11 Plus Tuition | St Albans
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The 11 Plus exams are a crucial step for children aspiring to attend grammar or independent schools in the St Albans area. Intense competition and over subscription of available spaces have caused parents to resort to extra tuition in order to give their child the edge in the exam process. Even the most able students are now put forward for extra tuition to ensure they have all the bases covered in an exam where technique, speed and accuracy are critical.
Parents in St Albans have a variety of possible tuition options to choose from. These options cater to different learning styles and needs. Before reading more about our recommendations for parents seeking out suitable tuition options for schools in the St Albans area, we highly recommend you click the button below and use the search bars in order to help with any applications you might be making to schools in St Albans.
Resources and Information For St Albans School Admissions
Search for your target school in the St Albans area here in order to obtain more specific information about the 11 Plus exam:
Search for free 11 Plus Practice papers for your target school here:
Types of Eleven Plus Tuition
🙋🏿♂️ Individual Tuition: learning alone provides a 1-on-1 environment in which some students thrive due to uninterrupted attention from a tutor. This can be done in-person or online, and it can achieve great results for your child. Particularly in subjects such as maths and non-verbal reasoning, where students are required to fully understand each step of the question in order to arrive at the correct answer.
👨👧👧 Group Tuition: group tuition provides a collaborative learning environment where students can interact with peers and learn from each other, as well as their tutor. A collaborative learning environment is especially helpful in 11 Plus subjects such as English comprehension, creative writing, persuasive writing and verbal reasoning. Students can listen to and analyse each other’s ideas in order to improve their own.
Group 11 Plus tuition can achieve exceptional results compared to a class in school because all of the children are highly-motivated and ready to learn. The tutor must also teach the class at the appropriate level to achieve excellent 11 Plus performance, not at the level of the least able student (as in school). It's also a more cost-effective option.
👩🏽🏫 In-Person Tuition: this traditional approach involves face-to-face sessions with a tutor, either individually or in a small group. In-person tuition allows for personalised attention and immediate feedback, but it can often be less thoroughly planned and more improvised than online tuition.
👩🏼💻 Online Tuition: learning online is an increasingly popular choice. It offers flexibility and convenience, allowing students to learn from the comfort of their own homes with top-rated tutors from across the UK.
Furthermore, the lesson plans are more robust and less improvised than in-person tuition because, in order to effectively deliver an online lesson, the teacher absolutely must have a variety of pre-prepared and well structured resources ready to be shown through the screen.
⏩ Intensive Courses: intensive courses are designed to cover a significant amount of material in a short period of time. They're ideal for parents who want a more structured learning programme with a clear start and end point. At times, tuition sessions can drag on without the progress or structure of the learning totally evident. Intensive courses are a good remedy for this problem.
How To Choose the Best 11 Plus Tuition For Your Child
The best 11 Plus tuition option for your child depends on their individual requirements and learning style. We recommend you consider factors such as:
Your child's preferred learning environment.
Your budget for tuition and how you plan to optimise it.
Any time constraints and deadlines (such as exam day).
The type and number of areas your child needs to improve in.
It's also essential to choose a reputable tuition provider. The experience of the tutor and their track record are important factors to consider here.
10 Tips to Help You Find an Excellent 11 Plus Tutor
1. Ask to see a learning plan for your child
A detailed plan ensures the tuition provider is organised, prepared and able to adequately prepare your child. A tuition plan will allow you to see when key topics will be covered, giving you confidence that your child will meet important milestones in a timely manner.
A learning plan also results in you receiving good value for your money. The tuition provider should target the key areas your child needs to improve in. This should be done in an efficient way which covers content swiftly but in the correct level of detail for the 11 Plus exam. This will ensure you don’t put your child through repetitive and ineffective tuition your wallet could really do without!
A good 11 Plus tutor should be able to tell you what topics they will work on with your child and how long they will need in order to help the child improve in line with the correct standard.
2. Sit in on an online lesson
When schools across the world were closed during the coronavirus period, thousands of parents were able to observe the level of teaching their children experience in school every day. This presented a new level of scrutiny for teachers who now knew a child’s parent may well be listening in on their lesson!
A few years on, this has resulted in teachers raising their standards and adapting to an online teaching environment. Furthermore, it’s absolutely right that parents should have a clear insight into the level of teaching their child is receiving. Parents should be able to choose and verify what they think is suitable for their child, just like they would for any other service they are paying for.
Observing a live session offers you the advantage of first-hand insight into the teaching quality and lesson dynamics. You will be able to observe if both the style of delivery and format work well for your child. After a discussion with your child about how they thought the lesson went, you will be in a strong position to make a great choice of tutor.
3. Focus on parent reviews, not just pass rates
High pass rates published by tuition companies may initially seem impressive, but you should also know they are based on highly selective data. Or, they are simply made up (that’s the truth).
Hearing from other parents provides a more helpful insight. Find out from others whether the tuition provider helped their children reach their target schools or greatly improved their subject knowledge. You can then make a more informed decision based on the credible experiences of others you personally know, or those whose authenticity can be easily verified online.
4. Ask about homework and feedback
High-energy lessons followed up by homework and targeted, detailed feedback are key features of effective tuition. These elements ensure your child stays engaged and improves quickly.
If the tutor isn’t giving your child homework or marking work outside of tuition time, you should raise questions about this. After all, how will they know if your child is improving? If they are delivering long tests during paid tuition time, parents are perfectly entitled to question why this can’t be given as homework. This will ensure the valuable time you are paying for is filled with productive teaching of the techniques and key concepts required for 11 Plus success.
Homework or tests should be set, completed by your child outside of tuition time, and feedback then given in a timely manner. Furthermore, the feedback should be clear and actionable. If you can’t understand the action that needs to be taken based on the tutor’s feedback, then it is unlikely your child will be able to.
5. School specialist tutors aren’t essential
While some tutors claim to specialise in gaining entrance to particular high-profile schools, the 11 Plus exam tests the same core skills across all institutions. If your child develops these skills, they will stand an excellent chance of success regardless of the school they are applying for. (You can click here to learn more about the different 11 Plus syllabuses, their similarities, and the subtle differences between them.)
Don’t pay too much attention to a tutor who says they are the person parents call in order to get into this school or that school. Most of it is just marketing and puffery. Parents should encourage their children to work hard, be consistent and have a positive attitude. These basic inputs will give your child their best chance of gaining admission to the top schools in the country without any alleged ‘specialist’ charging you well above the industry average to have them help your child.
As with life in general, blocking out all the noise and focusing on the getting the basics right day in, day out, counts for the most. Building skills and knowledge with continuous perseverance, discipline and a thirst for improvement will carry your child through even the most challenging of 11 Plus entrance exams.
6. Practice papers are revision tools, not the starting point
While practice papers and online question banks are important, a more critical step in thorough 11 Plus exam preparation is mastering question-answering techniques before tackling timed practice. The 11 Plus exam questions can be answered using specific techniques to improve speed and accuracy. Understanding and mastering these are critical, and this is very often the difference that makes all the difference on exam day. After this step, practice papers can provide the repetitions required to hone and refine these skills to ensure your child finds themselves on the right side of the fine margins on exam day.
7. Price is not the only consideration
A high price tag does not often guarantee quality. In your local area and online, you may have noticed the extraordinarily high hourly rates some tutors charge. Why is this?
Some tutors can charge this much because they are in high demand and are very good at helping students prepare for the 11 Plus. Though, this is the exception, rather than the rule.
More often than not, tutors know they can charge this much simply because the market permits it. The competition for school spaces is huge, and parents are willing to pay high prices in order to reassure themselves they did everything they could to give their child a good shot at it.
You might be told the tutor has a very, very packed schedule or a close to 100% pass rate. The reality is they might be working another job (hence the shortage of time) or quite simply use this as a way to justify charging more. We know this because we’ve interviewed and worked with a great number tutors over the last 10 years.
In our experience, the best tutors are often those who charge a fair rate and let their learning plan and first lesson speak for themselves. Trust your intuition. Understand the market dynamics at play and make the decision you think is best. These are the parameters you should be using to honestly say to yourself that you put your child in the best position possible to succeed; not how much money you put into their tuition. As a parent, that’s all you can do.
8. Choose a tutor with relevant experience
As a minimum, tutors should have personal experience with the 11 Plus (they sat the exam themselves), or have attended top schools or universities. This results in a tutor who has the required ability level to effectively pass on their skills and knowledge to your child.
What’s also worth thinking about is that it’s not necessarily the Oxford, Cambridge or elite university graduates who are the best 11 Plus teachers. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, great teaching is more about how the tutor can present information in a way that is easy to understand for a child, rather than how knowledgable or academically able they are. If an academically-strong person is using overly complex words or articulating their thoughts in a way which the student finds difficult to understand, then the fault is with the teacher, not the student.
Secondly, the 11 Plus exam represents a level of knowledge and academic skill which many adults can obtain, though this level is not totally straightforward. The academic rigour required for Oxford and Cambridge is far beyond what is needed to do well in the 11 Plus. Therefore, it’s not a mandatory requirement to have a tutor who has graduated from a first-class university. Then again, the tutor must know their stuff.
9. Your child should enjoy the lessons
Enjoyable lessons are crucial for sustained motivation and interest in learning and improvement. When children are happy and engaged, they’ll be more likely to stick with the tuition and achieve the growth they need.
10. Timing and punctuality matter
Being on time, organised and ready to teach matter. Your tutor should demonstrate this on a regular basis. It is important in ensuring a stable learning environment in which your child can gain academic momentum.
The Exam Coach: Your Partner in 11 Plus Tuition
The Exam Coach delivers group online tuition for children studying to sit the 11 Plus exams for grammar or independent school entry in the UK. We offer a range of online tuition options to suit your child's needs, including weekly tuition workshops and 5-day intensive courses.
Our 11 Plus Tuition Model
👨🏼🏫 Expert Tutors: our tutors are experienced, top-performing teachers who are passionate about helping children succeed in the 11 Plus.
✅ Proven Approach: our approach is based on years of experience and has helped countless students achieve their goals.
🎯 Targeted Skill Development: sessions are focused on essential 11 Plus exam techniques and skill development in order to score marks in the exam.
⏰ Flexibility: our online tuition options offer flexibility and convenience, allowing your child to learn from home.
📚 Comprehensive Preparation: we specialise in core 11 Plus disciplines, including 11 Plus English comprehension, creative writing, persuasive writing, and verbal reasoning.
📝 Full Support and Feedback: worksheets, homework, class notes and personalised feedback (via audio message) are provided for each course session.
With The Exam Coach team, your child will be well-prepared and confident on exam day.
Our 11 Plus Online Tuition
🗓️ 11+ Weekly Workshops: these 45-minute sessions provide continuous practice and cover a range of topics, including 11 Plus English vocabulary, verbal reasoning, comprehension, and creative writing.
🏫 11+ 5-Day Courses: these intensive courses focus on teaching key concepts and exam techniques for each 11 Plus discipline.
If you have a child about to take the 11 Plus, please visit our website or contact us today to learn more about how we can help your child achieve their full potential.