Help protect children from gaming harms.

Take our survey

Please or to access all these features

Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

11+ preparation fatigue and still below pass mark, keep pushing or ease off?

27 replies

Tittis · 27/05/2026 21:43

My DC is preparing for 11+ with the right attitude and is a capable child. We are not pushing preparation very hard but we are not doing a light preparation either and we can see she is starting to be very tired of it now. We are worried as, although we are seeing a good improvement in her knowledge overall and a decrease of silly errors across both math and English, she is still not where the pass mark is. She is usually somewhere around 60/70% and around 100 atom sas. We have been told she should be at 80% and atom score 120 to have a chance to pass and we are just not getting there. We always thought it was a matter of time but now loosing hope as we are so close to the exam. I would love to hear thoughts or experiences from parents who has a similar situation.
I am not even sure if it’s better at this point to give it a good push as we are almost done or would be better to let it go a bit and see how her brain respond. Thank you

OP posts:
MongooseOUT · 26/06/2026 22:40

@Tittis what did you decide on? I might pm you if ok

swdd · 27/06/2026 12:42

Tittis · 27/05/2026 21:51

year 5 (will do exam in the coming autumn).
we are trying private schools but very competitive ones.
we are at state school and teacher feedback has always been great with results above target but honestly it’s all very generic in that school

I do not believe independent schools set a fixed “pass mark”. Remind you that the interview and school reports also form critical parts of their selection process. Besides, you cannot fully trust third-party platforms such as Atom and their so-called pass marks. This can be a good benchmark, but don't take it too literally or seriously.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread