September 2015 takers?

[theonly1]

Back at it after a year off. I intend to do exactly what I did the 1st time round but adding the slight changes required.

[relaxedMum77]

I totally agree that if heavy tutoring is needed then Grammar school maybe isn't the right option for your DC. It shouldn't matter what the style of test is, or who the Board are setting the questions. Our lives were totally normal.. DS sat a few Bond 10 minute papers during the summer (out of his choice for fun) but nothing that interrupted our summer at all. His lowest score was on the English paper (109) ..which he actually hadn't sat any practice papers at all yet at the end of Year 5 was a 5B so is pretty good and 109 probably not a true reflection of his ability. If they are bright enough to pass, they will! Good luck to All!!

[mystery]

I don't quite understand your post relaxed mum. You say you did bond ten minute papers but that he hadn't done any English practice papers. Did you do practice papers in the other subjects?

Then you say children will pass if they are "bright enough" whatever that is but acknowledge that your son just scraped the English paper despite being "pretty good".

People need to decide for themselves what areas their child might need to do some work in in order to pass or get a superselective score. These other kinds of statement I do not find relaxed as they make people feel their kid is thick if they did some preparation and passed, or stupid if they didn't do any work and failed. Also, some children have not learned as much as they might have done at school for a variety of different reasons.

If you were going to do some work in the summer why did you choose bond ten mins and not the gl practice papers?

For someone wanting to keep their prep to a minimum for 2015 it would make more sense to do some gl practice papers in case it is gl and a little of whatever is considered to be the best practice for c e m to cover any gaps e.g.cloze, vocabulary work, mixed up sentences.

I am sure that one doesn't have to do very much to possibly make quite a big difference.

[salsa]

Spot on Mystery!
I think that parents come to this forum for guidance. They may think that "tutoring" is not needed and do nothing with unexpected results. As you say, some need a high score whether they are aiming for a superselective or are from out of catchment.

I have heard parents say that their children did not need any "tutoring", but they went to a prep school, had 4 papers "homework" at the weekend, did some Bond at home during the week, mock exams and a summer boot camp for good measure!

Tutoring is tutoring whether is being done at home DIY or a tutor is being used. At the end of the day the child is preparing.

[relaxedMum77]

I don't quite understand your post relaxed mum. You say you did bond ten minute papers but that he hadn't done any English practice papers. Did you do practice papers in the other subjects?

Then you say children will pass if they are "bright enough" whatever that is but acknowledge that your son just scraped the English paper despite being "pretty good".

People need to decide for themselves what areas their child might need to do some work in in order to pass or get a superselective score. These other kinds of statement I do not find relaxed as they make people feel their kid is thick if they did some preparation and passed, or stupid if they didn't do any work and failed. Also, some children have not learned as much as they might have done at school for a variety of different reasons.

If you were going to do some work in the summer why did you choose bond ten mins and not the gl practice papers?

For someone wanting to keep their prep to a minimum for 2015 it would make more sense to do some gl practice papers in case it is gl and a little of whatever is considered to be the best practice for c e m to cover any gaps e.g.cloze, vocabulary work, mixed up sentences.

I am sure that one doesn't have to do very much to possibly make quite a big difference.

the 10 minute papers were verbal and non-verbal to get him used to the questioning type. I see your point.. i just hear horror stories of people who make their child start tutoring for the 11 plus a year (or several) before they sit it...then devote their whole summer holidays to 11 plus revision. I just don't think its right if a child needs "that much" tutoring..then they perhaps should not be sitting it
Because most schools ( like our school) do nothing at all to prepare the children, then a few practice papers at home is a good idea, simply as the question types are not the type of thing most kids have come across before.
With regards to the English: Yes, my point being..that perhaps i should have given my DS a few English practice papers: to familiarise him with the questioning technique.
I didn't find this forum until fairly recently.... but i do think if i had found it 6 months prior to the test i would have definitely sat him a few more practice papers...but also think many of the posts would have freaked me out!!! The "Majority" speak of tutoring...years in advance.. the talk of specific papers.. the detail many of you go into with regards investigating who is setting the questions, then purchasing papers by that exact exam board ..ive not got a clue who GL are.. so although this forum is helpful in many ways, and definitely supportive..sometimes ignorance is bliss!!

[mystery]

Yes, I take your point entirely. Unfortunately though, Kent CC seems to have become more "secretive" over the years in the guise of a pretence of "fairness". In the past they used to make it very clear that the GL practice papers on sale in the shops were the most relevant ones for the Kent test. This year the only open thing they produced saying that the 2014 test was GL was buried away in June or July 2014 somewhere on their admissions website.

This puts some people at a disadvantage if others know and are doing some relevant practice (no matter how little). These children are young when they sit the first test that "matters" in their lives and if some children feel more "at home" because they've done some similar quesitons below it puts the ones that are not so confident in a "surprise" situation at a disadvantage.

Well done to your son at getting by with so little relevant prep.

The English paper was a botch up this year it would seem. One needed 24/24 to get the highest quoted standardised score of 138, 20/24 got 118 for a 10 year 5 month old, so the raw score for a pass was presumably in the region of 18/24 I guess?

The English paper was the first paper. So 7 careless mistakes in the first 25 minutes of your 11 plus test could have cost a pass? I don't feel it should be like that. It is one of the problems though with setting such short papers and then requiring that you pass each of the individual papers. But also the English questions must have been "too easy" for all the scores between 106 and 138 to vary between 18 and 24/24.

My guess is next year they need to put in way more questions or make the questions harder, or a combination. I don't think this paper can have been tested sufficiently beforehand.

[relaxedMum77]

Yes, i totally agree with you: the tests need to be longer for sure. I'm sure some kids passed some papers by a string of lucky guesses!! I also think all KS2 work should be taken into account in some shape or form.
Unfortunately it appears there will always be some who don't meet the required mark that are probably suited to Grammar...and some who somehow get lucky on the day, pass..and then often struggle to keep up once at a Grammar. I've already heard of a few kids who started year 7 at Grammar this year who have dropped out as they are struggling with the work Needless to say, the kids in question were always just "average" in KS2 but heavily tutored for the 11 plus. Not always the case i know.... but my point being that regardless of how well they may have scored in the 11 plus, IF their KS2 work was anything to go by, they would never have been students the school would have recommended for Grammar..!

[chimera-ma]

I joined the forum roughly 6 months ago with a view to DS doing the Kent Test next year. Having moved to Kent from London, and from a completely different school system abroad, I knew nothing about individual Kent grammar schools, knew no-one well whose children had sat the Test, knew only a little about Test format and nothing about the current Test providers or recommended practice papers or other materials.

Those of you who have just joined will find all that information on here, as I did, provided you are prepared to spend some time going through the various threads, including those which have less recent posts, to find some very valuable information. It is fairly easy to identify which thread topics may be relevant to your situation, whether now or in the coming months. There is certainly plenty of comparative comment on the value of different offerings from Bond, GL Assessment and others, plus fairly recent discussion re: the status of GL Assessment, who wrote this year's Test. (Look at a recent thread about Bond papers, for example.)

On the issues of tutoring v not tutoring and when to start preparation, if at all, it still astonishes me that people draw a distinction between teaching and tutoring. One-to-one, or small group, tutoring, whether using a professional tutor or parents/carers working with their child is a form of teaching: it's just semantics.

The standard of teaching varies within most primary schools I know and certainly from one school to another. Surely the preparation many parents and professional tutors do with children is making up for a shortfall in the quality of school teaching in English and Maths, or assisting children who, for whatever reason, have found it harder to learn in a classroom of 30 children?

I've always taken the view with my DS, who attends a fairly ordinary village primary school, that helping him reach a high standard of literacy and maths and helping him develop focus, discrimination and application in his approach to studying would stand him in good stead whatever secondary school he got into. Therefore it could be said that his 11+ 'preparation' has been going on since pre-school, although we've only started with 11+ practice papers recently, and in a non-intensive way.

I think it would be wrong to send a child into the Test with no, or little, preparation. Some children will never have done back-to-back tests before - and they have English and Maths and Reasoning and a writing test to do! Some will be made anxious by the unfamiliarity of V, NV and spatial reasoning questions, some slowed down by the computer-marking answer sheet for multiple choice if they have never before filled one in, and some will have no idea how to pace themselves within the time-allowance for individual tests and/or for the test day as a whole.

It is horribly competitive, this 11+ process, made harder if most local grammar options are superselective, and I'm sure we are all cognisant of the need to appraise the merits of embarking on and then continuing with preparation for the Test. There are so many factors to take account of, principally in our case: DS's likely and actual progress, minimising stress, and evaluating how good the non-grammar secondary options are versus a lengthy journey to grammar school. (We live on the outskirts of Sevenoaks.)

There are some really good post-Test reflections on all of this in other threads from parents whose children sat the Test this year: recommended reading.

[mystery]

Posts crossed Chimer-ma. I don't know - I've never personally known one of these heavily tutored but truly struggling at grammar children who then dropped out in Kent. Which subjects is it that they find the pace too fast for in year 7? Are there particular grammar schools that are very pushy in the first term of year 7 I wonder? I really don't know. Do you know a few personally? Is the issue really one of having been so well tutored that they've passed and really should not have done?

I know someone who says that a grammar teacher they know says this is the case .... but it's so secondhand I strongly doubt it particularly as I cannot imagine that the average grammar school subject teacher knows whether a child in one of their groups got through on headteacher review, passed outright, got through on appeal let alone how much tutoring they had and whether or not it was a decent tutor.

Personally I haven't yet found a tutor in Kent who I would think would make much of a difference compared with doing papers at home and going over the errors ...... met a few that could make things worse though!

[chimera-ma]

Yes, my long-winded post crossed with yours and a couple of others, I think!

I'm not sure I understand all your points, Mystery. I'm wondering if my post was unclear?

On tutoring for the Test, I meant that good Test preparation is important, whether using a professional tutor or DIY, particularly if there is a need to raise literacy and maths levels as a better school or teachers might have done.

I'm not critical of intensive methods if the child can cope, and one approach may work some of the time, another at other times. Any successful method, whether intensive or low-key, should help equip a child for secondary education: the important thing is getting to the necessary standard. I am positive about all sources of teaching/tuition: school, home or professional tutor.

How difficult it must be though, for parents/carers who feel ill-equipped to teach/tutor, whether due to their own educational status, work or childcare pressures - or all three - and who cannot afford professional tuition.