Eleven Plus Advice

It is always useful for your precious `Eleven Plus’ child to be given the opportunity of being able to learn from a real role model. A role model is not necessarily Uncle Bill who passed his Eleven Plus many years ago and then went on to become a successful tree surgeon. Uncle Bill may or may not tell your much loved child about how he spent a summer on the beach with the beautiful blond Summer. (A story not fit for the ears of an eleven year old.)

A more credible role model could be a Year 8 family friend. If you put your Year 5 together with a Year 8 grammar school genius you must be fully prepared for the consequences.

“What are the exams like?”

“Oh don’t worry about them. I never do any work for the exams. I didn’t do any work either for the Eleven Plus. No, just don’t think about them.”

“Do you have much homework?”

“Never – any way I do it all at school in class. I don’t have to bring homework home. None of my friends do any homework either. School is much easier than people say.”

“How you learn your French and Spanish?”

“The French teacher is never there. She is always away sick. She says that she does not like our class because we are so noisy. We don’t get any homework because she does not like marking. The Spanish teacher never talks in English. She just talks and talks we don’t know what she is talking about half the time.”

“I heard you went on a cool school trip last term.”

“Yes, but the food was terrible. It was a geography exchange. We were supposed to share with some French kids but all they did was talk to them selves. We had to eat plain croissants – and they were stale. There were no chocolate croissants, just old hard ones with horrible jam. We had no eggs and no bacon. We didn’t even have a Mac Donald the whole time because we were stuck in these little huts. They were mouldy.”

“We went on one to The Isle of Mann and had to write silly stories about the trip. Did you have to do that too?”

“Worse than that we had to write to one of the French kids – and make them a pen pal. How can you have a pen pal if you can’t even write the language? I never talked to my pen pal when I was on holiday – so I had nothing to say in my letters.”

“My dad always says that he did Latin at school – and he loved it. You do Latin don’t you?”

“The only thing I know about Latin is: “Latin is a dead language, as dead as dead can be; it killed the ancient Romans and now it’s killing me.”

“Come along dear, it is time to go. Say thank you to Trevor for telling you all about grammar school.”