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.

I have no problem solving NVR or VR. It is just a form of language like Wordle or Sudoku or Crosswords. It is really not that big a deal. Engage with it and you will quickly understand it.

Yes. Of course it is. In the best of worlds.

In real life the tutored children (with parents able to pay a tutor or parents well educated themselves to tutor) fill the grammar schools.

Surprised to hear that, I thought that it was well known that the UK education system and red brick universities weren't what they once were. Maybe it's a legacy thing, or people are re-thinking the US at the moment.

My parents live in Bucks and are well aware (if a little behind the times) of 11+. Their cleaner was called into the nice little local village school to ask if she had considered the 11+ for her bright 8/9 yr old. My parents offered to pay for tutoring and this was declined because the child “shouldn’t need to work” to pass. The lovely form tutor did a bit of unofficial extra work but there was zero support from her family and the child was just under the pass mark. The school suggested appealing, but this was declined by mum.

Ten years later said child has no A levels and is doing some cash in hand work behind a bar. I am in complete agreement with those who say that families don’t want to participate - lots of people (and I was really impressed with the primary) were trying to help and convince mum that this was a way to open doors but her family could not see that some effort was involved on their part as well.

You can buy the CGP Verbal and Non Verbal books or borrow them and they explain the basis of all of it. The National Curriculum is available online. Schools are forever trying to get parents to understand and engage, for a reason. Once you understand properly what is being taught, you can reinforce this at home. Every parent is in theory a child’s prime teacher. The resistance and insistence on this thread about how difficult NVR is for 10 year olds is a prime example of lack of engagement with one book that pretty much explains it all. There is no way an engineer cannot get their head around that in a few hours, if they bothered to try.

In the ideal world all of the 11+ topics, including VR, should be covered and taught in a state primary, including a daily, voluntary homework. That would give all of the children equal chances. In my son's state school only around 1/3 of the curriculum is covered, just a bare minimum that i suspect they can escape with. And it is a 'Good' school. How is this a fair system?

And what is the problem with that?

It isn’t my problem if other parents don’t want to spend time helping their children, or can’t for some reason. I’m afraid I can’t care about everyone else’s children.

Life isn’t a race to the bottom.

There was no way my child was attending a secondary where we live. Especially not with the jobs dh and I so in the area and what we know and see. The house was already on the market prior to her passing the 11+ just incase. If she hasn’t passed, we would have taken a massive financial hit and moved to a small flat somewhere with better secondary schools.

It was different this year with VAT leading to an immediate spike in competition for grammar places. I know of many DC who were consistently top of the class at their prep centres/superselective feeder preps/have teacher mums who know the system through and through and preped rigorously/have siblings at schools so all knowledge needed etc - they failed to get top grammar places despite 100% certainty the year before. It's not that they're all thick all of a sudden - they got academic scholarships at top 10 schools like St Paul's, City etc.

@carcassonne1 - that was a political decision made years ago. Those in charge hate grammars so they are not going to introduce it again. They have inadvertently built a money based system where people buy a private education or a catchment school and kids are trapped in poverty. All because they do not want their little darling to be pressured until 15/16.
When the reality is that GCSE revision requires quiet work spaces and is a test of memory and favours the privileged kids even more.
Once upon a time, at least grammar tests were largely IQ based, not money based. Labour destroyed that and trapped a whole lot of poor people in shitty areas with no way of getting out.

It’s not. But not all children who do the 11+ go to school in grammar areas. So it wouldn’t help them all.

I did, but that was 30 odd years ago. No one I knew was tutored for the 12+, as we did then, we even did the mock exams and actual 12+ exam in the school dinner hall. The 12+ was just what eveyone did. It wasn’t really an opt in thing. There was and still are, about 7 Grammar schools in that area, all in the same town. So it was just the thing there, although, I do know it’s now 11+ there as they no longer go up to year 7 in primary as I did as a child.

It's not an issue for your kid's future. I get that part.

they failed to get top grammar places despite 100% certainty the year before.

Perhaps not enough "brain power"

The child might have ended up attending university and securing a middle-class job if he had been in a comprehensive school area without grammar schools, instead of attending a secondary modern.

Sounds like the child just had shit, uninterested parents though. Most children need support and encouragement at home to so well. From that snippet, it sounds like that child has neither. Turning down someone offering to pay for tutoring and not appealing a school place is fucking madness. However, the families I know would probably do the same.

Some families are actually a hinderance to their children.

Some families are actually a hinderance to their children.

Though, why would anyone want to add an additional hurdle at age 11?

There is no political will to reintroduce the 11 plus more widely again anyway. Powers to be want people to pay stamp duty twice to cash in on that demographic of supposedly middle class parents now priced out of private education due to VAT. It is a nice little money spinner for them.

The only thing parent groups can do is push for existing grammar schools to up PAN numbers.
Parents just won against Cranbrook and they need to reintroduce 30 more day places at Year 9 I think.
This is the reality on the ground. Parent groups will be pushing and campaigning for PAN increases in the top comprehensives and grammar schools.

Because some of us live in awful areas with shit schools and we don’t want to see our children dragged down by the behaviour of others. The secondary school my daughter would have gone to here is rife with trouble (we would have taken a financial hit and moved). Behaviour issues there are astounding - unfortunately, due to dh job, he knows the ins and outs of it all. There is little room for education when teachers are constantly dealing with behaviour issues and getting verbally attacked.

Children who throw chairs at teachers, call them cunts and start fires in classrooms don’t generally get in to grammar schools.

Because parents want more for their children than sh*tty schools. UK has way too many really bad schools.

The government could have generated significantly more revenue by introducing a levy on the tutoring business, as well as taxes or fees for grammar schools and popular comprehensive schools.

@Mydogisamassivetwat - I think in the future parents trapped into shitty schools and areas who cannot afford to move but have strong educational values may just sign up to online schooling, which is far cheaper than traditional forms of private education. It is far from ideal but will be a necessary go to for some.

Online tutoring businesses do pay tax and those not in partnerships do have to pay VAT. But all you do by overtaxing is educated parents to work less themselves and fill in the gaps themselves, for free,
This whole drive to dumb down and restrict aspiration at every turn is really really not working for this country, whatsoever.

Yep.

Two parents in DDs year are going to home educate and/or sign up to internet schooling.

There are a few secondary schools here, none of them are good, but the children were we live, who all tend to go to the same school, always get allocated the really dire one down the road, regardless of other preferences.

These other parents aren’t in the position to move and will not hear of sending their children. They are appealing the other schools they put down on the form, but everyone does so they might not be lucky.

Much of the tutoring industry currently does not pay VAT. Additionally, if certain middle-class parents insist on grammar schools, a levy/tuitiom fee could be introduced. This would allow them access while providing the government with funding to enhance resources in comprehensive schools.

It’s not all about funding.

You can fund a school all you like. It’s the demographic of people who live in the area that dictate what a school is like. My husband works in that sector. Funding is not the issue.