Candidates flying from overseas to sit super-selective grammar 11+

[PopcornPoppingInAPan]

A friend told me for one of the super super selectives in London that some candidates who live overseas had flown in to sit the 11+ exam. If successful the whole family was relocating here. (This is foreign nationals, rather than “ex-pat” British families living overseas.) The school has no priority area.

I wondered if anyone had heard this and whether it was credible or if it’s one of those internet rumours?

I was also wondering if it’s even possible to do this. Obviously families do relocate to the UK and assuming they and the kids have a right to reside then the kids will be entitled to a school place. But can you do it before you’ve moved here?

I guess if you can put down a relative’s address as your address for the purpose of sitting the exam and then submitting the CAF maybe that’s all you need. I wasn’t sure if LAs did any more checks on candidates who aren’t already on their books at state primary, IYSWIM.

I have heard of a family moving from Yorkshire when their DC got a place at the same super selective school so perhaps this is just an extension of that.

@carcassonne1 - you need to look in person at the 4 grammars and speak to the teachers to see what you actually think.
The grammar schools my DC attended have loads of extra curricular clubs and opportunities. There are a lot of people trying to drill their kids and some do succeed with drilling alone, but I think it is a minority. From our state primary, all the kids who got in where greater depth from an early age, avid readers and fast at Maths. None of them did years and years of drilling. Those who were middle set and tried that never got in.

And that’s fantastic for your local schools. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work everywhere.

My y 6dd has been at her primary here since year 1. The school don’t do trips at all due to behaviour issues of some of the children. They tried in the past, and apparently it was just horrific. Staff couldn’t keep them safe due to thier behaviour. Plus, if there was a school trip, parents wouldn’t pay for it, even a fee of £5, although apparently most were free, preferring to keep the child home that day to do what they wanted with them instead.

I know all this as I heavily volunteer at the school, which is excellent if you engage, the teachers are fantastic, so much so that my youngest has just started reception there. It’s not the teaching staff - it’s the demographic of the area that brings it down.

I am involved in organising a year 6 residential this year as I think it’s so important. We had a parent meeting about it last week. 3, infact, as it’s so hard to get any fucker here to take any interest at all and set foot in the school. We have managed to get the price to £60 for three nights which I think is great. The school have a fund for any parents who need financial help.

All three meetings, we had parents saying they weren’t wasting money on sending them. Or that if the school could take them on holiday, so could they so they wouldn’t be sending them in, they would take them away on those days themselves.

out of 90 kids in the year group, only 22 are going. It’s such a shame.

Perhaps this would justify some parents choosing to separate students based on their "brains" from the age of 4, rather than waiting until they are 11.

My son is at a super selective and there are children from a wonderful array of different nationalities, cultures and backgrounds - Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Albania, Brazil as well as SE Asian heritage. Way more than he had at his comprehensive (he moved there for sixth form). For sixth form there were over 700 applications for 35 places.

He didn't take the 11+ - I'm not a believer in segregated education - but he chose to apply for sixth form and accepted the offered place.

His school does have a catchment area, although it is all of our county and parts of the neighbouring three counties, so very wide. The over-subscription categories are the same as you might find at any local comp.

For 11+ they admit 150 boys and they must provide proof of address, residency and right to remain at the time of taking the test (which is on the school site), at the point of offer (if requested) and when they take up their place. Looking at the number of applications compared to acceptance a child has approximately 10% chance of being given a place. Anyone "gaming" the system would certainly skew the chances of genuine applicants.

The school is holding it's year 5 open day next week and they are asking the state school boys (like my son) to contact their primaries and encourage their boys to attend the open day. They seem to genuinely want to to attract potential students from a more diverse cohort than they have traditionally attracted.

It depends on the school. Our cohort sat for HBS this year, lots of SE Asians but other ethnic groups as well. Most of them have been tutored for a couple of years but no one followed the regime you described. There will be some amazing children going there, naturally bright, diligent, great personalities concerned about the world around them, good friends. Definitely not just drill drill drill types.

If you want a CEO, you'll need to go private 🙂 It's a very different set of skills not necessarily developed at grammars.

My 4 year old in reception is very much like her siblings. She’s an August baby and already ahead of what is expected for the summer term of reception. She’s doing well as she is naturally bright but has our support at home. She also has the full engagement of the teachers at school as she wants to learn. Just like her older sister. Teachers bend over backwards to help my children because a) they see their potential and b) I am working with them, not against them. I had a teacher spend 2 lunchtimes a week with dd in year 5 going through her 11+ papers as he was so behind her going to a grammar school. He did it off his own back and I am so greatful for his support (his own daughter attends the grammar dd is going to in sept, so it was personal to him as he could see how much dd would thrive in that particular school).

I spend hours going in to school each week, helping with reading, helping with costumes for the school plays (which at the moment, they have to film as they can’t have parents on site for them due to past fights breaking out), anything else they need me to do.

I don’t see the school as the issue. The teachers are fantastic. My children would never fail there as quite frankly, we wouldn’t allow it. But we are supportive parents. Not all children have that.

We also don’t have a choice where we live. There are no better schools. My husband works for the LA, he knows the ins and outs of all of them in great detail. So we make the best of it by engaging with teachers, volunteering in the school to help staff try and get more parents engaged. I’ve been trying to start a PTA since dd started there in year 1. She’s now year 6 and we are finally a little band of 5 parents.

The school just got a “good” from ofsted for the first time in 25 years thanks to the wonderful head who started at the same time as dd did.

There will be some amazing children going there, naturally bright, diligent, great personalities concerned about the world around them, good friends.

Let's check how many of them are living in poverty with a single mum, or are from Poland, Syria, or Ukraine...

If you want a CEO, you'll need to go private

Alternatively, some comprehensive schools are likely to produce more CEOs than seom grammar schools

You forgot about refugees. They were not aspiring to leave their country so a different demographic.

It's not about race either. Ukrainians are not brown, Syrians can be white or SW Asian etc. It doesn't matter if parents value education.

When I took my daughter for her 11+ exam, there were a few children in the queue with parents holding 11+ practice books in front of them, barking at them to answer questions. Christ, if they were doing that, 15 mins before an exam, can you imagine the structure at home?

My dd was tutored in year 5, one session for an hour a week.

Only because, I did the 11+ myself. I know what an absolute head fuck non verbal reasoning is in particular. I opened up dds practice book and I could have cried! I went to a school in a area where there are 7 grammar schools, so we did the prep at school as eveyone took the 11+ (or 12+ as it was in my day, but same same). Dd didn’t have that, so we had to do it at home/tutoring.

Lots of people say you shouldn’t tutor children at all. It would take one heck of a genuis child to go into an 11+ exam and look at a non verbal paper and know what the fuck to do. Or the verbal and maths. Especially when they are from a school outside of an gramma area so they have absolutely no prep in school for what it entails. Adults would be confused as hell faced with that too.

Tutoring just enables someone who knows what they are doing to explain HOW to do the 11+ questions.

I've seen queues around HBS many times, the parents must all have been investment bankers but many of them looked like Uber drivers - I'm sure they were just pretending to fool MN users.

if parents value education

Parents or families who value education do not equal to the 11+ exams or selective schools, or a strict tutoring regime spanning years.

Some families value education but oppose early-stage educational segregation (as mentioned by one of the posters above). Some family glue education but believe in education within an environment that includes a full range of abilities, reflecting the real world.

In the queue there must be a mumsnet poster out there who works as an Uber driver, happens to be a single mum, has experienced poverty, yet still manages to send her daughter to a private prep school after years of dedicated tutoring!

Thanks Cap.

Get a life 😂

You don't have a job?
I simply can geg how parents spend hours in their childrens' schools.

Just any.

I'm reporting you for personal attacks.

The test should be an option to all bright children. Not only the tutored children.

I work 2 days a week at the moment (getting over a pretty spectacular health issue). The rest of the time I walk my dog and volunteer at the school. Or sit on my arse drinking tea.

@Mydogisamassivetwat 100% agree with that. I cannot solve absolutely all of the VR/maths questions for a superselective, even my engineer husband finds some of them challenging. Just imagine what a 10 y.o. has to suffer in order to get in. I suspect it has become much worse in the last 10 years due to the overtutoring approach of some parents and the booming tutoring business - the exams have become even harder, more questions in less time and even an average degree-educated adult would find them quite hard. The consequences are that children are made to suffer even more due to overtutoring as they don't teach this stuff at state schools.

It is an option for all children. Anyone can do the 11+, tutored or not.

Why wouldn’t it be? You don’t have to pay for a tutor. You can choose to teach them how to answer the questions yourself at home. You don’t even have to buy books, you can get them off the internet.

My point is, you can’t just turn up for the 11+ with no prep at all. You need someone to tell you how to do the papers. Could be a parent, could be anyone. The questions are very different to what most children are used to.

We chose weekly tutoring (an hour a week in a group of 4) due to the health issues I had at the time. We felt it was best for dd to have outside imput. She loved the prep work so did a lot at home with dh too, but he was drowning having to do everything while I was ill, so it wasn’t fair to put it all on his shoulders.

I’ve said before-I can look at a reception class and predict with maybe 90% accuracy who will pass the 11+. There will always be exceptions either way, but not many.

According to some of the posters above, you simply lack brainpower.

A lot of the Uber drivers with kids at grammar schools also have alternative day jobs you know. That is the way they are inclined, hard work all the way, provide for your families etc.
Now why exactly is that a problem?
Typical British rhetoric - invite Indian doctors and nurses to graft on your NHS because you cannot organise it yourself but if they then want to send their kids to a grammar school it is suddenly a problem? Because it is all too aspirational. Good enough to look after your elderly and pay shed loads of tax, but not good enough to get an educational choice for their own DCs. What a pile of tosh.

Nice.