If your child does not get into a grammar school please read

[OldTrout]

Hello all:

I just wanted to add my support for AK Loving Dad's views.

I was pretty devastated last October and this time last year as the good ship grammar school sailed off without my little fish aboard.

Little fish felt it badly because her great friends from primary were all off to grammar school and she wasn't.

But six months on little fish has become something of a big fish at her local secondary school. Yes, the pace and workload of her classes is most likely not at the standard of KE grammar schools - but she's doing very well and really shining at times.

For us, this process of 'going for the 11+' was always an experiment. We didn't go the private tutor route - but invested or inherited old bond books and did more reading. Although the main result - getting into a grammar school didn't quite work out for us (DD was set on KECHG/ KEFW - both of which were easy commutes for her) and we agonized about whether to put KE Handworth girls (a very long commute) on the school places form or not. In the end, DD was so strongly against 2 hours+ of commuting a day that we opted for our local secondary.

Regardless of the disappointment doing the 11+ has had some obvious advantages.

She went on to do amazingly well at end KS2 SATs and on SAT/ CAT style testing at her secondary comprehensive school.

She's come into secondary determined to go on to do well at GCSE and transfer back to a King Edward for sixth form.

And - perhaps the best result - she's become something of a big fish at her local comprehensive - and hand on heart at a school like KEFW or KECHG I really don't know if that would have ever happened.

I have a happy, confident little fish who loves going to school, enjoys her classes and seems keen to do her best at her school work. With only a 5 minute commute she has tons of time for outside interests and belongs to all sorts of clubs (especially sports).

I know part of that is of course her personality - but even little fish agrees doing the 11+ was a jolly good thing. And so - knowing that bad news in terms of results/ being wait listed can be heart breaking for parents/ children alike - please be assured that there are benefits - doing the 11+ does give your child has the best possible start for going on to do well wherever he or she goes for secondary.

Old Trout


PS I have begun DIY 11+ prep with small fry (little fish's younger sibling) which small fry will sit Sept 2014. So I'll be right back into the waiting/ worry from next September.

[WindowGlass]

OldTrout

That's a great story so far. Thank you for posting it.

I am always concerned about stories of children not getting through on self-tutoring though.
We just can't tell whether they would have with external tutoring. Sites like this do help to democratise (!?!?) the process a little, but maybe the schools should do more to let people know what is needed - publishing past papers probably does a lot towards that end (which doesn't happen in our area though).
Maybe school should ask CEM (I think they're the only paper provider locally!?!?) about that, as what was made known about the test on the school/consortium website(s) did not reflect the reality of the day in my opinion.

Thank you again for your story, and wishing you and all your DC the best for them, for you and for our society (we need ALL our kids to do their best, work, serve, earn and pay for our pensions

[OldTrout]

Window Glass:

I agree - I will always wonder if a tutor might have better prepared little fish for the structure of the exam.

However - DH was going through a very difficult time at work (on threat of redundancy) and spending money on something like a tutor was just never going to happen that year.

Redundancy didn't happen - and yes we do wonder if we had known he'd have survived 'the process' at work and we'd hired a tutor....?

I think the real issue is that the grammar schools themselves all give out this line that having a tutor isn't recommended - just do more reading.

Indeed the King Edward Grammar Schools site says: "Intensive coaching or tuition is not in the long term best interests of your child. The Grammar Schools in Birmingham is in no way connected to, nor does it endorse or recommend, the services of any organisation or agency purporting to offer tuition and/or revision courses for children to assist in preparing them for school entrance tests."

So I think rather than ask primary schools to help - I think we really need the King Edward Grammar schools to gather the data on exactly who gets in - (i.e. percentage tutored/ percentage DIY) and who goes on to do well (i.e. do heavily tutored children in fact really struggle - which anecdotal evidence here on the forum suggests may happen). I suspect the problem will always be that there are those who are bright enough to have done well anyway, but perhaps had parents who wanted to 'cover all bets' and hired a tutor as well, just to be sure.

[WindowGlass]

I do think parents really have to try to be quite cool about the 11+, there's a lot of heat about it. It's a major battle, but it's not the war!

I remember reading how the distinguishing mark of the middle class is that they'll pull out all the stops to achieve what deem to be right and successful. That sounds a bit unfair, but it isn't necessarily - if true, then maybe it just means that they have standards they're not willing to compromise. Education is often one of them.

Granted, sometimes people have disagreeable standards, but whether their children get into a grammar, that they have to consider independents as a fall-back rather than a preference, or that they go with a state non-selective but try their darnedest to make that work well - which might include challenging the school, becoming a governor, extra-expenditure on extra-curricular music, sports, dance etc or academic tuition - just a strive to make a child nto a responsible and capable adult, useful to their family and society.

However, this can all be true of any "class" of people, not just middlers, we all have to work. Just maybe middlers have more of the means and less of the worst obstacles to be able to make all this happen; not to say it's easy!

[Stroller]

I am always concerned about stories of children not getting through on self-tutoring though.
We just can't tell whether they would have with external tutoring. Sites like this do help to democratise (!?!?) the process a little, but maybe the schools should do more to let people know what is needed

You're partly right, WindowGlass, but loads and loads of children who are externally tutored also don't make it. In fact, a prep school near us only got one child from their year 6 into a selective school last year (funnily enough, that one that attended a state primary until year 4). They all had tutors too, it just didn't help. The state school DD attended had vastly better results for both superselectives and indies.

[JaneEyre]

I think we really need the King Edward Grammar schools to gather the data on exactly who gets in - (i.e. percentage tutored/ percentage DIY) and who goes on to do well (i.e. do heavily tutored children in fact really struggle - which anecdotal evidence here on the forum suggests may happen).

It is a good idea, but I do not think it is feasible because people are not honest enough...

Moreover, I consider that I have DIYed for my DS plus having him tutored (without getting the support I wanted in English, but here we go ). So in which category should my DS be?

I would never let the whole 11+ preparation in the hands of a tutor. I think that parents need to have a real input and get involved, which might involve some sacrifices (I personally put aside a master degree I was working towards at that time. I still have not gone back to it )

[MSD]

I think you can ask the school where the children came from in Year 7. Although this wouldn't give you info on private tutoring, but it will surely tell you which ones came from private prep schools and that for me is a very long term private tuition.

[Petitpois]

+1 Jane regarding the approach to 11+

On the data side they already have a ton of characteristics.

Ethnicity (all I can't be bothered to tell the full truth about kids ethnic mix as they look very largely white)
Address
school (state or non state)
FSM.

In addition they can easily tie that up with the pupil level stuff the DfE hold as well as the national data matching exercise done by Bath university, annually, using

PupilId (which is mean't to be unique) for schools datasets
UPIN for post 16

But they can using matching algorithms on surname and postcodes, DOB, to a very high degree of reliability, even without identifiers..

Yes I bet not many parents know that every year all those forms that they fill in in Junior school go off and the data from HESA is matched up to your school records etc.

In short they already have a very clear line of sight between KS2 outcomes and long terms outcomes for KS4/5 and undergraduate level. They have been doing Bath data matching for donkeys years. What is even worse is that that they have spent roughly £1500,000,000 (£1.5bn) on interventions to address NEET kids, since 2001

Would it surprise you to find despite the money since 2001, there were about a million young people between 16-24 Not in employment education or training (in 2001). Despite all the garbage out of BIS and EFA, need I say what the picture is today? £50bn a year on schools and people don't get uptight about pockets of shockingly bad outcomes like Sandwell. It is unbelievable really.

There are places in the world where kids would gnaw their right arm off for a chance at an education, and we have kids wasting their lives away after school, keeping chicken shops profitable, in this neck of the woods.

[nickynoodle]

I think you can ask the school where the children came from in Year 7. Although this wouldn't give you info on private tutoring, but it will surely tell you which ones came from private prep schools and that for me is a very long term private tuition.

Disagree on the private prep school=private tuition…. my DDs private school did nothing at all to prepare for 11+, i naively thought it would for the fees i pay, but alas not. Those of her friends that did well in the WGHS test were tutored outside school for years.

[Inspector General]

Unfortunately it is not really in the interests of a prep school (particularly one connected to a public school) to coach for 11 plus grammars! Perhaps its a half hearted effort on their part!!