Advice on 11+ preparation materials, mocks and past papers

[Hullopalloo]

Hi all,

We are going to try and see whether we can attempt the 11+/some of the local indies. It's such a long shot i know - no finances to tutor - currently working through Atom plus some CGP books.

Target schools - NLCS, South Hampstead, Habs (Elstree) and HBS

Questions for any seasoned parents :

1. which boards should i be aiming for here when im purchasing books. It's not clear on the website whether its GL or CEM
2. should i be booking into doing timed mocks? - another cost
3. where can i purchase past exam papers for any of the above

bump!

There are a lot of second hand but either unused or largely-unused 11+ books on Vinted. For brand new, Amazon or somewhere like TG Jones.

PM me

Habs now uses Quest for its assessments, which is the assessment arm of Atom. So Atom should be your main focus for their test.

We used the South West Herts Consortium test as our “mock” (though we did plan on including one of the schools on our state application form). However it is a paper based non adaptive test so not entirely a dry run for the indies.

We used a tutor and asked if we should do a paid mock and she didn’t think it was necessary and just said to do lots of times tests at home.

@BarqsHasBite much appreciated, did you feel it was useful having a tutor? I've been told mixed things, some say they have access to more past exam papers, others saying im too late anyway so its money down the drain as good ones will all be booked up.

I find all this bizarre I'm not going to lie.

I did the 11+ when I was younger. They gave one practice paper to me the day before, no prep at the school I was at because I was moving from a non grammar school area (across the whole country) so my primary just didn't do it.

I was baffled to find out when I started that some of my peers had received tutoring to prepare. There were some who felt themselves they'd only got in because of the tutoring and it was them who struggled and weren't suited to the really academic atmosphere. Not sure where you live but it wasn't like a complete hard cut off where we were, there was still a very academic "non grammar" which kids were assigned to next. Just rather than taking 11 GCSEs (not kidding) it was more like 9.

With kindness, just a thought, fair enough to give them some chances to practice in a book but if they need tutoring or a lot of support, this might not be the school for them?

If you want a steer on exam boards, it is safest to assume GL style. That will cover most of what they are likely to face, especially for the schools you’ve listed. A practical way to check is to try a few mock papers yourself. You will quickly get a feel for the style and level.

Timed mocks are useful, but you do not have to rely on paid ones. Booking in for grammar school entrance tests can give good exam practice under pressure, and those are often free. It helps children get used to the environment without adding extra cost.

South Hampstead is part of the London 11+ Consortium. The child sits one test, and the results are shared across the group of schools, which simplifies the process a bit.

For North London Collegiate, the focus is on Maths and English only, so preparation can be more targeted there.

@Lemonthyme i find it strange as well but it does seem like everyone is tutoring in North London.

@schoolprepper very helpful, thank you

Honestly, I found it invaluable. For the NVR and the VR you do need to be taught how to tackle these questions. I showed some of the NVR questions to my DSis, DBiL and uncle - between us we have four Oxbridge degrees (including engineering and physics) and my uncle is a retired physics professor. There were questions none of us could do, but my DCs could having been taught how to do them! They’re like cryptic crosswords - you need to understand the rules of how to tackle them.

An experienced tutor can also teach wider exam technique which is invaluable. Eg for adaptive online tests it’s really important to spend time getting the first 10 questions right as this affects the adaptive algorithm which then determines the highest score you can achieve. This is more important than trying to complete the test.

Whereas for an old school paper test it’s important to try to complete the test, and you can skip harder questions and go back to those at the end.

Also, my son was awarded an academic scholarship and while he’s bright and capable I doubt that would have been the case without our tutor.

There will always be people who say “well if you need to tutor lots then it’s not the right school for your child” but that’s just not true for many. Frustratingly most kids are tutored which must drive the overall standard up. So it’s a gamble for your child to be one of the few who isn’t.

And the schools you are targeting are amongst the most competitive/hardest to get in (sorry!).

However, there are families who get offers from good schools without formal tutoring so I’m not saying it’s an absolute necessity, just that I do think it’s a good idea. If you’re not using a tutor then as a parent you’re going to have to do a certain amount of tutoring yourself so you’ll need to understand how to tackle the tricky questions and exam technique for the different tests.

I don’t think you’ve left it too late at all. The Atom platform offers tutoring so that would be one option or there are crammers that run during the summer holidays and probably May half term.

If you pm me I can send details of our tutor if you don’t mind remote tutoring. I don’t know if she has any availability though.

Good luck!

PS I don’t think access to past papers is a biggie. I’m pretty sure schools don’t generally make their own past papers available. So all you can do is practice on the commercially available test papers.

Exam boards: South Hampstead and Habs are both Quest Assessments (not GL/CEM). They’re all based on KS2 though so coverage is similar. HBS is GL. NLCS use their own papers, maths and English only (samples are available on their website).

Timed mocks: Definitely useful, either timed tests at home or in-person mocks if you want to emulate the real thing. Speed can make a big difference on the day and often the challenge is completing the tests as much as knowing the answer.

Bear in mind Quest is adaptive so it’s more about the difficulty level you reach rather than having a set number of questions to answer. So it’s worth practising adaptive tests too, as there’s a technique to learn here.

Past papers: There are some available from the schools, and lots of free ones available online. (If you add .com to my username and check out the resources – there are 453 there that you can filter by subject etc.)

In addition to the above, it’s worth focusing on VR and NVR practice specifically. These take time to learn the approach, and are a lot more straightforward when you’ve got that experience.

Good luck!

for the target schools you a going for, try ExamPaperPlus for prep materials they can advise your on specific products.

Nlcs has quite a few past papers online, try and diff them out as they are much tougher than GL testing

the maths in particular has some tricky questions at the end much like JMC type puzzle questions

@heykitsu i looked up timed mocks and there seem ones through the 11 plus forum, but are there more for london that people know about?

ExamPaperPlus offers in person mocks for lots schools. These are very good simulations of the real test. Best done closer to the exams though

I run a summer booster in Islington and we do the mocks

I hate to ask, but if there are no finances to tutor how are you going to afford the fees?

@Wonderknicks so DD is already in an independent but looking to apply to others during the 11plus - fees wipe me out each month so i cant afford to commit to tuition regularly so i wanted to see whether we could do it at home. We still have our existing school.

Honestly North London does seem very tutor-heavy now, even for really bright kids. We couldn’t justify loads of tuition either so ended up doing a mix of books, timed practice and Ace11Plus at home instead - the diagnostics/weak topic tracking helped quite a lot because it stopped us wasting time on areas they already understood. Would recommend

I'd definitely check each school's admissions page rather than buying lots of GL or CEM books straight away. Quite a few schools have moved away from those formats, so it's worth making sure you're practising the right style of questions.
If money is tight, I'd prioritise CGP books and the familiarisation materials on the schools' websites over buying loads of different resources. Those will give you a good foundation.
I do think one or two mock exams are worth it if you can stretch to them. You don't need loads, but sitting a timed paper in an unfamiliar setting can be really useful, and the feedback often shows you where to focus next.
Unfortunately, for schools like HBS, NLCS and Habs, you generally won't find official past papers for sale. Most independent schools don't release them, so you're usually relying on sample papers and good-quality practice materials instead.
Good luck! It sounds like you've already got a sensible approach with Atom and CGP.

Anyone here sitting the ISEB for London Indies?

I’m a bit confused by my experience of the online preparation platforms.

I signed up to Bond Online Premium Plus, as my understanding was that because Century is the platform behind both BOPP and ISEB, the mock tests would be closest to the real thing.

But we’ve immediately run into an issue: the comprehensions that come up for the English ISEB mocks are always exactly the same passages (with different questions but the passages are the same).

It’s so bizarre. I wrote to them and checked that this wasn’t a glitch, but they confirmed it’s true that the same passages will always come up (something about a town suffering from a heatwave, then something about a woman walking a dog.)! It’s so weird.

In addition to that, they only give you a ‘Stanine score’, which is pretty useless as at the top end required to get into the ultra competitive schools presumably eventually everyone will be in the ‘9th stanine’. Also it doesn’t let you review the wrong answers.

I would just go to Atom, which is super expensive as well of course, but the format seems to be slightly different and there are some areas (like overly complex grammatical terms) that apparently don’t feature on the real ISEB.

Am I missing something? Is there a way of either fixing the repetitive comprehension glitch, or getting more detailed information on errors/ performance?