Hi,

Can anyone recommend the best books needed to prep DS for the above schools? We have moved on from the bond books and have the CGP books and past papers for the schools but just wanted to know what else we should purchase.

Also, are Schofield and Simms the best for comprehension?

Thank you in advance.

Which year is your DS in?

If year 6, doing exams in January, you should be beyond books.

If in year 5, you shouldn't be thinking about past papers yet.

Thank you for your response.
My son is in year 6 and I know it is late but things have happened at our prep school which now mean that I am having to prep him more than I thought I would. I don’t want to go into it as it is has had me in tears. I realise it is cutting it fine but I’m just trying to do the best that I can for him. I suppose what I really wanted to know is, should it just be papers that we should be concentrating on at this time from the above schools and any others and completely forget about the books?

In my experience, none of the books had sufficient depth to their comprehension questions.

In the exams, the differentiator is the ability to get good marks on the longer (4+ marks) questions. These are the ones likely to be asking: "what do you think", "what effect does the author create", etc.

Your DS needs to be led through a few of these questions until he can figure out exactly what this type of question is asking and so how to structure an answer.

Past papers are the best practice for this, but obviously don't usually come with answers.

Comprehension is a slow burn.

At this stage it will be far easier to pick up marks in Maths than in English.

If you can discuss the comprehension papers with him as soon as possible after he has done them that will be very helpful.

The Highgate papers are a specific format and focus very much on language and structure. I like their papers very much. it is good that one is first so you can prep for that format and then MTS and St Albans are more the same as each other. DG

My son is at Highgate and although it was 5 years ago there are a couple of practical tips that he found useful in the final stages of preparation (he had a tutor with whom he did past papers, no books btw). As stated on the front of the paper, the Maths paper has to be completed a page at a time - they tell you when you can turn over and you can’t go back, so he needs to be prepared for that. DS also benefitted from being told what I thought was obvious - that its important to get the easy questions right! Take plenty of care with those, he thought it was more important to impress with the hard questions! There is a Bond book called How to do Comprehension (or something like that) you won’t have time to go through it now (and I didn’t with DS) but it does have a section which goes through a paper and shows a poor answer, a middling answer and a top marks answer for each question. DS found it really helpful to see that and to see how you get the examiner to give you top marks. Being a more mathematically minded child I helped him devise a way of writing a story with a plan (first para introduction, second action and third ending) and to think punctuation (try and include speech or thoughts) and senses/description.
Good luck!

Thank you all so much for your help.
We have a little bit of time so fingers crossed we can get him into one of the schools at least but if not which additional one would you have as a back up, Aldenham?

John Lyon, Berkhamsted, Belmont (for Mill Hill).

Depends where you live.

MTS and Highgate will be harder to get into than St Albans.

But yes Aldenham would be a backup depending on location. DG

Thank you