Efforts required

[parent2013]

As you know that the bar is getting raised with every passing year as we see the numbers of children surging up for the various grammar school entrance exams. As a parent, do you know every trick in the book and how much work is required?

There is no right or wrong answer. The efforts do vary from individual needs but this is just an attempt to benefit 2014 parents by giving a flavour of what efforts were put in by 2013 pupils (and also outcomes to be posted in Oct/Nov).

I would request the parents to please share their info and refrain from making this thread into a debate of what's right and wrong.

[Dande]

Parent2013

Have you ever considered that some children will not pass these exams regardless of tuition and time spent on preparation????

[leanmeamum]

For the creative writing, I would say that there are about 12-13 topics which you need to prepare. Having done that try practising how to change the stories written to suit different topics. Lots of topics overlap and children can adapt their existing stories to suit these Children also learn to adapt other material to suit their topics.

For eg. a scary story can be adapted to suit - meeting a stranger, walking through a strange place, etc.

[Juancurt]

Blimey!

We had one hour a week tuition from November 2012 up until the exam and probably the same amount of practising at home.

I saw it as an enhancement of skills rather than trying to get my child to the required level to pass. It worked with my elder child who is now in a Grammar School and this time as we wait for the results if it is meant to be she will pass.

I have comprehensives I would be happy for her to for to.

She sat the Bexley and Kent (for practice).

[London_Mum]

I think the relationship isn't that straight forward. The amount of preparation a parent chooses to do is often directly related to how likely the parents think their child is to pass.
A parent with a child considered highly likely to pass may either go totally over the top on exam preparation just to make sure or may feel very little is added except exam technique.
Equally a parent who feels certain their child will fail without tuition (or is borderline at best) may also opt for one of the extremes. Either they will tutor for 2 years to cancel out the fact that their child may have areas of weakness. Or they will prepare very little seeing it as a bit of a waste of effort for such an unlikely goal.

Therefore time spent preparing is probably more of an indicator of a parent's views on their child's natural ability and their perception of how competitive things are in their region than a definitive guide to what is required to pass each test. A very bright child doing one year's tuition may have easily passed with only 1 month's prep instead but will never know that and may attribute their excellent score to all the hard work they did.

Perhaps parents of similar ability children who took different approaches with each sibling would be the best ones to ask?

[Bobmumof3]

We too started in November last year. He did 4 papers a week (VR, NVR, Maths and English) we varied the English between comprehension and a piece of creative writing.

Some weeks he had off if he had a lot of homework or social commitments etc.

We kept it quite low key, but as you say he is top at his school so we know he is bright. He grasped the question types straightaway so it was easy for us to tutor him.

Time will tell....

[Ladymuck]

I agree that it would also be helpful to have an idea where these children are in their class.

[MerlinFromCamelot]

Dd1 is in year 9 at GS, top set. In primary school she was miss average from reception to year 6. A fair few of the so called high fliers did not pass the 11+

Only did DIY prep. But no clue as where to start with Dd2??

[Ziggy]

Hi
We don't know any results yet so I'm not sure how helpful this will turn out to be.... However, I thought the best preparation was exam technique. Lots of work on timing, key words for the creative writing, eliminating multiple choice answers that couldn't be right, making sure they guess the answers they haven't got to, reading the questions before the comprehension etc etc.
We did do some work on any weak areas in knowledge but mainly exam techniques!

[MerlinFromCamelot]

Now that the results are out, anyone happy to share which materials were used?

Thank you