Ryan’s* mum initially contacted us in December 2017 to book an assessment, however, by January she’d found another tutor that was closer to her and cheaper and so decided to try them out instead.
Of course, that’s not where the story ends. (If it was, it wouldn’t be a very good story!)
By February, the other tutor had had to cancel some sessions due to ill health and Ryan didn’t have time to waste so he came to give Kin Learning a try. The problem was we now had only 7 months before the 11+.
Like all of our students, Ryan attended an initial assessment that enabled us to recommend a suitable class and to plan lessons that catered to him as an individual. This flagged several problems, however: he had never been introduced to reasoning and he struggled with basic arithmetic and in comprehension.
Taking into account that we were short of time and that Ryan was significantly behind, our conclusion was that the 11+ would be too much of a stretch for Ryan. Whilst Ryan’s mum took this on board, she felt sure her son had potential and would be willing to work hard.
Honestly, we were dubious but were open to being proved wrong. We all agreed not to rule anything out and, if worst came to worst, the work he did with us would be help him at school generally.
Following the assessment, Ryan was assigned to an 11+ group with two other children. During Ryan’s first few months we continued to have some concerns. As reasoning was completely new to him, we’d started with the 8-9 Bond books and he was struggling even with these.
Despite his struggles, Ryan continued to work extremely hard in class. He was diligent about completing homework and his mum was reviewing his mistakes at home where possible in order to free up our lesson time for other topics. We were moving forward but progress was slow and we now had only 5 months left before the 11+.
In a last ditch attempt to get through the 11+, Ryan’s mum had booked three weeks of Summer School for him. Summer School was going to give us a chance to delve into topics in more depth and introduce Ryan to harder 11+ material.
Throughout the Summer School, Ryan was one of our hardest workers. He was popular and still found time to make friends but his determination was clear. We quickly discovered that Ryan liked to try to find solutions for himself (which, incidentally, is the ideal attitude for an 11+ student). When Ryan did need help, our staff grew accustomed to giving him just enough information to get him on the right track and then leaving him to complete the question himself. With our gentle guidance, Ryan started to make remarkable progress.
After two weeks of working hard at Summer School and completing additional papers at home, Ryan sat his first Kent mock with us and the results were…. disappointing.
When analysing a mock, we assess a child’s rough working and could see that Ryan had clearly tried hard to implement all he’d learnt at summer school, however, he was still well behind where he needed to be.
All in all, his predicted mock score came out at 275 out of 423, and Ryan would need 320 to pass. Our predicted scores are based on years of data and tend to be extremely accurate so this was a real worry.
Along with Ryan’s mock scores, we sent a message to his mum:
Undeterred, Ryan continued to work hard in the final week of Summer School. As promised, we tailored his Summer School work in accordance with the mock; he was assigned additional reasoning work as well as lots of vocabulary work.
Following a third week of summer school, Ryan sat our final mock test of the year, one week before the Kent exam. The results were… still pretty disappointing.
Ryan had improved his predicted score by 20 marks, which was good progress. But he was still 25 marks away from passing.
During the following week, Ryan worked non-stop. He attended three more classes and did plenty of practice papers at home along with targeted worksheets that we’d provided.
Going into the 11+, we knew that Ryan not only needed to pass but he needed to achieve a high score so that he could get into a super-selective school. This was because he lived slightly out of the catchment area for most Kent grammar schools.
A few weeks after the exam, we got Ryan’s results:
Not only had Ryan PASSED but he had scored 384 out of 423 – 64 marks over the pass mark. His score breakdown also revealed that he had scored full marks in maths, which is no mean feat.
Interestingly, Ryan ended up scoring higher than some of the pupils that had been ahead of him all year.
Encouraged by his 11+ results and wanting to push himself further, Ryan requested to continue with lessons during Year 6 and we were absolutely thrilled to have him.
…but it takes a lot of hard work and determination.
Ryan’s mum worked closely with tutors to do all she could from home.
Ryan was able to pull ahead of other students by making the most of the summer holidays. That said, he’d also worked very hard in the previous five months.
Mock test reports often contain a few surprises, both good and bad. We were able to use Ryan’s mock test reports to personalise his learning and make the most of the weeks we had left.
*Whilst the events and emails included are entirely real, names have been changed/excluded for anonymity.
We’re passing on our expert knowledge to you with this free and comprehensive guide to the local 11+ exams.
Covers: Bexley, Kent, St. Olave’s and Newstead exams
Includes: catchment areas, historical pass marks and more.
