Do I need a tutor for the Bexley and Kent 11 plus exams? Can I teach my own child?

11 Plus Prep School tutors children in the Bexley and Kent exams, as well as the Bromley exams, because we realise that coaching children to pass the eleven plus is a time- and energy-intensive enterprise, and we want to save you, the parents and guardians, this time and energy and maximise your child's potential to succeed in their 11 plus exam(s) and beyond.

But do you actually need an 11 plus tutor? Can a parent or guardian take on the challenge of coaching their child the skills required to pass the 11 plus exam?

Either way, whether it's a professional tutor or you yourself who coaches your child, your child will almost certainly need some degree of tuition. While the Mathematics and English components of the CEM (Bexley) and GL (Kent) exams are covered in the KS2 primary curriculum, the Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning components are not. A child who goes into an 11 plus exam equipped only with their KS2 learning, could well struggle with, and be shocked by, the unfamiliarity of Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning.

Even for English and Mathematics, while primary schools do an excellent job of teaching children, the focus of their teaching is spread between children of varying abilities; the child who is planning to sit the 11 plus exam(s) might not receive the necessary depth-of-learning in order to do their best in English and Mathematics. More importantly than this, it is simply not the job of state primary schools to get your child into a grammar school. (Conversely, private schools do coach their children to do well in selective examinations such as the 11 plus).

So, while there are always exceptions, most children will need some sort of tuition to have a realistic chance of getting into a grammar school.

But can you, the parent or guardian, do the job of tutoring your child to pass the Bexley or Kent (or St Olave's or Newstead Wood) exams yourself?

Yes, you can.

However, before embarking on a mission to tutor your child yourself, consider the following:

• Do you have a solid knowledge of English and Mathematics? English and Mathematical knowledge is essential if you are to coach your child yourself. You will need to know the KS2 curriculum for both subjects, as the Kent GL and Bexley CEM will be aligned with what your child is learning in school.

• Do you have time to familiarise yourself with KS2 English and Mathematics? If you don't have a solid knowledge of English and Mathematics, then you will need to find time to brush up on (ideally) all aspects of KS2 English and Mathematics.

• Do you have time, in general, to tutor your child? Whichever way you slice it, tutoring a child for the 11 plus requires a big commitment of your time. Most children who sit the 11 plus spend, over a period of maybe two years, somewhere between two hours a week and two hours a day practising for the 11 plus. The parent or guardian who tutors their child will need to be on-hand to tutor, to do the administrative tasks (e.g., preparing materials), to mark assessment papers etc. It can become challenging to juggle 11 plus tutoring with all your other commitments.

• Do you enjoy doing puzzles? The two other components of the Bexley and Kent exams (and most other 11 plus exams) are Verbal and Non-Verbal reasoning. Unless you have sat an 11 plus exam yourself, or unless you enjoy doing puzzles, then Verbal and Non-Verbal reasoning can be bamboozling. If you enjoy doing puzzles - crosswords, sudoku, word-wheels etc. - then you should enjoy the puzzles presented by Verbal and Non-Verbal reasoning. If you don't have patience for puzzles then there could be a steeper learning curve for you and your child. (You may be interested in an earlier blog post which lists puzzles and games that are good for 11 plus tutoring).

• Do you know what materials you'll need to tutor your child? There many kinds of 11 plus materials including assessment papers, study books, mock exams. Each book type is often broken down into the following subjects: English, Mathematics, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning.

Among these are often other types of book which are narrower in their focus, e.g., 3D and Spatial Reasoning, Logic & Codes, Comprehension. Often these books are further broken down into parts (e.g., Comprehension for Verbal Reasoning part 1; Comprehension for Verbal Reasoning part 2). Then, there are a few publishers who you might want to consider, e.g., CGP, Schofield & Simms and Bond.

Publishers of 11 plus material will often issue their materials for both the GL exam and CEM exam. If you are a parent who lives in Bexley or Kent, you may be considering sitting both exams. You therefore might want to consider if you need both CEM and GL variants, say, of a particular publisher's Verbal Reasoning assessment papers; there can be a lot of overlap between CEM and GL equivalents but also differences that account for the variations between the exam types.

On top of all this, some publishers publish their material in standard format and multiple choice format. Both the Bexley and Kent exams are currently in multiple choice format but, as standard format is harder than multiple choice, you might want to consider teaching standard format as well as multiple choice format so that your child sees their own multiple choice exam as being relatively easy compared to standard format.

In other words, there are a lot of materials, a lot of publishers and a lot of decisions to be made around what to invest time and money in teaching to your child.

Tutoring your child is doable, but it requires a big commitment in time and effort if you are to produce the desired effects of tutoring. We realise that not everyone has the time or skills to tutor their own child, which is why 11 Plus Prep School exists: to take on the responsibility for maximising your child's potential and their chances of getting into the grammar school of their choice. If you would like more information about our services, please take a look at the courses we have to offer or if you're ready to start your child on one of our courses enrol your child at 11 Plus Prep School today.