11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello
This is first time in this forum.

Before even discussing with my DD about grammar schools and its prep etc, I would like to know if it is very expensive to prepare the child for the entrance exams. Also, once they get admission to the preferred school, is it similar to state schools or do we have to spend like private schools? Its just as a family, we would like to take a informed decision and see if we can commit to it..
Thanks in advance
Krit

Grammar schools are state schools - there are no additional costs.

If you DIY then the expense is minimal.

Some of the grammars have more expensive uniforms/trips to Borneo/clubs which require expense.... But not necessarily more than Upper schools or comprehensives.
It depends on the school.

Tutor wise you're looking at 2-4 grand for expenses depending on how long you tutor for and the class size/any mock type things you do.

We DIY'd and bought a load of workbooks and mock papers from Amazon and this website, a few apps, and a copy of Bananagrams
Probably spend about £150 in total plus two mock exams which were well worth the price simply to get the exam-in-hall format familiar to DD and give a very rough benchmark of how she was doing: the downer of DIY-ing is that you can't always tell what level the cohort are working at (cos it's the cohort she has to perform against in order to pass.)

But there's loads of info and resources on the site and the internet: if you have time and are willing to put in the effort, you don't need tons of cash to DIY and could easily have a stab at it if you've got the time and a willing DC.

DDs grammar has twighlight courses that you can opt for from Y8. Mostly language classes that they can't fit into the main curriculum. These are optional and can be a small sum extra per term but I have think are a great choice to have. Blazer at £29 is compulsory - but then we have a comprehensive chain near us whose blazers are more expensive by far.

We diy'd DD too. We did try a tutor but no good so ditched tutor after trying out about £120 worth of lessons. We went a bit mad in Waterstones on books and spent about £100. Plus the GL books. Many of which we didn't use. Ultimately DD seems happy in school and it is a good fit so worth it.

Where we live the comprehensives do similar trips to the grammars and the uniforms are about the same cost, so no more expensive. As you can see from previous replies the cost to get your child ready can go from very little to ver much.

DC here used Explore and Learn at Sainsburys. But they haven't had their results yet.

Dp's said their dc enjoyed the sessions and got a lot out of them.

Probably a cheaper option, but I know there is mixed opinion on here.

We diy'ed minimally during summer holidays and my dd got in to a grammar school.

My ds refused to do anything and I am sure he won't have reached the pass mark.

All his friends except one had paid tutoring.

i think your most significant cost is going to be in the prep in either tutoring versus DIY.
we also went down the DIY route and cost around £100 in study materials (plus time and energy of course)

Morning everyone

Thank you for your valuable input.. She has just started in Year 3, so I thought will start looking for information.. I think i want to try to work with her myself but probably I need to work hard a lot before

Don't start too early with formal prep for the eleven plus, it will put them off. We started in Y5 with an hour a week. At this stage get into good habits of reading widely and questioning words they don't know and loving learning and the rest will fall into place.

Our children's uniform is definitely not more expensive than local comprehensives. I think it is probably fairly comparable to some and cheaper than others.
In terms of cost we paid for a tutor for approximately 9 months, slightly less than once a week. We paid £30 per session which comes to around £1000 in total. The tutor provided all materials and we bought no other 11+ books. I did buy the past papers from a couple of schools but it turned out I didn't need to as the tutor did have them already.
Our children gave up swimming lessons for that year which cost just over 1/2 the cost of tutoring. (They restarted again as soon as the tutoring was over).
So the outlay was around £500 for us in total.