Hi,
My son is in year 5 (turned 9 at the end of August) and we are hoping he can sit the 11+ in 2020.

We have started sending him to company name removed by moderaor once a week for 1.25 hours. Whilst there he completes all the work set and generally gets between 80%-90% in the weekly homework assessments set in maths and english.

However, he is also doing an 11+ club at school for 1 hour per week. He is not getting such great marks there. They are working through the "Schofield & Sims 11+ Progress Papers 1 9-12 years" doing an exam paper per week. We have been setting a timer for 1 hour and he works through the questions. There are 100 questions in the papers and he generally gets 80 done in the 1 hour time. His marks have been between 45-55% which seem very low.

I don't know what sort of marks the other children are getting. I guess I'm interested to know, at this stage, should he be getting much higher marks? Some of the stuff they haven't covered yet in class so he obviously won't know it.

Having not done these sort of test papers before, should he be expected to get a much higher score straight away?

It is a little bit worrying but I'm not sure if these things will just improve over time as he (we think!) is a bright boy. We go through the papers after he has completed them to explain anything he wasn't sure of.

Any advice would be much appreciated.
Many thanks

It may be the way you have phrased it but the 11+ club sounds a bit odd to me - there is no point just working through exam papers including some stuff your son hasn't covered yet - you have to teach the stuff, check understanding, test it, go over it again, test again etc. You can't just learn stuff by getting an exam question wrong and going over it for the first time....

Is the school/11+ club experienced in getting children through to the schools you are targetting? What do they say he should be getting? Ditto the tutor company, what do they say?

He has another year to learn more and practice and get faster, though, so there is always hope!

It has been a few years now but If I’m thinking of the right papers these are simply designed to practice fairly standard number manipulations. I believe they are intended to improve speed with practice.

I’m not sure it would be necessary or expected to do 100 in one sitting and your DS may simply be getting bored!

As I said it has been a few years since I used S&S progress papers so if anyone has more recent experience then please jump in.

What material is the study centre using for English and Maths?

Is the 11 plus club just using the school premises or is it actually run by the school?

Have past members of the club successfully obtained places at the schools you are interested in?

Likewise other classmates at the study centre? DG

We also think it is a bit odd that the 11+ club are just working through the exam papers. Company name removed by moderator seem to be approaching it a better way, not doing exams papers yet but working through assessments to gain confidence and make sure they have things covered. To jump straight into the exam papers seems a little strange when there is no guarantee the work has been covered yet. Unless I have this wrong and the 11+ practice papers cover only things until year 4? I'm not sure. I would have thought it was also year 5 learning.

The 11+ teacher is someone the school use every year and I believe past students have been successful so maybe it does work.. We're just finding it a bit difficult to know if this is the best way!

I don't know the success rates of prior pupils. The school just said the class has been "successful" but no further details given. He is employed by the school to come in once a week to take the class on school premises. We only had to pay the cost of the study books.

Different strokes for different folks.

You are in the best position to decide what works for your student.

How does your student feel about the two different approaches? DG

It’s not what I would expect children to be doing with a tutor. It’s a homework type of book and I believe the sections are 4 sets of 25. If you want to do 100 a week you could split it over 4 days.

Not “student” DG.....”son”....!

DG - he prefers the study centre but I suspect that is mainly as they do a lot of work on computer.

I guess what I am asking is would you expect him to be getting better grades in the 11+ Club practice papers at this stage.

Is anyone else doing these practice papers?

Perhaps splitting into 4 lots of 25 is a good idea.