11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi, need some advice. Do you take a two weeks holiday aboard long haul during summer time, August? If your kid will have 11plus exam for two schools, Latymer is on 2nd Sep and DAO is on 1st and 3rd Sep. We are tempting to cancel our holiday and just concentrate on practicing past paper during summer holiday everyday solid.

What do you think? Any advice?

Many thanks.

Go on holiday. If you need to work all day every day of the summer, then your child will miss out on some much needed rest and relaxation time over the summer and may well resent it too.

No child should need to do that amount of work to get into a school.
anecdotal I know, but we did one paper a weekover summer apart from a week away in Germany. A primary school friend did one paper every day, and she complained bitterly about that when they went back to school. Guess who score higher.

It’s all about quality of prep work not quantity and I’m sure you can make up the time. You can also use your time on holiday to subtly get some vocab practice in etc.

Hi

My DD sat the 11+ exam in September last year. We went on holiday for 2 weeks at the beginning of the summer holidays (overseas, by the pool). My DD passed & we're waiting for our allocation in 7 weeks time.

The exam isn't the be all & end all. We didn't do anything (except normal reading) on holiday and came back to a few weeks of focussed but not excessive prep - a couple of hours per week. By June / July we were pretty much there - just keeping it going without over doing it.

Hope that helps.

Sonya wrote:Hi, need some advice. Do you take a two weeks holiday aboard long haul during summer time, August? If your kid will have 11plus exam for two schools, Latymer is on 2nd Sep and DAO is on 1st and 3rd Sep. We are tempting to cancel our holiday and just concentrate on practicing past paper during summer holiday everyday solid.

What do you think? Any advice?

Many thanks.

Take the holiday if that’s what’s planned. What sort of summer break is anyone in the family going to get if your child is practicing papers every day solidly? And what would be the consequences on the well-being of your child when s/he knows that the tests are so important that the family holiday has been sacrificed?

My daughter was studying all summer and she failed so it's better to go on holiday.

We took a three week break including a two week holiday on the understanding there would be proper revision on our return. We also eased off in the final week before the exam, mainly talking about strategies and types of questions. Every child is different, but the results surpassed expectations.

Think of the pressure on your child to pass those exams if the entire family has cancelled its holiday because of him/her. Go on holiday! I was away at a lovely lovely place last summer and there was a poor English child being made to do 11+ practice at breakfast every day. Please don't do that either. Leave the books at home.

Go on holiday, and if it makes you feel better take some exam prep with you, Then you can decide when you are there what to do. Even if you don’t touch the books for the duration of the holiday, which you probably won’t, at least you know you could if your child felt like it.

guest201 wrote:at least you know you could if your child felt like it.

10 year old on holiday, feeling like doing exam prep rather than anything else? Really? Not unless he or she felt pressured to do so, surely.

Definitely go on holiday. Last year we had a week's holiday in the UK at the start of the holidays and a week abroad for the penultimate week. No work on holidays but we worked in between with the exam the first week of September.