11 Plus Exams Forum

My son just spent year 5 doing lots of topic work, productions, school trips yet as a 'top set' maths student he has left year 5 with little/no grasp of simple fractions, decimals, shapes percentages or area. He has spent 4 of his 6-week holiday learning and gets it now.

(In my experience) Y6ers do very little learning anything new but plenty of exams as the schools wants 'top marks' for end of year SATS. Those at the end of 5 yet to learn the above will have very little chance of learning these before year 7. Yet I am assured my son is 'where he should be with maths'!!

Before I take it up with the school, can anyone shed some light on whether I am jumping the gun?

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Look at the level 4 to 5 grid to see what sort of things should be taught to top set Year 5 (by end of year 6 all should be covered).

Hi,
It's not just me then!!!
I agree Ds top set for Maths/ English but I don't believe he was pushed.. Spent 8 weeks practising for a show( lottery funded and overall good experience) but since that finished in April has done little. I asked him what topics he was covering... None. Didn't help that his teacher is the only piano player in school so she ( who is a great teacher) spent the final couple of months out of the class rehearsing for end of year shows. Ds class had lots of cover teachers and from what I gather watched lots of DVDs and not a lot else, except for when ofsted were in and there was a lot of 'fake' (Ds words) lessons and activities!!!

I also am assured that Ds is way ahead of where he should be but there is so much 11 plus stuff he has never covered and his school are little help.... God help us so little time!!!

Alot of 11+ maths is actually year 7 maths. I 'm don't why the 11+ exam question setters set maths which the children would not have routinely done in school.

Also bear in mind that when I do revision maths with year 6 they swear blind that they " have never done this before" even though I know they have, even in some cases the term before, with me!

I'm sure that's right Yoyo that there are kids at plenty of schools who swear blind they haven't done something but they have, but equally in other schools it could well be that there are children who have not covered much maths - it's not that they've forgotten it.

Also, if they've done it once and forgotten it, but in 4 weeks at home they can grasp it quickly again (or do it for the first time I suspect!) then maybe they needed to learn it earlier at school and repeat it more times?

The maths syllabus is set out so that you keep going over a subject and build on it. eg In year 2 they are doing simple fractions and that is built on until decimal, fractions and percentages are being converted.

My point was more that it is often wise to take what children say with a pinch of salt

Agree that 11+ questions are beyond anything that even top set maths pupils seem to do at school by the end of year 5. Conversely I was looking through some GCSE/KS3 SATs revision guides/past papers in case I could find any useful questions to use - and realised that with the work we've already done for 11+ we've covered so much of it already that I can't see how the rest is supposed to take another 6 years!

Yes it certainly is wise to take what children say with a pinch of salt, and they certainly forget things! But if they really were only doing "simple fractions" in the top maths set in year 5, even if said child had forgotten them or couldn't be bothered, then there's not much hope for the other maths sets.

Maths at some schools seems to crawl - even in the top set - and at others seems to shoot along. As they all sit the same GCSE and A levels it probably doesn't matter too much, but when you are at a crawling school and doing 11+ with a maths paper at the start of year 6 it is irritating I do suppose.

Okanagan - what revision books were those? I cannot believe you have covered all the algebra including simultaneous equations, quadratic equations etc or any trigonometry. There is masses of stuff at level 6 and up which will be needed to get an A*. The style of question has also changed radically this year ...