Is 11 plus exam tutoring vital (especially if my child is already very bright) and if incredibly beneficial, when is the best time to start ?

Introduction to 11 plus entrance testing

In many areas in England, 11 plus entrance examinations are run by approximately 164 state- funded grammar schools. In essence, they are employed to select which students will be offered a place when transferring to secondary/Key Stage 3. Therefore, they explicitly set out to assess and determine whether a pupil demonstrates extremely high levels of academic ability and prowess. This is because grammar schools purport to cater adeptly for advanced or fast-track academic progress and achievement throughout years 7-13. As a result, it appears that the tests are deliberately designed to probe for skills, knowledge, understanding and their applications beyond the core skills Maths and English National Curriculum delivered in Key Stage 2.

Children usually sit 11 + in the autumn term of Year 6 – often in September – in plenty of time to assist their forthcoming applications to secondary schools via Local Education Authorities.

Often the tests focus upon combinations of Maths, English Reading Comprehension, Verbal Reasoning and Non-verbal reasoning. Individual schools freely choose which of these skills are included in their specific 11 plus each year. Also, the schools frequently used materials for testing devised and designed by two completely separate boards : GL Assessment or CEM Assessment. GL offer some free, downloadable practice papers online whereas CEM purposefully do not make past papers available I the public domain.

It is vital that you visit the website or indeed websites of grammar schools using the 11 plus entrance test to determine their chosen format (please DO expect significant variations) , and dates for testing. Some grammar schools also offer Year 5s the chance to sit practice tests in re summer term.

So do I need a tutor?

In my personal and professional opinion – backed up by years of experience – the answer to that is a categorical yes.

The grammar schools are intentionally trying to test for indications of true and independent intelligence – and quite rightly are averse to the concept of tutoring which might somehow enable pupils who will quite simply struggle with the high pace and expectations that grammar schools work to.

At the same time, there is NO WAY whatsoever that tutors in this context could supply rote learning or similar to somehow scrape a student through.

Instead, the best 11 plus tutoring explores new skills with an applied focus upon efficient approaches and useful strategies strategies in a whole new arena of problem solving scenarios.

Uses your very bright child could probably fathom this in the test. However, equally intelligent pupils who have had that extra input will be working so much more fluently, confidently and faster than your child who is happily engaging with this for the first time. Every single mark counts. With an estimated initial 1500 applicants for a few hundred places, your child needs at least some pre-learning and exposure to really achieve to their full potential – working with pace, accuracy and self-assurance aged 10-11 in fairly daunting and silent test conditions.

Here is a simple – one skill- parallel. An intelligent year 5 and 6 pupil would indeed fathom how best to divide 208,794 by 89. However, those pupils who had explored algorithms for composite and prime number long division will answer this rapidly. Those who are using every ounce of intelligence to fathom it out, simply will not. Multiply this by so many genuine unknowns -verbal and non-verbal reasoning are NOT even looked at in schools),- just how much of a disadvantage do you want your child to be at in the tests?

So, if I just buy my son/daughter the 11 plus books, will this help?

Potentially more than doing nothing, but this is perhaps like hoping the monkey with a laptop will type coherently. Yes your child will pick up some of the prerequisite skills but not all and even with the ones they do begin to understand, these become progressively more challenging and interesting in the tests. Then they need coaching on how best to achieve maximum marks and strut their stuff under timed pressurised test conditions which most 10-11 year olds have precisely zero experience of…

So when is the best time to start tutoring?

As a time-served Year 5 and 6 teacher, when pupils enter Year 5 there are so many new expectations about work, attainment, focus, concentration and standards.

This can take them a few weeks or months to take on board and adjust to. Accepting that it all depends, I would recommend either just after Halloween or Autumn 2. Or, for the most able, January. Like a dog, Education is for life not just Christmas and a truly productive two terms of tutoring should enable your already able son or daughter to take all new skills and thinking in their stride, achieve mastery and solve the more challenging question types, and perform with skill and dare I say, positive pleasure in the tests themselves. This only comes for 99.9% with high quality guidance and tutoring.

Small group face to face, course- based tuition or personalized, tailor-made learning for your child?

Several students that I have worked with as a one-to-one 11 plus tutor had previously tried to access what was ostensibly similar learning in small group, face to face courses with a tutor. Again and again, both parents/carers and pupils switched to online one-to one as in small group sessions their learning was compromised by the needs of others even in a group of 4 to 6. Learning is inevitably diluted and compromised by the varying needs of each participating group member – rather than being specific to your child and exclusively focused upon enabling him or her to excel within the tests and access the secondary school that will best ensure they thrive.