Once your child is consistently hitting 80%-90%......

[scarlett]

It must depend on when they reach that score.If it's 6 months before the test, then they're obviously doing well but should you just then leave all practice ? What would you suggest would be the best thing to do ? That's more constructive...giving a few ideas . I know children get fed up and do burn out ...my son did really but I think most people can recognise the signs and act accordingly.

[push-pull-mum]

That must have been so disappointing for you, push-pull mum. But it wouldn't ahve made any difference to her performance on the day if you had stopped practicing when she was hitting 90% would it?

Ah - the point is - how would I know? And how would she know? As it stands she knows she worked as hard as she could so there's no 'if only ...'

And I suspect that skills like VR need to be practised or else you forget - and certainly lose speed.

[tokyonambu]

You're assuming that the relationship between performance in exams and work done towards them is monotonic --- that more of one means more of the other. But that's not true tactically for students: a good night's sleep the night before is better than another past paper or feverishly reading another book. And that's not true strategically for athletes: "tapering" training so as to hit a major competition in peak condition is a major part of the skill of a coach. It would seem implausible that there is not a similar effect for preparing for a crunch exam, and there's a point past which more work is of limited, or indeed negative value. As to whether that point is 12 hours, 12 days or 12 weeks before the exam, well, there's probably a good PhD in a study on that. Which may lead to a conflict between "know you've done everything you can" and "knowing you've done everything you should".

[push-pull-mum]

You're assuming that the relationship between performance in exams and work done towards them is monotonic --- that more of one means more of the other. But that's not true tactically for students: a good night's sleep the night before is better than another past paper or feverishly reading another book. And that's not true strategically for athletes: "tapering" training so as to hit a major competition in peak condition is a major part of the skill of a coach. It would seem implausible that there is not a similar effect for preparing for a crunch exam, and there's a point past which more work is of limited, or indeed negative value. As to whether that point is 12 hours, 12 days or 12 weeks before the exam, well, there's probably a good PhD in a study on that. Which may lead to a conflict between "know you've done everything you can" and "knowing you've done everything you should".

Funnily enough, tokyonambu, I did let my 10 year old have a good night's sleep before the exam - and she slept a lot better knowing that earlier in the evening she had done a past paper and scored 100%.

As the mother of a child who, in spite of a lot of hard work and dedication, did not acheive a Grammar school place there is nothing you can teach me about conflict between 'everything you can' and 'everything you should' - the sleepless nights about that one are written in wrinkles from hairline to double chin. What I said was that DD and I had the reassurance that she couldn't have done more rather than that I arrogantly assumed that a better result couldn't have been acheived if certain things had been done differently.

It's very easy to theorise when it's not your child. All I was sharing was my personal experience - I am glad we didn't stop working at 90% because when the fail happened - I would have blamed myself for not getting her to keep going. And she might have blamed herself too - which would have been terrible.

[menagerie]

Katel,
The only grammars round here are super-selectives, one in 11-14 children gets an offer of a place, so 80% is a sure fail and 90% is not quite there yet, probably borderline waiting list. I know what you mean about the plateau but after a plateau another peak can come and it's important to allow for that if it may happen. If my boys were regularly achieving 90% I'd look for a pattern in the 10% they got wrong and then once that was covered maybe scale down the practise papers to those 10 minute ones and play more mental games. Also, do the papers with lots of distractions all around. I get my kids to do papers with the radio on, the cat pawing at their pen and my partner and I chatting in the back ground so they aren't thrown by disruption. In fact we probably need to do a few more in silence so that doesn't throw them either!

I really feel for you Pushpull and your daughter but that work was not in vain. Now she knows what self discipline is like, she knows how to aim for something, how to fail and pick herself up, and she knows she is capable of 100%. Bet she aces all her exams. You don't need to go to a grammar school to do that. Her attitude and the way you helped her develop her work ethic at a young age will will hold her in great stead all her life, whereas not trying in the first place or giving up early and coasting wouldn't. Sorry if this opens a can of worms, I don't know your story as I'm quite new to these forums, but in her case, is there not a case for 12 or 13+ entry? She must be super-bright.

[Loopyloulou]

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[katel]

Well, if your idea of the heavens is getting 100% on an 11+ paper.............!


I did say that I realize that superselectives are different. It just seems to me that if you don't need to, slogging away at papers when you've already cracked doing them must be pretty mind numbing.

[Looking for help]

Why be content with mediocrity Katel, when one can reach for the heavens?

I don't think its about being content with mediocrity when you can reach for the heavens. It's about one goal.....getting your child into a particular school because you perceive they will have a better chance there. If I could I would go back three years and make a huge change to the approach I took.
This isn't about a child performing/not performing, especially in the case of superselectives. This is about a very small difference between the top raw score and the pass mark raw score, making it extremely difficult to know whether even scoring upwards of 90% is sufficient to pass the exam. Therefore if you really want a particular school, you need to keep at it, otherwise the others out there will beat you to the prize, and that's the end of it.

[Jules7]

Responding to the original post, if we had stopped at 80-90% then DD would not have passed the Bucks 11+ (not superselective system) as age standardisation means that 90% was the minimum needed to pass for the older ones in the year and of course you need to account for a % marks dropped on the day for nerves (if your DC is affected by pressure of this kind).

It's all specific to the child and system in question in my opinion but I am no expert!!

[push-pull-mum]

I really feel for you Pushpull and your daughter but that work was not in vain. Now she knows what self discipline is like, she knows how to aim for something, how to fail and pick herself up, and she knows she is capable of 100%. Bet she aces all her exams. You don't need to go to a grammar school to do that. Her attitude and the way you helped her develop her work ethic at a young age will will hold her in great stead all her life, whereas not trying in the first place or giving up early and coasting wouldn't. Sorry if this opens a can of worms, I don't know your story as I'm quite new to these forums, but in her case, is there not a case for 12 or 13+ entry? She must be super-bright.

Thanks, menagerie - March was a pretty grim month but things are looking brighter now. I do have a couple of 13+ contingency plans if she really does hate it at the new school but there are advantages (not least that she can walk to school by herself in 20 minutes )

What let DD down on the day was her confidence. She messed up the (truly terrifying) Comprehension and she let it get to her. She ended up second guessing herself too much on the other papers - convinced that she must be doing something wrong because they were so much easier! Poor sausage. She has no regrets about all the effort though - and she is a phenomenal workhorse still.

I still don't know what I'm going to change in my 11+ methodology now it's DS's turn. He's a very different character - and much less likely to want to put in the work - especially as he's seen that it didn't get his sister what she wanted.