11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi all,

This is my first post, I am new here.

My DS I am preping for his 11plus next year.

I am tutoring him at home and he goes to tution centre one day per week.

I just wanted to know, how does everyone know they are on the right track? i.e. covering the right topics etc.

I speak to other mums at the school who has gone through the process and some of them even tutored themselves all the way and their kids passed.

Some days I feel I am doing well other times I feel out of my depth. Is this normal?

Hi Nikki,

I tutored both my children and I think this is one of the toughest parts of it. My DD just sat it and I was so stressed!
I mainly used the CGP practice books and 10 min tests for each subject but also dipped in and out of other books hoping this would fill in any holes. I also wrote out a Maths "11+ curriculum" that I found on here from someone and checked that we'd covered all the areas. Also, used information from the Maths Skillstrack assessments my children did at school and worked on any areas they were worse at.
At the beginning of the summer I discovered some books called Bond How to Do Maths and the one for NVR which I found extremely useful for seeing what DD was good at or needed more work on. Wish Id found those earlier.

Welcome Nikki

This forum can be a great source of information for you and I would suggest you take a look at some of threads in your area to glean more details. Yes, it can be overwhelming but a good place to start is by being sure you know which school you are targeting and reading admissions policies carefully to be sure you are not wasting your time. You will find helpful people here but you may find it takes a while for responses to kick in as today is results day in Bucks and Kent which means that the boards are very busy and your post may have been over looked. Good luck.

One other thing! I found mocks to be extremely useful. Both my children did 3 each, approx one a month from beginning June. They got better as they did them and showed me that they were doing well and gave me more confidence in what I was doing. These tests also gave feedback on how they did compared to everyone else so gave me an idea of their chances of passing.

Welcome! It really varies depending on which test you are talking about.

If you could say which area you are looking at you will get better advice. For example, in Bucks the test only covers content up to the end of Year 5.

Mocks are important IMO, not too many but enough to guage you are on the right track. The actual marks in the mocks are not that important. In fact some will be harder than the real thing. What's key from the mocks is to identify the content and technique gaps so you can address them accordingly.

Thank you so much all for your responses.

I have bought both Bond and CGP books however I find CGP easier to understand over Bond in terms of context.

I live in Medway and am aiming for the Medway test, I would like my son to also do the Kent Test as this gives us more options when applying for schools.

Just to give an idea of what I am doing:

I have spent the last five weeks using the Bond "up to speed books" Maths and English. We have now started doing the 10 mins tests, which my son is completing in about 13 mins but the amount of questions he gets correct can vary from 6 to 11 out of 12. I then correct these with him and go through the incorrect ones with a fine tooth comb so he understands.

We also do mental maths and tables in the car.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the speed at the moment. The accuracy is more important. Even with a couple of months to go my DD was a bit slow but over the summer she’d got lots faster. She only missed one question in the actual test. Though obviously don’t know how her accuracy was!

Cass1 wrote:Hi Nikki,

I tutored both my children and I think this is one of the toughest parts of it. My DD just sat it and I was so stressed!
I mainly used the CGP practice books and 10 min tests for each subject but also dipped in and out of other books hoping this would fill in any holes. I also wrote out a Maths "11+ curriculum" that I found on here from someone and checked that we'd covered all the areas. Also, used information from the Maths Skillstrack assessments my children did at school and worked on any areas they were worse at.
At the beginning of the summer I discovered some books called Bond How to Do Maths and the one for NVR which I found extremely useful for seeing what DD was good at or needed more work on. Wish Id found those earlier.

Hats off to you Cass for tutoring yourself, I am not that confident yet as this is my first time, I am hoping that with my second son (hes 7 at the mo) i will defo be more confident. It gives me peace of mind sending him to tuition once a week.

Cass1 wrote:I wouldn’t worry too much about the speed at the moment. The accuracy is more important. Even with a couple of months to go my DD was a bit slow but over the summer she’d got lots faster. She only missed one question in the actual test. Though obviously don’t know how her accuracy was!

I keep reminding my self "i`ve got time,i`ve got time" lol or i will panic otherwise.