11+ mocks - any miracle stories?!

[AskTony]

Hi,

Feeling bad for DS at the moment. He sat his first mock 11+ at the weekend and scored around 55%. He is one of the top of his class in school and always does well with any bits of preparation we do at home and he thought he'd done ok so this came as a bit of a shock. I've not told him his score as I know he'll be upset and demotivated.

I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has any positive stories of poor mock performance but then doing well in the real thing? I've looked through his answers and a lot of them are what look like silly mistakes. There were only a handful that I thought were genuinely too hard for him or covered topics he hasn't covered in great depth yet.

I don't want a debate on grammar schools. I hate the system but I am from this area, my family are here and it's just where we live and something we're automatically part of. Almost every child at his school sits the exam and his friends are on track to do well and more than anything he wants to be at the same school as them. We do one hour with a tutor and bits at home. More tuition is not an option, either money-wise or wellbeing wise for DS!

The exam is September. Just feels like a long 3-4 months of dredging ourselves through somethign which we may already have a sign isn't going to be worth it.

Thank you :)

I wouldnt be disheartened yet. A lot can change in 3 months. It's a struggle to get kids to review their work. Encourage him to read through his answers and spot silly mistakes himself. Tell him how many there are so that finding them becomes a 'fun' puzzle. Then have a chat with him that 10 silly mistakes means 10 marks lost.

The mock has shown you which questions were too hard for him, so have the tutor focus on those for a bit. Maybe also take him to see some other schools just in case. I'd be surprised if all his friends get into the grammar school and none go elsewhere.

All the best to him.

You still have time. I would spend some time analysing how he lost marks. Often at this time it’s about speed - they need practice to get faster and get through the full paper. It sounds like perhaps he got through the questions but made some mistakes. Is this because he was rushing? Or can you identify what sort of question he’s getting wrong? My recommendation is practice practice practice. After each practice - analyse where and why he’s losing marks.

Thank you @UmmH and @Pineapple32 for your replies.

I like the idea of getting him to find the ones he got wrong and I'm certain he would spot them straight away. That would hopefully help him think more about reading the questions carefully - I definitely think there was a large element of rushing and missing the smaller details in things that were being asked.

Agree also that practising will help, and that is what we intend to do now for the last few months. The fact that he's usually very good at maths gives me some hope that he'll pick the harder topics up fairly quickly. There are definitely some he hasn't covered yet with his tutor in any detail so hopefully those will be easy marks for him to pick up once he's gone through those.

We are lucky in that we have two other decent enough schools nearby and of course, you are right in that most of his classmates will go to those and not get into the grammar. He's just currently hearing lots of stories of high mock scores so it's easy to get carried away and assume these children will pass!

We have another mock in a few weeks' time so we'll see how he gets on then!

Hi my daughter sat 11+ last September we did test booklets and mock tests at home we didn’t use a tutor she’s very bright and above average in all areas but she found some test papers we have challenging we encouraged her to re look at the incorrect ones most times she could see her mistake when given unlimited time. I think it’s timing the test that makes them seem harder adds pressure but we wanted to practice timing though as it’s very strict on the day. We did also get her going back to check odd questions she wasn’t sure of at the end but on the day this didn’t help as each of the 4 sections are timed individually not as a whole test like we’d though

@MyDenimBee yes the time pressure definitely makes it harder! We've done lots of 10 minute tests but never more than that and to be honest we've never been bothered with the time, we've just been focussing more on learning methods, concepts, vocab, etc than speed. Maybe now is the time to start focussing on working quickly!

I went through a bit of it with him this evening and he saw his mistakes straight away on all but three of the questions! So that gives me some reassurance that it's the technique and timing he needs to work on rather than being too far behind with the actual knowledge. I'll keep hopes up for now!

What area are you in? Personally we didn’t do mocks that early, end of June was the first, then two beginning/end of the summer holidays. I wouldn’t worry too much for now.

Agree you need to work on speed but also stamina to concentrate for longer periods. As well as 10 min books, I got a set of practice exam papers but sliced them up to better replicate the Trafford test eg 1/2 a paper of maths (20 mins), 1 x 15 min comprehension. I’d be looking into your exam format in detail and try to replicate practice at home as much as possible.

Also look if there is a particular subject he is dropping marks. Comprehension was something I worked on in more detail, as I realised he was trying pick out answers and he personally suited reading the whole text first. He got a lot of questions wrong assuming the witch in the text was nasty! The comprehension was actually about a kind and helpful witch! That was such a useful example which led us to change approach and then raise his comprehension scores from 50% to near 90%!

Good luck, I know how stressful it is, but deep breaths!

Thanks @yoshiblue . We are also in Trafford! That's a really good idea about slicing up the practice papers to be more like the local format (which I assume the mock he sat was set up to be like - it was Newell which I gather is pretty close to the real thing). And good point on the stamina and concentration - if I think about it it's not often at all that children of this age have to sit in silence and concentrate on one thing for 2 hours is it, so it's definitely something else for him to get used to.

He dropped most marks in maths and NVR which are usually his strong points - really silly things to get wrong too which ties in with your point on keeping concentration. Comprehension was also pretty low but that's his weakest point anyway so that wasn't as surprising. Will try some different techniques on that one too - in the mock he only had 10 minutes to read the entire text and answer 12 questions so we definitely need to work on speed and skim reading there!

I almost feel as though the exam techniques are harder to get right than the actual knowledge!

Hello from Trafford then! Having got a child with ADHD and Autism through the exam, I’ve tried every technique in the book 😭

The NVR is the hardest, I think they were bursts of 8 questions in 3 mins, which is quite frankly ridiculous! We were working more on 10 questions in 5 mins. I remember he wasn’t solidly getting to the end of all the 10 min NVR tests too.

My DS passed comfortably, and I think it’s worth remembering they don’t have to be really strong in all subjects.

Depending on your location, I’d suggest ticking for both Urmston and Stretford too. The standardised scores are a little lower.

Could you please give more details on how you helped your child with comprehension. My DD is struggling with that at the moment scoring 50%

@Alleojam

Watch these YouTube videos for some more information. There are actually so many resources on there for 11+. I’d highly recommend Top Dog Tutoring for specific NVR topics. My son liked to watch these in the Summer holidays.

X

Urrgh, Mumsnet are stripping the You Tube links out!

Look up ‘Top Dog Tutoring 11+ Reading Comprehension’ and ‘The 11+ Tutors in Essex’ is the other channel.

Thank you 🙏 🙏

My kid failed every "formal" mock pre 11+. She passed the actual exam with points to spare. Currently doing GCSEs with expected grades of 7-9s. Never struggle in a grammar school, always good grades. Hope this gives you hope .. I could have done reading a story like this 5 years ago! Good luck

In Kent, most years you only need 55-60% to pass. Did you not get given a standardised score and some context? Anyway, mocks are there for your child to learn from. If it was so easy that all kids passed first time, no one would need to do mocks! Help them learn from their mistakes and move on. Good luck

Please also remind your child not to leave blank answers! In Trafford, it is multiple choice with no penalty for an incorrect answer - so if they are running short of time - guess!!!! There is a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right.
Obviously preferable to consider and answer each question within the time but the NVR especially is tough and as noted above, very time constrained. The number of children leaving blank answers is frightening and you can’t return to a section once finished.
Good luck!

With a formal mock test, you should know more than just % of correct answer, how's the ranking ? The organisation should give you idea how likely your son will get into grammar school. Sometimes, the organisation just set the questions too difficult / too tricky, and it is not necessary to have 80% correct to define a pass.

In the next few months, there are a few things needing to be seriously tackled excluding their academic capability.

1. Silly mistakes
2. Mental resilience
3. Speed

The 3rd one is the least of a problem, but need to make sure what they put down are correct. 100% correctness of 85% completion is better than 80% of 100%.

Silly mistakes would need to be managed by reading carefully and do their workings.

Mental resilience is the trickiest, particularly because it's different for each child. They can't be overly confident neither shall they be too nervous or scared.

If you manage these and with some luck, you don't need miracles as he's very capable of as you describe. He just needs to focusing on showing his true ability.

I am an 11+ tutor.
I certainly wouldn't give up now.

3-4 months is a huge amount of time to do prep.
You don't say if he is doing any prep yet, if not, then you do need to plan to do it.
Clever kids who should be in the grammar school can fail without prep because of:

1. tricks in the questions which they are not expecting, so the question mixes cm and m for example. This is just about doing more practice, and reading the question carefully.
2. not expecting questions to be 2 or 3 step questions especially in maths. In order to work out the answer you have to work out something else first.
3. exam papers with mix of topics. In school you tend to focus on one maths topic at a time. Here you have to be ready to jump from one to another
4. exam techniques - stuck? Give it your best shot and move on. Sensible guess and keep going. Use mutiple choice answers to benefit you. Not sure? read it again, underline key words, circle key numbers. Look for patterns and clues. They never tell you anything accidentally, if they say it is a regular hexagon, then that matters, both that it is regular (all sides and angles even) and that it has 6 sides
5. correct maths terms with no explanation - product, sum, factor, prime, adjacent, all shape terms for 2D and 3D shapes etc
6. some topics or things they don't do in school. One or two maths questions and many VR and all the NVR are new, not necessarily hard, just needs some practice.
7. timing. Many kids are not used to working under time pressure. They have to concentrate and keep going!

So get hold of the correct practice books for your area and do loads of practice in the next 3 months. If he is regularly top of his class, and is working at greater depth in Maths and English, he should be fine.
Good Luck!

for timed practice, do 30 minutes at a time. If you have the 10 minute books, use them, but do 3 together. At this stage you need to build up that longer concentration.
Typically in maths, NVR and VR questions allow 30 seconds per question.
Some practice books allow less or more than that, but that seems to be the rule for the exam, so that gives you some idea of speed.
Tests differ, and I am not your area, but some tests have 'short' maths questions and then 'long' maths questions. The short fit into the 30 seconds pattern, the long ones don't.

Great tips thanks

Dd got very low marks in maths and nvr in her earlier mock tests. Her tutor started in February which for her was far too early and we nearly pulled her out of tutoring as a result. By June she was scraping a pass. She ended up passing maths, doing better than expected in reasoning, and acing the English, and overall got a super selective mark (Kent test). We focused on making sure she was solid in enough areas. By this point she was never going to get the hardest questions right. She's just not a mathematician. We also found that a lot of the practice papers from her tutor were much harder than the Bond papers, so over the summer we focused on the Bond books. That might seem counterintuitive but it gave her the confidence she needed to stay focused rather than panicking before she'd even opened the paper. She sort of found her stride, did what she needed to do, and got to a point by mid August where she was feeling ready for the mid September test.

At this point I spoke to my DS that sitting the mock is just to get used to what the test looks like. There is a chance that they’ve not covered all the areas presented in the test.

Its the first one and I told my DS that he absolutely wouldn’t pass and its not about passing it’s about familiarity with the test and the timings.

There is still plenty of time.

Sorry, been away. Thanks everyone for all of your encouraging responses! I do feel a lot better now and having looked over his answers with him feel confident it's the techniques he needs to work on (pretty much all areas of technique!) more than anything so your suggestions have all been really helpful. I think he struggled with grasping how much time he had too - he said he didn't find working at speed a problem but in actual fact I think he panicked and missed final steps of the multi-part maths questions etc. And despite being good at actually 'doing' maths, there is some maths terminology he isn't so hot on (one question was about 'order of symmetry' which was a phrase he was unfamiliar with - once I explained the concept it was obviously an easy question to answer). So I might make him some maths terminology 'flash cards' to practice over the next few months too!

3.5 months to go and counting them down right now!

Just had an underwhelming score in his mock. His tutor was very surprised. She said he didn't do any of the techniques taught in class 😔

She thinks this is a good thing and can be fixable. Just totally over this