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I've just started looking into tuition for my son, we are interested in Sutton grammar schools. I wasnt planning on him having any tuition as I naively thought if he didnt get in on natural ability then grammar school wasnt right for him, but having bought the Bond practice papers I now see that a lot of the stuff in the test he wont have learned at school yet. Tutors are telling me he's missed a lot of study and will have to work really hard to catch up and stand a chance. He's very strong in maths, not so strong in English - he's in the top group at school but doesnt enjoy it so puts in minimal effort and on the practice papers he rushes and often doesnt read the question properly. Im just wondering if it's worth our time and money, does he actually stand a chance? I dont want to put pressure on him if we're chasing a dream, equally I dont want him to pass the test but then not be up to the standard of other pupils, since we wont be able to continue the tuition after the test. Any thoughts?

There are very recent threads re similar query. Have a look at those as well.
Eg.
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=54419

Hi, we didn't go down the tuition route. But we did do some mocks in the summer before the Tiffin Boys exams.

They went reasonably well, so we entered the Tiffin exams - but we'd decided that if the marks had been bad - we just wouldn't have tried.

We had Bond books too and did papers fairly regularly but continued with extra-curricular stuff. Unlike a lot of the parents in our school, we only tried for one school. It wasn't a big deal, and we were pretty set on going local as I didn't think that he'd get through. But he did.

I'm sure it's partly because Tiffin don't do VR/NVR and also because as a family we were pretty chilled out and balanced. I actually think the hard part starts now as it's such a high achieving school and so many of the boys will have been coached/tutored and ours hasn't. But I guess what I'm saying is that it is possible to do this without tuition.

Tuition/coaching/preparation is all the same thing.

If you have been doing Bond books and papers regularly at home followed by mocks then your ds has been tutored/coached, just by you rather than by somebody else. In fact your ds may well have got more individual attention from you rather than being one of a large class.

Some parents send their dcs to tutors as they find it difficult to prepare if they have other siblings to deal with.

Your ds doing Bond papers and books with you at home was probably the same preparation as others doing them in a classroom or a tutor's house so the other boys who will be in his class in September probably did around the same amount as you did. DG

Hello Golddust99,

I can't talk for everyone but we did tutoring when our DS was in Y5. Nothing too intense, 30 minutes once a week but then he would do 15/30minutes every day with CGP books. Bond books for us worked previously as a revision of what they were doing in school but in my experience, they are too easy for what the kids actually find in the real exam.

Even the brightest kid needs some sort of guideline because in most cases, they haven't done assessments previously so they need to learn to work within the time given, answer what they know straight away and use the rest of the time to solve those problems where they need to do "extra" thinking or reasoning. Mock tests are very handy for this purpose!
All schools will tell you that the content of the exam is K2 curriculum but there are certain subjects like algebra that will only be covered in Y6 and by then the kids have been through the grammar school test.

There is no algebra in the Bucks Transfer Test and it is quite clear that content is to the end of Year 5.

OP is talking about Sutton schools

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mad?

I have no experience with Bucks but most GL and CEM revision books have some algebra exercises. Very basic but you still need to learn how to solve the problems.

There was no algebra in the Sutton/Kingston exams. My daughter thought the exams easier than all the prep she had done; which included roughly what has been mentioned already.