Ask Me Anything: Secondary English Examiner, Teacher and Tutor

[TimothyLunnTutoring]

Hi everyone!

I'm an English examiner, teacher of 12 years including time at nationally leading independent schools, and tutor for GCSE and A Level English Literature and Language.

One of my clients — a parent I tutor for — suggested posting on Mumsnet. She said advice from someone who's sat on both sides of the exam (teaching it and marking it) might be genuinely useful for other parents trying to help their children through 11+, 13+, GCSEs and A Levels.

Please ask away — happy to give guidance on anything exam-related or general parenting support in relation to the exams and subjects mentioned above.

I'll be checking in periodically over the weekend, so will reply as and when I can!

Please can you provide guidance on what a child in Year 7 should do to assist them with the transition from KS2 to KS3 - KS3 is more analytical in language and structure which was not touched in KS2.

I completely understand where you're coming from.

KS2 features a lot of shorter comprehension, whilst KS3 requires students to begin to write paragraphs and essays.

I would leave structure to one side; analysing structure is difficult without the teacher's guidance in lessons.

As for analysing language, I would suggest two things. The first is to use writing frames to help your child structure their response. Point Evidence Explanation was used for a long time; schools tend to use What How Why now to help their students structure these longer responses.

I also think sentence stems/starters are helpful to get students to begin to write longer responses analysing language (and eventually structure). With sentence starters, students already have part of the sentence written and simply fill in the blanks.

Some teachers don't like this strategy because they feel that students should develop more independence, but I feel that comes with time. They need to start somewhere.

In terms of the actual nuts and bolts of analysing language, I always, always start by teaching my students how to analyse connotations. We look at a quotation, narrow it down to a key word, then think 'Why this word and not another?'. By identifying three separate connotations - or meanings - of that particular word, they can begin to think about a writer's choices.

In brief, paragraph structures like PEA, sentence starters, and asking them 'Why did the writer choose this word and not another one?' is a good start.

This is hard to support at home, I should say! Reading support for example is much easier. If the teacher could share any sentence stems and paragraph structures they use in class, that might help.

Thank you for the informative answer.

Realistically, what are the chances of a just-slightly-above-average academically pupil to pass the 11+? Especially, if the plan is to be tutored at home with relevant workbooks/ online resources after starting year five? Thanks!

A pleasure! I think it's hard to know how to support at secondary school.

I'm going to link a blog post by Andrew Atherton that I found helpful. I have no links or affiliation with Andrew; I read his book a while ago. It is popular with English teachers.

This post explains how we try to teach analytical writing at KS3/KS4:

https://codexterous.home.blog/2021/04/11/the-what-how-why-of-whw-introducing-and-using-what-how-why/

I'm hoping I'm allowed to post links on Mumsnet!

Hi there!

If you start in Year 5, that gives plenty of time. Well done for getting ahead of the curve. The panic sets in when the preparation starts at the last minute. Completely possible.

There are so many resources available to you on Amazon; look into Atom Learning online.

The child's attitude towards learning is one of the biggest factors here. Students that are self-driven and willing to work hard can make huge amounts of progress, despite underlying ability. The same is true at GCSE and A-Level.

Try to make the tutoring sessions as enjoyable as possible, as opposed to more work after school or on the weekend. Something they could look forward to. Perhaps a reward during the session or afterwards. Learning environment matters as much as the learning itself.

When you say 'tutored', do you mean you would sit down with them and work through resources? Or hire a tutor to come to your house? Either approach can work. Sometimes, students find it easier to work with a tutor. I know teachers that have still hired tutors despite knowing the ins and outs of the 11+ , simply because their son or daughter still sees them as mum or dad. Equally, some children are quite happy to work with a parent.

You could also consider group classes for tutoring in your area.

In brief, yes, especially given your time frame.

Thank you! That’s really helpful @TimothyLunnTutoring

No worries at all - and I wish you the best of luck with it. I appreciate how stressful 11+ can be. You're doing all the right things.

In recent years, I have noticed an increasing number of MN threads started by parents with children, usually in a Grammar or Independent setting, who have achieved high GCSE grades (all 8-9) with the exception of EngLang and/or EngLit (say grades 4-6). What factors do you think are at play here?

Oh that's a good one!

I've worked with some truly incredible teachers putting in 60-70+ hour weeks during term to try and get their exam classes over the line. I think there must be a few factors at play.

Firstly, assuming we're talking about the GCSE (not IGCSE) - the exams are very hard. English has a very low grade 9 percentage compared to other subjects like History, Geography or Science. You can see this here: https://www.bstubbs.co.uk/gcse.htm

English Language has 2.2% of grades nationally achieving grade 9, with 819199 entries. History has 5.8% of grades nationally achieving grade 9, with 289677 entries.

Partly you might explain this away because History is an optional subject, so students choose to take it who are good at it, whilst in English, everyone has to take it, so the spread of grades is greater. But even Maths has 3.4% of grades nationally getting a 9, with 851268 entries, so I don't quite buy this.

I think partly then it's due to the reforms in 2013-2014 where the government decided to deliberately make English and Maths hard, because there was the perception they had become too easy.

Then you have reading habits. The PISA scores have come out recently, which show England is doing fairly well compared to other countries when it comes to reading. Nonetheless, there are a lot of studies showing that reading - especially of long texts - is in decline. You can pin this variously on modern life, social media, videogames, Youtube, homework, parents working longer hours etc. But what is undeniable is that reading is on a downward trend - and to do well in English, you do need to be reading regularly, even if that's the newspaper, a popular science book or a biography of a cricketer, and not War and Peace!

Finally, you have the marking. I'll link an article below, but the marking of English exams is highly variable. You would expect this with an interpretive subject, but nonetheless, the margin of error is still very high (compared to say Physics)

https://mrsalles.substack.com/p/how-to-write-grade-9-essay-including

There are other factors too, but these are the ones that come to mind. I would say that nobody (schools, teachers, students or parents) are to blame here - it's a really complex web of politics and culture.