My name is Alice Evans and I am 11 years old.  This is about my experience of the 11+ and all that my parents and I have learnt from it; I hope that you will benefit from reading about it…

I am nearing the end of my primary school years and will soon be starting year seven.  We did not know very much about the local schools- only that they had a bad reputation.  So we went to look at them.  The first one was a Specialist Performing Arts School; it was quite rough and the standards for work were not very high.  It also seemed as if the child council was in charge of everything.   The second one was a Sports college- and it was easy to tell (as every inch of the school had something sporty on it).  The children had no discipline and no respect for the teachers or the property - the floors inside the school and all of the playground were covered in chewing gum even though there were notices on the walls saying that chewing gum was not allowed in the school…  Again, it was very rough and had poor exam results.  Finally, we looked at the third school.  It was a technology college and it was a slightly more popular choice this year.  The students were better behaved than they were at the sports college, but they showed off all the time.  The headmaster was liked a lot by the children, but did not seem to be respected very much.  We had a look at the Ofsted reports and the league tables for all of these schools and were not surprised to find that they all had very bad results. You can see why we decided against these schools!

There was one school, which we have admired for ages, but we are not in its catchment area and so very few places are available.  I have taken the entrance exam for it and placed it second on my list of schools.  It is a Specialist Language and Music college- I am very good at both those subjects.  The school is a mixed comprehensive school, but there are some selective places.  We are still interested in this school, but it is no longer our first choice.

It was decided that I should look round some Grammar Schools- the closer ones were Colchester County High School for Girls, Westcliffe High School for Girls and Chelmsford County High School for Girls.

When we looked around Colchester, the atmosphere did not quite feel right for me. When we looked around Westcliffe, we were quite impressed.  It seemed like a very caring school as well as a school good for education.  It is also near the sea; that would be a fun place to move to! But when we looked round Chelmsford, the same spark appeared in all our eyes.  The atmosphere was brilliant, the girls were friendly, the old building was a little scruffy - but that made it feel cosy.  Chelmsford was where I wanted to go! 

But of course, I would have to take the 11+ exam to get in…

My parents sent for some test papers right away.  We received them a few days later and when they arrived my parents handed me a comprehension:  Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I still shiver when I think about it. I was 30 minutes late finishing and I came out with 40%! I tried the maths - around the same.  The verbal reasoning was about 60%.  I was good at all these subjects, but there was just so much in the papers that I had not been taught at my school.

My father gave me a few more papers and we noticed no improvement.  He tried to explain the techniques to me, but ended up calling my mother at work and then my grandfather to help him with a tricky maths question!  We needed help and fast.  We needed a tutor.

We phoned an agency to find us a suitable tutor.  They left messages with three different tutors - but the tutors never called us. Eventually, after a worrying week or two, we found a tutor on the 11+ website and got in touch with her.  She made an appointment with us that very Saturday, actually.  This tutor was Stephanie Williams.

My mother and I drove to Billericay on Saturday.  We were greeted by a little dog and a  blonde-haired lady.  We sat down and got to know each other first, and then it was serious work time.  I was given a maths, an English and a VR paper to do.  Stephanie looked at my results and told my mother that we were a bit late for tutoring and that we only had two months till the exam.  She told me that my English and Verbal reasoning were quite good, they still needed work though, and that our main focus would be Maths.  She gave me an oatmeal cookie and sent me home with a little red maths book.

The weekly lessons that we booked went rather well.  Stephanie is also a maths teacher, so she could really help me.  Almost every week she sent me home with a paper and a few pages of maths to do each week, plus some new vocabulary (I found the new vocabulary in newspapers and classic literature).  But the work began to get harder very quickly… 

I had never at school experienced so much hard work.  At first I hated it; I was tired, fractious and worried.  My parents got tired, fractious and worried too, so the house was one big “fluster box” (as my sister described it).  Sometimes I came to Stephanie with only half the work done, or sometimes even less.  And all the silly mistakes!  On some pieces of work, we made a tally of how many silly mistakes I had made and it was shocking!  But I some how managed to eliminate those.  But after about a month, I began to enjoy all this pressure, and if I concentrated then I could thrive!

Now I must speak about my school as it played a big part in all of this.  I have two main teachers and a teaching assistant, because one teacher is the deputy head and is always busy.  My main teacher did the 11+ herself, but she had something against the fact that I was taking it.  My other teacher was very quietly encouraging me, and my teaching assistant said good luck with it a few times.  But on the whole, they didn’t cope very well!  I was told off by the main teacher for even mentioning grammar schools and for trying to bring 11+ work to finish in school time.  Also, when we were asked what we did in half term, I said, “Maths! I did go to a restaurant for a treat, but I mainly did maths.”

The teachers phoned my mother and said that they were “concerned” about me.  The main teacher built up a huge story to tell my mother on parents evening as well about how my work was “slipping” because I was under pressure.  But every week I was getting 22/22 for Spelling, 20/20 for Maths, staying awake, being kind, I got the best marks in the school in a Primary Maths Challenge and I did one of the “best Peter Pan projects in the class” according to my teachers.  So I don’t see how my work could have been slipping!

After I had properly got used to my weekly lessons with Stephanie, things began to look a lot more hopeful.  We also found out that I was really good at maths - I had always assumed that maths was not my strong point because I never used to enjoy it, but now it is my favourite subject!  I was beginning to get bored with VR papers, as I kept getting 93%.  When Stephanie told us that we had covered two years of work in just over a month…  we were amazed!  We took a photograph of all the books that I had worked through; there must have been over 50!  I have them all now in a big blue bag, tucked away ready for when my sister takes the exam.

It was time to start the mock exams.  I drove to Billericay feeling nervous, but when I arrived I felt relaxed.  I did a paper about “The Snow Geese” which I enjoyed, a VR paper and a maths paper.  Stephanie added up the scores and gave me 88% on my first mock.  I did one more mock - Stephanie made it slightly harder for me.  I managed to get 84% that time. We had one more lesson with her, and that was it.

Near the exam, as the school weren’t helping me much, we took some days off school.  We are not the kind of people who would do that, and I have only ever had four or five days off sick, but we felt that we had to.

On the 5th of December, I took the exam (I was taking the test for the specialist language and music school on the original date).  I woke up, had a hearty breakfast and drove off to Chelmsford with my mother in the pouring rain.  We were welcomed by a nice girl with an umbrella, and taken in by an older lady.  By this time I was actually feeling a little less nervous than I was before.  I sat down at my desk and got rid of my clinging mother!  After a few minutes wait, several ladies began to hand out the English Papers - Lord of the Flies.  Unfortunately, I really don’t like this book; but it was a fascinating passage.  The questions on it were not very very hard, and it explained some of the old-fashioned words.  Next came the Maths paper.   To my horror, I found no algebra, no loci and almost NO FRACTIONS!  I found it quite hard, but easier than I thought it would be.  Finally Verbal Reasoning, which is my strongest subject.  In both Maths and English I finished with 10 minutes to spare, but in VR I only had 5 minutes to spare.  I think it was because I was concentrating really hard.  I left the hall feeling at least twice as confident as I did when I entered the hall.  To add to that good feeling, the sun had come out and I had received a cookie!

About a week after this, I found myself not quite knowing what to do; I didn’t have any more work to do and nothing that I knew of (at the time) was coming up.  But we did like the look of an independent school in Cambridge as well (The Leys), so I took the entrance exam in January.  I actually did so well that I got to come back for a scholarship interview! At the interview, I spoke to the head of Mathematics (he said I had done very well in my Maths), the Head of English (he said that I had received the best marks out of the 90 applicants,) and the Headmaster (he said that I had done incredibly well and that I have an “interesting mind”). I felt afterwards that it had gone rather well, and it had; I have been awarded a scholarship there! We would still prefer to go to Chelmsford, but this is very comforting to know. It could also be a good barometer for the 11+ results!

I will always remember and treasure this experience, and I would say that a reasonable amount of pressure is good for you. And now we must wait for 3rd March.

Stephanie is fantastic. She is patient and hard working. She works the children really hard always leaving with lots of homework set.

She is the best tutor ever!