0:00 – Intro
0:18 – What was the 11+ for Originally?
6:12 – The Current Landscape
7:01 – Format of Papers & Previous Exam Boards
11:17 – New Exam Boards
22:03 – What makes it challenging
26:49 – Pupil Premium, Catchments & Social Mobility
30:30 – How to Prepare for the 11+
42:48 – The Future of the 11+
44:19 – Outro

Intro

hello Internet people the fact that you’re here today means you passed our selective test which was designed tokeep you out it’s been a while since we last discussed the 11 plus so today we thought it’d be a good idea to look atthe current landscape Mr John good question it’s a great questionthere let’s start with what was the original purpose of the 11 plus exam the 11 plus was always designed to select

What was the 11+ for Originally?

the brightest and best students essentially I I do think there’s beenthat hasn’t really changed that’s that’s not in a state of flux it’s just the the different ways that they’re selectingpeople and I think the extent to which they they select so when it firststarted postwar I think there was a initial idea that our economy is splitinto kids who will go into Academia and become I don’t know engineers and thingslike that like where you require University education andthe let’s say the more vocational laborer so initially in in a time wherevery few people went to University I think that was the initial initial concept is that there was meant to be asort of split in in the workforce where people would go down the vocationalroute some would go down the academic route but that’s changed somewhat in the sort of interveningyears more and more people going to University and that kind of thing soit’s exactly the same but it’s more competitive than ever do you think it’s still as useful as it used to be no umnot in that sense they used to have grammar streams within secondary modernsso so that where like a school passes their like Primary School students onto a like I’ll give you anexample so my dad he didn’t pass my uncle passed 11 BL he went to a grammarschool my dad didn’t pass but he had missed quite a lot of school um but he went into asecondary modern and then he went into a class and that was a grammar schoolstream he he went to in a class called G so the idea with that was that youreceive a grammar school education despite not having passed I guess you can think of it as a bit like say setone in the regular State School even if students don’t pass 11 plus there’sstill the opportunities over a pretty good education but now I think it’s more it’s more competitive everyyear I think there’s more and more people going in for it um so I guess that’s that’s changed somewhat because Ithink all those years ago not many people would even think that they would necessarily have to well we had a lowerpopulation as well and that also sort of factors into it so we got a higher population now so more competition and Ithink also I think with higher immigrant population we got a bit more Drivetowards the 11 plus so there’s a lot more people taking it so it has has changed but the original idea hasn’tchanged much it’s still to select the priors and best I think one of the so sothe the thing that you said about um sets that’s that’s sort of one of the reasoning behind um grammar schools inthe first place isn’t it you it’s easier to teach a cohort that are of the samesort of academic AB um ability but then the same it can sort of be achiev D incomprehensive and and second modern schools where you know you have a you have this set system you know you’ve gota top set sort of your middle set or set and then and and then your bottom set II think I’m sort of in in the middle as to whether whether it’s worth it yeah I mean I think there is a a little bit ofa difference in that if the whole school is selected then obviously like thestudents at the very top in the top set will be a lot stronger on average andsame with the middle sets as well they’ll be stronger so even if you’re in set three or set two in a grammar schoolthat’s potentially you’re working at a higher level than a set one in a stateschool but there’s plenty of very intelligent State School students sowell we’ve also got less people going to University now as well because originally it was to to to guide peoplethrough that grammar school and into universities you now have less people going to universities as wellcom compared to what so compared to when it first started so it started in like we said after the war 1944 basically itwas a way of getting people from Secondary School like grammar school technical school or or modern thegrammar school would basically prepare people to go to universities but I’m saying like nowadays there’s less people going intouniversities really no I would have thought more people would go to universities now like than back thenbecause only about 2% of people went to UNI and my guess yeah compared to then but Imean like there’s a decline currently oh do you mean over the past few years yeah yeah yeah so do you think that’s do youthink do you think that’s making the 11 plus less important like in recent history well the I think the value ofbeing a graduate has decreased with the increased cost in University fees so thereturn on investment becomes less because there is something called The Graduate premium so like graduates tendto earn more than people who don’t graduate from a university but I’d say like over the past few years becausestudent fees have risen there’s less of an incentive for people to go down thatroute but you’ve also got more and more people doing apprenticeships and that sort of stuff and like scarcity createsvalue so there’s so many people with degrees nowadays that they obviouslyless valuable obviously there’s a shortage of people in certain trades um where there wasn’t as much inthe past partially because of the population increase so yeah’s a whole variety of but there there’s so manyfactors behind it um so should we go into what’s going on currently because I

The Current Landscape

think that’s what most people would have clicks here for um a lot of changes examboards exam boards um different formats for each one and I think quite a lot ofparents at least from like our experience are a little bit lost as to what they should be doing what theyshould be going for and what they need to know for each exam board well I’d saythere’s sort of one overall change and that’s this that’s the increase of the theschools generally that are adopting an online approach to the exams so theythey utilizing a test Bank of some kind to select their students yeah especiallyespecially in the independent school sector so originally we had GL which was

Format of Papers & Previous Exam Boards

four different papers yeah maths English verbal nonverbal it was one time for the entirepaper um and there were four of them right well they they usually they used to do it split across two test days sothere was like yeah there’s there’s a stand there’s a there’s a standard format and then theborrow can also request certain changes for the ex yeah so it can be there can be changes in between different B andstuff yeah but originally um at least like 10 years ago or something that was a that was aStructure right and then cem came along in don’t remember the year20 around 2013 that’s all time and they introduced a style of paper that was twopapers with all four subjects within that paper and each section was timed individually you know like 10 minutes onday to hand handling 5 minutes comprehension but then I remembered when I did the 11 plus that it was timedindividually section by section in it when yeah when I took the test yeah Ithink it was I honestly don’t remember I don’t think it was I think it um I remember it was but I I know that CM wasintroduced to make it um to make the 11 plus a little more challenging yeah moretutor proof is what they call it yeah yeah because they found nothing’s to proof more more G toproof but but then theyve actually found that the reverse happened so wellbecause I think is because they introduced so many different and new things like for example there weren’t 3DNets and 3D non-verbal questions before so people felt like they had to gettutoring for it because it was a new thing yeah and obviously that tipped the skulls the other way I think was itcouncils and the basically um educationalists are obsessed with theidea of of social Mobility so they always go okay well we want to encourage like say more poorerstudent well poor students to be able to enter these grammar schools and for it not to just be all the sort of richerkids being able to get in because they’ve got access to tutors so that’s the thinking behind making it more tutorproof so you’ve got people so you got the selection of people just with higher IQs who are able to get in but inpractice it ended up going the other way because they studied it um so they theyanalyzed how students were doing in the switch to CM and they found thatactually it was it was not encouraging social Mobility at all was actually worse than before like you said andthat’s probably because if you got access to people who can teach how totackle those components which someone from a lowest social economic backgroundis unlikely to have then they’re going to have issues with it so probably thefairest way of doing it is just to do maths in English because everyone learns maths in English yeah but it doesn’ttest everything does it like yeah I know but it I’m just saying they’re trying topush this social Mobility goal but if you have com specific components thatthey don’t tackle in school then you’re not going to encourage social Mobilityso for a long that’s been the two exam boards well actually you know we had CSS as well yeah which is moreusing the esss side of things they have creative writing whereas the others don’t they’re not multiple choice forthe most part whereas the other ones mostly are they have like a little it’s like some of the paper is a little bitmultiple choice and some like mixed mix format yeah and and and then the onlineum examples like IAB so they then the newer yeah yeah they are multiple choiceas well and the and the SAT but they didn’t used to be that’s the thing the reason why is just because of profiteasier you don’t have to employ people to look through written answers and all that sort of stuff so it’s easier it’s ait’s a profit motivated change like everything that we see in terms of what’s Happening

New Exam Boards

Now what are the new examples so recently we’ve got atom which hasstarted to enter um especially some Independent Schools you got forest and chigwellother places using atom they’re local to here yeah and they’ve got things likecreative comprehension which is is it’s just notnot a straightforward comprehension there’s some like problem solving within it and that kind of thing so that’ssomething that I saw sorry what do you mean what do you mean by that so it’s not just read this text under and umanswer these questions it’s like like inferring you like those questions with like dates that you can figure out thisperson was it will it will use all kinds of of things within it so like it could have charts and stuff like that sothey’ve got to work out or infer some information from it’s a bit bit more involved bit more complicated I guessthat’s quite good cuz it encourages this flexible thinking um it’s harder to prepare forcuz you’ve just got to sort of cope with it um and that’s kind of why if I haveteach children how to how to pass Independent School exams or something like that I always think the mostimportant thing overall is just being an adaptable Problem Solver so just teaching that ability to cope with curveballs not teaching specifically for a test or anything like that it’s more can theydevelop a wide range of skills that they can of utilize in in thissituation um also obviously cm they moved online so now we’ve got morebarers taking up GL and GL have they were traditionallysplit across two test days and but we’ve had more borrowers obviously seeminglywanting to requests to have one specific test day andutilizing some of those cem elements um so the the timed in individual sectionswhich don’t allow you to go back and forth in the paper which I guess adds a little bit of difficulty but it can alsoit probably help some kids with their T time management a bit because if theyinsist that there’s a certain section that they I’ve had this experience sometimes when you give a kid 80questions or something like that they they don’t like 25 yeah they they don’t know how to manage their time so theythey just go okay I’m going to spend like 30 minutes on this like little section here and it’s like that’s notthe best way of doing it so I suppose each one’s one Mark yeah I suppose it’sit’s kind of good in in that sense although it does add for for a lot of kids it adds an an extra layer ofdifficulty it’s just something else to think about isn’t it so you said I atom yeah the different boards yeah Isaid atom GL CM C and uh selectiveeligibility test the what the SE used in um Sutton yeahand and also there’s the future stories do we know the formats of these ones uh yes I think it’s a um I think uh yeahthere’s a mat in English paper which I believe is around 45 to 50 minutes umeach and then it’s used for a group of schools around the southern area uhWellington yeah Consortium yeah yeah Wellington Tiffin and there’s a stageone and for some of the schools ask for a stage for a second stage stage of testing but yeah it’s used for aConsortium of schools okay and future stories is like a bit of a strange oneagain it’s like a consortia of schools and I can’t remember which schools I know chelsford is isn’t in that likechelsford Grammar School for Girls um that is part of it so I need to learnthat because one of one of my students is actually doing that exam but I Ibelieve there’s creative writing um in it so it seems to be a weirdum combination of cm and uh csse in asense because it’s got that creative writing side but I think the creative writing is actually quite difficultthey’ve got to write something quite long but I don’t know we’re going to we’re just going to see loads of loads of um random exam boards sortof and I think more and more schools will start to produce their own sort of say that yeah as it becomes a bit easierto develop their own exams internally um I thinkwe’ll see more and more schools develop their own bespoke systems or they’ll youknow join forces and create one yeah so everything’s a bit up in the air at the moment like I think yeah I think we’llsee changes over the next say it does take time obviously and they’ve gotcontracts in place so obviously like any of these test banks that have like afiveyear contract or something like that in place but after that you’ll see moreand more shifting so every like 5 years or so makes it more difficult for us itdoes but especially when we try and make mock papers and things to yeah no that that can that can be that can be trickybecause it can be difficult to reflect the exact nature of the paper yeah and by by the time we’ve finalized yeah afew sets of papers it’s time to change everything again isn’t it that’s why I think it’s quite important to actually teach them as much as possible like justExpos yeah Expos to a lot of different yeah and so many kids take more than one exam as well so I I have kids that takelike say three four sets of exams and it’s like completely different so I’m just I just go what do you aim for youjust cover as wide a base as possible so they’re not in the last few years we’vehad Redbridge and se6 schools they used to be on different days is they last few yearsbeen been they’ve been on the same I feel like it’s purposely done just to make them make a make a decision yeahI’m get I’m I get quite a lot of kids that are both that are doing The Independent Schools too and then there’sa whole difference there because you’ve got say bankr doing CM but then you’ve got like chigwell doing atom but you’vegot another three or four months to work on that after yeah although some of them haven’tlike some of the kids they they hadn’t done reasoning so I had to I have tolike teach them a ridiculous amount of reasoning in 3 months which is not idealthe last time we spoke about the 11 plus was probably about a year and a half agoI mean in a podcast obviously we spoken about it every week every day um but thatwhole last podcast was episode 12 a whole conversation on whether we thoughtthe 11 plus was right or wrong for specific people I don’t know if our views have changed on that since sincethe last conversation yeah what are your thoughts um who’s it right for who’s it wrong forit’s it I don’t know I think it’s sometimes difficult to say like I I seeI see some children and I I think right okay that they are well suited to agrammar school um to the point where I think they may find life incertain um comprehensive schools difficult yeah but at at the same time II think you can get a good education in most in most schools um because it’salso highly dependent on the individual and the the teachers within the schoolum things like things like teacher retention rates make a difference um ifyou’ve you know if you’ve got one consistent good teacher throughout the throughout your academic life I feellike that that makes that plays quite a key role yeah I feel like it’s it’s it’skind of difficult to say like who it’s right and wrong wrong for there’s a lotof a a lot of gray area it’s not like yes or no I feel so yeah the people who fly through the 11 plus and it’srelatively straightforward for so they get very high qualifying scores and just have you know they they’re more capablewith you know Academia then Grandma scoes the right route for themgenerally because in a state school even if they obviously they they’re in the top set and that kind of thing there areare some really really good State schools though that that can cater for them but some State schools can’t caterfor that sort of level of ability then I think a grammar school is a good solution but I’d say some people whojust about get in it might actually be a suboptimal situation for them because tobe at the bottom in a school is never a nice thing yeah it knocks yourconfidence this is what we said last time I think yeah like if you if you the people that just get in they do worsethan the people that just missed out cuz the people that just missed out are usually at the top of the class in anon-selective school and that carries with them from like year seven to GCCthey actually do better in the gc’s than the kids that just got in yeah to a selective school and are kind of at thebottom yeah it play it does play a big part and I don’t think a lot of people a lot of parents realize yeah and then allall the sort of ability is all ready within the TR so I can see that but buton the on the converse you you get the so those who just miss out they also carthey also carry that um oh i’ I’ve failed this yeah this which is I failedthis big exam which for them at that age is very often an exam which is built upto be sort of a be all and kind of a brutal exam because yeah it’s the only it’s the only test in your entire lifethat you never get to take again will I retry for yes yeah you can fail your driving test anumber of times even blood test you can go in twice three times and you never know why you can never fix yeah youcan’t fix you don’t know why you can never retake it it’s kind of brutal for an 10 11 year old to go through that thebiggest barrier to a child aside from just academic ability and that kind of thing is is all the maturity to be ableto handle it so to be able to study hard enough to toget in but also to be able to handle a test situation those sort of things makea big difference what makes it challenging for children um at at the age of 10 11 so I

What makes it challenging

think one of the one of the challenges is if you’re in an area where there aren’t that many grammar schools or orIndependent Schools like Redbridge for example uh you know where we only havetwo grammar schools one one for boys one one for girls um the you knowcompetition is quite tough it it is very immense so I think that’s that’s one ofthe challenges but at the same time just to maybe contradict myself I don’t think introducing more grammar schools is thesolution I think going back to what I said earlier maybe looking at bringingquality teachers in that stay that stay is yeah bettersolution I I think that the having the grammar School stream within uh ordinarySchool makes How would how would that work so like like like it happened withmy dad so even though he didn’t get into a grammar school he was able to have sort of a grammar education um becauseit was in the higher sets there there’s loads of things in in grammar schoolsthat you don’t you sort of so for Latin you can study Latin and yeah they’remore they have a a slight bias towards the more sort of academic subjects rightmath science yeah languages such as Latin you you like business studies you wouldn’t be able to but you could studyeconomics yeah I think the more vocational subjects are catered Forslightly better at the um comprehensive schools what about the age maturitybecause obviously children born earlier in the year will have an advantage yeah right yeah it’s there it’s probably theit’s one of the biggest factors definitely soort of how how mature thechild is there is a massive massive difference between children born at the beginning compared to born at the endpeople mature different rates firstly but also at that age things change very quickly I also think there’s a big difference between boys and girls thereis there’s there’s quite a lot of evidence that suggests that boys are at least a year behind girls in terms ofmaturity more than that yeah it’s probably probably more than that because you reach your mental maturity as a man when you’re like in your 20s uh yeahit’s true yeah no it’s true I watch I watched something the other day it’s true no I’m laughing at myself cuz I don’t what I’m laughing at myself cuz Idon’t think it’s true for me but I still act like a kid it’s I thinkit’s 26 or something like that that’s the yeah so um this thisum I can’t remember what the podcast was but I think it’s about 2 or 3 years so when uh a girl at 16 will have the uhmental age of a guy at 19 or something like that no I mean and they and theyhave the so they actually have an advantage in terms of um education I notice it massively when I’m teachingthem for 11 plus like the massive difference between the boys and the girls like the girls actually no I’venoticed it too the boys are just like oh I just want to like play around or something like that and then the girls aremore you know a lot more focused yeah and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing it’s just bad in this specificsituation yeah cuz people like you do learn by messing about with things and like kind of taking things apart puttingstuff together like you learn from your environment there’s there’s different typ there’s some people who believe thatboys should start school later than girls I think they probably should yeah like they they they need to spend a bitmore time just like playing around and then because they need the maturity to actually cope with academic study Ithink it’s the most important factor actually maturity M obviously you’ve gotacademic competence and stuff like that but in terms of actually getting the improvement over time if you’re workingwith a child L maturity comes probably top of the top of the list cuz they needto be mature enough to take on these Concepts and concentrate and that kindof thing plan and revise and all that yeah um and also just I think think parental invol involvements veryimportant but even some some parents really want to like you can tell they’re they’re very keen but their child isjust not not ready not ready for that um responsibility of taking it on ordoesn’t really want to do it in the first place and then it can be quite difficult to work with a

Pupil Premium, Catchments & Social Mobility

child over the past few years it’s been more difficult to get the qualifying score to get into the to get into theschool and I think part of the reason is because of this pupil premium thing soif you if a students in receipt of a pupil premium that will put them infront of children that aren’t even if they got the same score yeah and I’m not saying that that’s wrong as in I thinkit’s actually probably a good thing but I’m just saying it makes it slightly more difficult to yes it will it willput them in front yeah um I I think generally is actuallyprobably a good thing but it does mean that it’s harder to get to get a child ingenerally if you think about the average person coming to a tuition session they’re going to be usually in aslightly higher economic so what if you have someone that does come to a tuition session but isn’t uh like that well offsay they’re still doing pup premium yeah and they do tuition way of like it might give them aslight Advantage but there’s no way of controlling those no there isn’t but I suppose they can’t they can’t controlthat so it’s not but but I suppose it’s good that that a child from an A Higherno a lower socioeconomic background can get in or has a greater chance ofgetting in I think that’s probably a good good thing overall cuz it allowsfor that social Mobility didn’t you say that was um happening at University as well at themoment with University’s offering reduced with University’s providing reduced offers um these con contextualoffers based on sort of where you live or whether you were offered free School meals thingslike that but I’ve noticed that also at Independent School level too so there’salthough I’d say there’s fewer General scholarships there’s more bseriesavailable so that sort of gives you more of a chance of being able to get get toa school despite being say like middle class I think there’s a general effortacross the board to improve social Mobility but it’s I think it’s quite animpossible thing really because you’ve got sort of postcode selection as well so obviously people buy houses nearschools and then that will put up the prices of houses in places that arewithin the catchment area of a school or a good school so everything’s a postcode Lottery the catchment area thing is kindof crazy cuz we we’ve we’ve known people that have literally been on the otherside of the road sometimes the catchman splits a road in half and we’ve had people that live here on this side ofthe road and the catchman is on that side and they just don’t get a placeyeah they they’re really strict about it well I’ve known people who’ve got really high scores but they don’t get inbecause they’re just not in the catchment obviously somewhere like ilford County ridiculously oversubscribed a lot of applicants Ithink for the past like like seven years or something like that no one’s got in from outside thecatch because they’ve got limited places and it the ones within thecatchment tape priority so there’s a lot of things like that it’s about a one in I don’t know if it’s changed now it’sabout 1 in 13 or 13.5 yeah very very low I think it was like 1 in 12 a few yearsago it’s slowly going yeah now it’s now 1 in 13 to 14 yeah for someone that’s

How to Prepare for the 11

going into the 11 plus preparation process now how would you advise them are they in year five or they in year four dostart with year four I mean we our course starts in year four I know a lot of people jump into year five butobviously two years is better than one so start with four and then we can go into five a year four I suppose in thoseyears four and five they learn a lot of new Concepts so especially things likefractions percentages and decimals they tend to be bigchallenges as they enter year four as s of said it’s important for children toknow their time tables that also tends to improve theirdivision and that kind of thing because those are like two things that they tend to struggle with so multiplyingespecially two two digit by two digit numbers M and also so dividing then Ithink fractions decimals and percentages tend to be big hurdles for them in yearfour so making sure that they’re relatively strong with their understanding of those Conceptsespecially fractions before they reach year five is yeah cuz you can’t do like ratio proportion yeah that sort of stuffbut I tell you like just having an early exposure to those Concepts and it it’strue that they don’t necessarily completely understand them by the end of year four but if they yeah but theyexposed to them that giv a a better chance for them to understand them in year five in terms of reading they needto be reading progressively and also enough so asufficient amount yeah cuz vocabulary is quite a big part of the 11 plus isn’t it yeah I tell you even though obviouslywith a switch to GL there’s less of a focus on vocabulary compared tocem but it factors into a lot of things so comprehension having a strongvocabulary is very useful mhm um andalso just a it improves their understanding of say a story and their ability to infer ifthey’re reading relatively complex books yeah um I mean it also helps to answer worded math questions yeah so verbalreasoning obviously comprehension is really really one of the most important important skills that you’ll ever learntoo so there’s no harm in doing it even if they don’t they don’t pass yeah so we get all the foundational knowledge inyear four for those that are starting in year five well all all of that and andmore basically so um the hard thing I think to get right is momentum becausewhat I’ve noticed is there some kids they they dothey start to lose momentum at the end of year five but that’s the time when you need to actually have momentum soyou know through the summer holiday actually that’s critical time whereas some some students theymight take a holiday or something like that or they might do something or or they might work less and that’s where Ifind a lot of people pass and fail is is is in those critical that critical monthbefore they start school because if they don’t have if they don’t have thatmomentum going into it yeah I mean it could go the other way as well I’ve seen a lot of times where children getoverworked and they they’ve got the momentum they’re going up and then they get to yeah like Easter or July yeah and themomentum they burn out and then they drop off then they’ve got to get from there back up again in like a month yesI think the timing of the breaks is is important too when they’re when they’re takenum because it’ll be different for different people as well yeah yeah for me just anecdotally from what Isee every single year there’s a few students and I start to notice I don’t know they over are lacking a bit ofmomentum or they need they me need more work M often it’ll be more work to behonest um in the vast majority of cases is is that they need to be working harder but you want the buildup to betowards the exam you don’t want to be working working harder and then yeah drop off it’s hard to say and also likethere’s things that characterize that momentum that aren’t just about work it’s like thechild’s incentive to to everything yeah there’s a lot into the child’s mood aswell like every there’s there’s so many critical things like food sleep exercise what’s going on at home what’s going onat school yeah stimulation generally that kind of thing um there’s a lot of factors as they go into an exam but I’dsay like like this is why I always advised against taking a holiday in thatyear five year I’d say in year four take your holiday take a nice long holidaysomething like that just yeah just just because in year five you’re not going tohave you need that momentum going into the exam so I I always recommendespecially if anyone joins in year for I was like take a holiday and summer because in year five youshouldn’t you shouldn’t be taking that long holiday fine fine for a week or something like that but I’ve noticed ithappening more and more recently people going away at that time in year five yeah wasn’t too bad this this timepeople were taking relatively short holidays but um it it’s taken that likefour or five week holiday where you’ll completely lose momentum the child will come back and yeahblank um so um why about things cuz I I always think I think we spoke about this the other day thingslike consistency how important do we think that is yeah no no so cons consistency is important um but alsojust remember you want especially a child in year four or year five you wantthem to have that that joy for learning yeah um so consistency shouldn’t be tothe point where they sort of become robotic that that Joy should should still be there for learning um yeah MHso there’s a fine balance there of making sure that that consistency is also maintaining that yeah MHmaintaining that Joy I think that’s that’s one of the most complex things in in terms of what wedo finding finding the balance because there is like sometimes I think ohthere’s so there’s so much to get through today we need to we need to crack on but then some sometimes I’mlike look they’re looking a bit it’s like they need something fun game or something like that like they needsomething to sort of keep their their sort of morale up so they can sort ofapproach the learning with a bit more GTO and that can be difficult to getright so vocabulary games and things like that I try to do a lot of that likevocabulary centered work yeah we’ve got the whiz card we got we do word all yeahthere’s like um countdown numbers yeah and just um I think also that’ssomething that families can can do too so things like Junior articulate just asa sort of good General skill that ability to articulatethemselves they can take that into secondary school and Beyond practicethat kind of thing and also the speed of thought that’s required to to play someof those board games so there’s things that families can do to sort ofencourage speed first of all cuz I do think it so boils down a lot to speed ofthought but also keeping it fun so keeping some aspect of of learning or orgetting fascinated about words and that kind of thing make it a fun aspect too there’s one more like sort key challengethat want to bring up is when do you think they should start full papers Ihave my thoughts on this full papers yeah full like exam 11 pluspapers uh is there a time that’s to early is a I I think they should be doingum some exam style questions throughouttheir learning but but an actual full length an actual full length paper towards the end of year five I I thinkbecause for for if for example if if you’re doing an exam that’s in it also depends when the so say so say the examin September yes right so if the exam’s in September I’ll take starting somepapers you know three 3 months before leaves you in a good position I I feel if you’ve done enough sort ofpreparation work and you’ve done you know sort of a a handful of exam questions up until that point then doingpapers 3 months out of the exam I think is is ideal I think yeah what do youthink I think um in terms of getting used to time conditions it can be usefulto start slightly earlier to but they don’t necessarily need to dothe exact exam format so it’s important for them to depend what you you’rethinking of of what’s the test for so I think sometimes a test can be toevaluate their levels or assess that in which case like I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to test throughout theperiod but but you’re talking about like but yeah like not like catch up sort ofwhat you’ve done so far I’m saying full 11 plus in terms of I think in termsof cuz you don’t want to do them constantly do you like I think that would just Jade them yeah that that thatcan be a bit of an issue if they start really early and they’re just relentlessly doing papers then it it’snot the most helpful activity so I partially agree with s of in terms ofthat’s how that’s probably that 3mon period before the exam is a time when you need to be doing a lot more so likemore regular papers but then you could do you could do one in March it wouldn’t hurt yeah see I was probably going tosay Easter April May time yeah cuz they don’t they won’t have learned all thetopics Yeah by by like you can you can sort of get abaseline um and and just see how they are like easier in in May and then up tolike 3 months before June July whatever yeah start doing full yeah yeah the and the advantage with doing that is becausethey haven’t because you know some of the students won’t have learned everything by that stage doing an examin in April it also gets yeah you you can sort of see how their problemsolving skills are being developed yeah you know whether they’re able to yeahmake a start on on questions on a topic that they haven’t learned before um it’salso good for them to see what they’re aiming towards cuz if they’ve never seen a full paper they don’t know whatthey’re working towards yes they do AER that you know that s of time they can say all right I can see that I’m here Ineed to get to here like having a Target is useful I think it’s also it does depend partiallyon the child because I’ve had some kids they’re so far behind that they needmore Learning Time rather than you know spending all the time uh doing tests wouldn’t bebeneficial in those three months they actually need to spend time like learning the material yeah if you don’tknow the concept you can’t answer it yeah so yeah in that in that case um but if a child is like as s said more orless ready for the exam by say may something like that then in those threemonths then the best use of the time is to exam technique is to work on thatexam technique so how do you think the 11 plus will change in the future or how

The Future of the 11

would you like it to be in the future I I like the paper base system but um Ithink we will I don’t see that sticking around yeah I think we will be moving to anonline system um similar to the IB where you’ve got some sort of adaptive AIdriven um testing testing platform in place for most exam boards and andschools so it like throws up a so if you get it right it throws up a harder question yeah and if you get incorrectit drops you down a bit Yeah Yeah yeah I was going to say the same thingwe we did actually start making our own version of that didn’t we a few years ago where it gives you leveled yeah yeahyeah I agree I think it will be computer adaptive computer adaptive some sort of AI will be involved for sure and thenback to what you said probably if there isn’t one or two exam boards that have cornered that AI computer market thenschools will create their own yeah and then we’ll have loads of different yeahspecified things for different schools yeah I think glad to see that happening already I think cuz it’ll be easier andeasier to implement these a question Banks and stuff like that I think it will will expand out and so ispotentially a massive profitable Market yeah so there’s been a lot of changes inthe last few years and by the sounds of it there’s going to be a lot more well

Outro

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