bored. Her last two years of primary, she got so bored she started going to the bathroom to make bubbles! We were notified this by the teachers and they basically said they will allow it. She was GDS in everything, so they probably understood she was just bored. Anyway, she is now in a more academic school and is very happy....no more going to the bathroom to make bubbles :)

@SamPoodle123 agreed 100%.
We are a product of our environment, and more so for the kids in today's distracted environment.
Everyone should read Atomic Habits

jamesclear.com/power-of-environment