11 Plus Exams Forum

Dear Parents
Congrats to all super mums and dads who prepared kids for 11plus.i m looking for a bit of guidence from you all to use it for my son who is in year 4.what would you recommend DIY or group tutions /1_2_1tutions.
I know three kids one who did 1_2_1tutions,other DIY and third group tution ,all of them have similar scores.
i completely understand thats each child is different,but what do you all.think....is the way to go?
cheers
pg

Good luck on your journey. My DD did small group tuition 4/5 in classes 1 hr a week for a year then 2 hrs a week. This worked for her as motivation from others, felt more like going to dance or other type of activity class rather than pressure of learning. It's just pd off as got a good score for Southend catchment.

I DIY'd and both my DD and myself enjoyed the journey. We only really started serious work from the Easter before the September's test. She was determined to pass and worked hard and never complained. She got an amazing score, and did herself proud.

I was able to give her my undivided attention, as I'm a Homemaker at present. This worked for us and will work for you too, if you have the time to put in!

Good luck on your journey, wishing you all the very best!

if your son is an extrovert who can hold his own in a group then go for it. A child needs to be a little pushy in a group so that the lessons are not dominated by other children.

DIY would need lots of patience on your part and if both you and your child can work together without stress - it is the best and cheapest way to get your child ready.

If the above two are not suitable, then I would go for 1_2_1 with a recommended tutor.

Hi

First time poster. Have been lurking around for a while and have found out so much since looking at this forum.

I am interested in this post as I am thinking of changing from One to One tuition to a group. The tutor we have doesn't really seem to know very much about the 11 plus so a bit frustrating. DIY tutoring would be too stressful and don't have the patience!

Fun Mum - would be interested to know which tuition agency you are using. Would you mind if I pm'd you as it sounds like the one I am thinking of going to.

Good luck to everyone!

Apologies if this turned up twice. I posted it a few minutes ago but it doesn't seem to be there.

It depends a lot on your child, the quality of the tutor, and your own abilities/patience.

Some kids are going to do well in the exams no matter how they prepare, they just need some kind of practice and familiarisation. I find that the parents of such kids tend to overrate the importance of the tutoring and underrate their child's natural ability in attributing success in exams.

I personally would recommend starting out with home tutoring if you feel able. This is the only way you will get a really good understanding of your child's abilities and where/how they need help. (And if they seem to be doing pretty well, question whether it is really worth the trouble and expense of the a tutor. See other thread on expense!)

Once you know what your child needs to work on you can decide either to focus on those areas yourself, or find a tutor. I think that the main advantage of tutors is that they know the tricks of the trade especially for verbal reasoning. However, the tutoring will probably not be tailored to your child. Even if the tutoring is one-on-one, they tend to have their standard approach. The tutoring class that we were in for a while wasn't even tailored to the exam my daughter was taking – it was a generic approach they used for private exams and grammar exams in other areas also.

Another issue I had with the tutors, both in the class we used, and other tutors that we investigated, was that they themselves were poorly educated and their communications and materials were full of spelling and grammar errors and badly written sentences. I'm sure there are tutors out there that aren't like that, but I didn't come across any unfortunately. I knew from the beginning that we certainly wouldn't rely on them for the English paper! (They didn't really cover that anyways.)

In the end we considered the tutoring classes as useful for an introduction to verbal reasoning, but not for the other sections or even for dealing with overall test taking technique e.g. timing.

We did about six months of weekly tutoring classes and two months at home, but I wish I had done it the other way around as the two months at home were far more valuable and she benefited much more from it.

I also wish that I had started the home tutoring first so I knew what the most beneficial areas to work on would be.

Another thing about tutors is that ours, and some others I'm aware of, end up drilling past questions over and over, getting the kids to memorise them, on the premise that the questions get used over and over again and the kids will be able to just recognise them on sight and know the answers. That's another reason why we moved away from the classes. I do understand that this method is successful, but not everybody wants to use this approach. (I'm not sure this is even applicable in Essex.) I feel that the work we did at home at least was real learning that will benefit her in future years.

Best of luck whatever approach you decide on.

No reason why it has to be 100% one or the other. You could use a tutor AND do some DIY if you're confident enough about the questions yourself. If you can find a tutor who is familiar with the particular exam format you might well pick up some useful information that way which is harder to get as a DIYer.

"I think that the main advantage of tutors is that they know the tricks of the trade especially for verbal reasoning".


If you are DIY'ing for VR I would recommend the 'Bond, How to do VR' book. Work through the book with your DC, and then get lots of practice for the appropriate VR papers for your area (we used GL papers) as well as the Bond VR Book (10 min tests). The only other VR papers we got were freebies from this site! By September my DD was getting 95-98% each time. The more practice they get the more familiar they become with the question types, they get quicker and the score shoots up. My DD at Easter never quite finished the papers, but I used to allow her to finish them, noting how long extra she needed. By September she always finished them and had time to spare.

As they say, practice makes perfect!

If looking for a tutor ask for recommendations. Use a qualified teacher or experienced tutor who is familiar with the exam.

In Essex check that they produce some of their own materials - all the good ones do. There is not enough on the shelves that is specific to Essex.

I am finding the GL Assessment 11+ Explained Verbal Reasoning a great help. I am learning each of the different questions in VR with DS and there are games and things to do for us both.