Queen Elizabeth Barnet (for boys) Grammar School exam prep

[Ta-ta]

Hi, I would suggest to quickly cover year 6 maths. Your child has to be very able at maths and very fast even at this stage. My child is very confident at maths and still lost few mark at QE.
English you will need to do a lot of past papers as he will need to be able to understand the text, extract the information and infer from the text. A month before the exam you can do MCQ papers and let’s not forget the grammar and punctuation. We didn’t use bond or CCG books as I didn’t think they are the correct one for QE and Latymer. My child score highly in both schools, and I can say from personal experience-No to bond and ccg books.
If I can suggest something to you- make sure you have back up plan otherwise the pressure will be very high. Good luck.

[sonjyot]

Ta-Ta can you please advise, which books and papers you have used? I understand Bond and CGP are not for QE but would appreciate which books / papers to use?

[Ta-ta]

Hi Sonyjoy,
First you need to make sure he knows year 6 maths. You can buy some study books for year 6 like: Target-Your-Maths-Year 6 Or Galore park one. You don’t need to do every example but to make sure he know every topic. On this way will know his weakness and what to work on. This can be covered really fast as you are not doing the whole book. Than you can use First past the post, galore park and GL materials you can find. Don’t forget you can use them again and again to make sure he can work on them until he gets them correct. Bond you can use some of the questions from the books but you need to chose them well, this is why I personally don’t like them. If your child is good at Maths at this point it will make it very easy for you. You can give him some past papers to stretch (from time to time)him but this is very different from Grammar school. They expect kids to be well above KS2 , more KS3.
English - we use only past papers and a month before the exam I bought books from Amazon on MC grammar and comprehension books from First past the post and GL books .
I mostly worked on comprehension and creative writing in year 5 as this was his weakness.We did use our Saturday for a study day(comprehension and creative writing)and few nights after school another 30min to hour for going over maths , creative writing but no stress if it was homework from school.
Good luck.

[thisisnuts]

They expect kids to be well above KS2 , more KS3.

No they really, really DON’T expect kids to be at KS3 level - just very fast and accurate at KS2.

DS got a high score without doing any KS3 Prep. We stretched with PMC papers. But he did find when he was in years 7 & 8 that there were lots of boys who had covered quite a bit (in a few cases, all) of KS3 before they started at the school.

[Ta-ta]

I was talking about Independent school Maths past pappers. Usually the end questions are above KS2 and require some knowledge of KS3,at list on top independent schools . I am not applying they need to cover KS3. Please don't get me wrong, and I am sorry if I have not explained it better.

[thisisnuts]

Ah yes, that's true - the Indies do stray into KS3.

[soumyadineshb]

Hi,

I am after some advice from you all on what materials to use to prepare for QE English paper. Any materials you found very useful will be a great suggestion

Also any tips on which materials is useful to prepare for spelling and punctuation will be great.

Thanks in advance.