11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi. My eldest daughter is in a GS having been successfully tutored through the 'old' VR exam. I went back to the same tutor for my twins. Gloucs had now switched to CEM exam and I feel a lot of the topics the tutor is covering are not really likely to come up on the CEM exam. This is leading to a lot of work and not so much learning.

Can anyone tell me are the following topics likely to appear on the new CEM exam -

MATHS
Complementary, Supplementary, Corresponding and Alternate Angles
Probability
Division of fractions

ENGLISH
Colons and Semi-Colons
Concord
Prepositions
Phrases, Compound and Complex Sentences - Connectives and Conjunctions

VR
Type 32 - coding
Types 2,4,5,21 - linking words
Type 16 - letter pairs
Type 19 - numbers and brackets

I've also been told to do the NVR with my children myself at home as it only represents 10% of the marks?!?

Any help would be appreciated as I am now thinking about switching tutors.

Richard I have private messaged you.
KCG

Hi Richard,

I found out that tutors do not teach just to pass the exam but to get a much rounded understanding of the subject, irrespective of the likelihood of a topic coming in the exam. Whereas we want them to concentrate on just the exam.

I was exactly in your shoes last year with my twins and wanted to get rid of our tutor. I worked with them at home and we went through past papers.

Last year was the first for Bexley 11+ CEM and there were no past papers; I created a few papers from all the information I got from this web site. if you are interested (or anyone else) please PM me with an edress and I will email them back. I found them useful as each section was timed, and it introduced them to the concept of each section being timed and how fast they needed to work.

Hi, thank you for all the advice, it is very useful and I am in the process of checking out the various threads and links suggested.

I am switching tutors to someone who seems to have a better handle on what should be covered for a CEM exam. I'm nervous doing this at this stage but feel its the right thing to do for the twins.

Thanks again,

Richard

Hi I am a tutor and parent. I have pupils that have done CEM and passed but the honest truth is that you cannot predict CEM. it is not the same every year. It is better you help children to understand the topics and practice with different questions. This is the main reason they called it "Tutor proof". Help them to understand mathematical concepts, vocabularies etc. teach them how they can use dictionary and how they find meaning of words from the sentences and passages. Spellings, different kinds of cloze, etc.