GD terrified of 11+

My DH attended same grammar school as Berners Lee but was a couple of yrs older. DH failed his A levels & did them again by correspondence course and did well! We are still in regular contact with several of DH school chums. All did OK but nothing special! No more than my school mates at the comp! At the time it was a gramnar for bright working class boys from mostly the local Clapham Junction area. ..it gave them aspiration beyond their fathers' brown collar jobs.There were middle class boys too..one of our gang was the son of a doc. They lived in the suburbs & obv. did not do well enough to get into his local grammar!

Grammar school pupils who would not have flourished without their early education.
But most of those people were educated in the days when many children left school at 12 or 14 - if they went at all.
Not Berners Lee, obviously.

But the OP’s concerns are real. If the child in question is this bothered about the eleven plus she perhaps should not be put through it.

My DD did an Oxford interview and was not offered a place. It was a relief as even she says, being nervous, she would never have coped with the tutorial system. She went elsewhere and got her first.

Horses for courses.

There is no big deal about grammar schools. They do what they say on the tin:- provide a fast track academic education for those able to profit from it. There are other aspects to a person, yes, and sometimes the very able do not have the other life skills to succeed in life so grammar school is not a free pass.

But - Shakespeare, Coleridge, Pepys, Marvell, Berners Lee (amongst many others.) Do you really think they didn’t add to the sum of human happiness? Grammar school pupils who would not have flourished without their early education.

Community schools tend to be those still overseen by a Local Authority rather than Academies /Free Schools.

Mandeville describes itself as a non-selective comprehensive, so I think the non-selective bit must apply to the children who opt not to take the test as obviously many are creamed off for the Aylesbury Grammars. I feel sure I read somewhere that the equivalent of secondary moderns are called Community Schools, but I can’t find where now. It seems a bit of a muddle.

PollyPerkins I totally agree.

NfK Any school can be called a community school, it doesn't mean anything, except perhaps it has community-based activities evenings/weekends. In some areas, all schools have community in their title. Similarly a school describing itself as non-selective could be in an area which has selection, hence would have been referred to as a secondary modern years ago.
It seems Milton Keynes is the only Bucks area with no selection. And though the newish secondary in Winslow describes itself as comprehensive, I'd be surprised if some Y6 didn't apply to the Aylesbury or Buckingham grammars, hence stopping the secondary from being comprehensive..

There are so many different types of 'clever' . Kids who have good memories, those who find it easy to learn by rote, those who 'get' non verbal reasoning, those who know instinctively how to solve problems, those who see patterns, articulate kids, kids who look at paintings and can talk about them, kids who dance spontaneously, kids etc etc. who have great social /empathy skills..the list is long. Sadly we seem to place greater value on certain skills and not on others yet we need people with different skills & abilities to make our world go round.

HM999 my DGD1 has opted not to take the 11+. She lives in the north of Buckinghamshire and will be going to a non-selective secondary comprehensive school. I believe selective secondary modern schools for those not achieving grammar school standard are called community schools.

A pity really!

I've often wondered if putting on headphones and listening to something eg a language, whilst you sleep at night could work

We learnt that we had to work as there was no way that the teacher could open up the top of our head and pour the knowledge in!

pollyperkins the one thing I did learn from my grammar school was that we were all very, very stupid girls. (A stream too.)

I am sad that there is such stress for children throughout their school lives. It does seem to be the way of the world nowadays in the never ending effort to make all people the same. It will never work as we know that children develop at their own pace and they are not the same.
One of my friends is teaching her year 6 pupils lessons which she learnt in her teens and says the youngsters don't have the maturity to understand what they are learning. The brighter ones can learn parrot fashion but even they don't understand what could be the point/application of what they are supposed to be learning.

There seem to be far more exams nowadays than there ever were from the very first school day. DD teaches little ones in their first year of 'proper' school and she hates the sats system which even her 'babies' have to sit, most of whom don't know what on earth is going on. Could be because they cannot read or write!? Teachers are not allowed to grade them nowadays in order to spare them such stress. Some of the children in her class are not even able to cope with ordinary lessons and are only there because the parents wish them to be in mainstream school in order to be seen as normal. The teachers are not allowed to recommend a more suitable school to the parents which seems ridiculous. You can understand the aspiration but it is insensitive in many ways because the children struggle so much and are often very unhappy.
The other side of the coin is the grading of the teachers based on the improvenent shown in their next Sats results which the teachers know from day 1 is not going to happen. It is little wonder that some of the results really appear to be skewed when the teacher gets to know their new pupils and wonders how on earth a particular child was credited with the marks shown on their record. At this point the raised eyebrows tell the story.

I am just a granny who would like children to enjoy their school days - so what do I know except that commonsense has gone.

Sorry to brag (I try not to but Leemw's post has made it impossible for me to ignore) - all my children went to good comprehensives, all got a clutch of grade A's at A level, 2 went to Oxbridge, the 3rd to a good redbrick where he got a First. All have masters degrees as well and my daughter now has a PhD too. They are also able to converse with people from all walks of life without being snobbish or patronising . Don't tell me they could have done better at a grammar school. I went to a grammar school back in the day and the teaching was rubbish compared with the teaching I have observed in comprehensives where I have worked.
Sorry. Rant over.

HM999
I could write a list of evidence to disprove leemw's post but, of course, it is all anecdotal.

Beau
When I worked in Buckinghamshire, it was comprehensives in the north of the county, grammars and secondary moderns in the rest. Is it different now?

Good mixed-ability teaching can enhance the experience of the most and least able in a secondary maths class. It's about in-depth learning. The most because they have be able to say why/how something works or when this is true, the least because they can hook into the trains of thought of other pupils, not just the teacher's.
Sadly as setting is so common, because of all the testing in schools, primary and secondary, and because mixed-ability requires a certain style of teaching which doesn't fit with the teaching to the test ethos we have now, it has fallen out of favour in England.

With you Jalima.
Only by being educated at a really excellent grammar school will your child or grandchild be able to advance to a top university. Ha ha. My poor daughter must be odd then, comprehensive-educated and gained her place at the university with more A level pupils applying per place than any other!
I'm a retired teacher, and would never work in a grammar school because I went to one, and still carry the scars of being the thickest despite 2 post-graduate degrees. My sister, smarter than me, hated it, and left education altogether at 16.
Why separate children, 75% who suffer the indignity of failure (actually I think it varies in different areas, it can be between 18% to 32%, and in same area it can be different % according to gender) and those at the bottom of the grammar school who feel like failures too? Now that they don't leave education/training until 18, it's more true than ever.

I am astonished at your post leemw and find it hard to believe that you were a teacher.
Only by being educated at a really excellent grammar school will your child or grandchild be able to advance to a top university
Not true

A good secondary school won each of my sons a scholarship to a great university career!
I'm sorry, but I don't understand that sentence. Are they academics?

leem as a former headteacher I disagree with your perspective. Whilst outcomes at grammar schools are usually academically high that is not a surprise! The children who attend have been selected based on their academic ability. If I have time I will hunt out data to show that students' progress at grammar school is often less than those at comprehensive schools, who teach all comers..most very successfully.

leemw711, I'm glad you are happy with the education your children received. However, those of us whose children went to 'top universities' from true comprehensives can't let it go unchallenged.

A decent comprehensive system offers a good, well rounded education, and I count it as one of the best things in my children's lives. They're all great team players who get on well with all sorts of people, and are valued in their jobs.

I'd also like to add that success in life is not only about going to a 'top university'.

Without knowing the alternatives available to this little girl, we don't know what is best for her - and indeed OP's job is to help with offering some respite and calm, not making decisions.

As a former teacher I can’t understand why some of you are criticising the grammar school system. It is infinitely better than other secondary schools and gives children a better chance of educational success and progress than any other. Only by being educated at a really excellent grammar school will your child or grandchild be able to advance to a top university. A good secondary school won each of my sons a scholarship to a great university career!

Agree too with Beau!

Yes Common Entrance is still sat at most Prep schools. Children are normally about 12 when they take it and results will count when going onto their next school at age 13.