11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello All

Have just looked up our DD's results from the Sutton grammar mock exam and she got a score of 315 (VR-111, MA-97, Eng - 107).

DD is September born therefore I gather will have points knocked off in the real exams. I'm beginning to think that even though she is a clever girl, she's just not clever enough for the limited places available. I suppose this has brought home to me just how competetive it is out there! I'm wondering if it is really worth continuing down this route when I feel I kind of already know what the outcome will be!

Any words of wisdom out there?

M

DD was sitting the exam with the sole purpose of experience, as in real test there will be nvr instead of math. Multiple choice English was very useful indeed, as my DD never did that one before.

Foxandsot, how familiar was your DD with the style of the exams and how the exam questions were likely to look?

x

It all depends on the child..... some find the exam experience a real shock and so sitting the mock will reduce anxiety for the next time....there is time to brush up on weaker areas. Just the act of sitting the exam and achieving the scores should give your DD more confidence next time round.

agreed Chad, nothing like a proper mock session to really familiarise DCs for the exams, can be daunting being a room with lots of other people they don't know and using rather more formal exam papers and answer sheets etc.

My dd has been visiting a tutor one to one once a week since January. The tutor would only take her on once she had assessed her and seen that she was of a certain level. Although she has never sat an exam like this before, I assume she must be familiar with the papers as her tutor gives her papers to do as homework. After the mock dd said she felt that a lot of it was easy and didn't appear to be phased by any of it!!

Spoke to dd's tutor earlier and dd needs to work on her checking of work, apparently she loses marks due to silly mistakes.

M

need to check multi choice answer sheets too - only have to slip when completing one line and this can put all the remaining answers out.

My DD did Sutton mocks last year in early June and results weren't brilliant (under 300 but we didn't really need high scores in Kent). I panicked a little but I thought by the time we will get to September considering she had done test in early June, she will have improved to score enough. She didnt.

All I can say is consider your backups carefully but don't give up. You cant bail out after all the work you have put in and I think its just send a wrong message to a child too than when the going gets tough you bail out.

Stick through it and your DC could still pull it through in the exams. There are no hard and fast rules about passing 11+. I bet there will be loads who do well in these mocks and still perform dismally in the actual test. Keep going but open your eyes wide to your other options too.