11+ Exam Case Studies
Want to get an insight into the 11+ exam process, from parents who've been through it already?
Read our case studies and find out more about how they approached preparing for the exam, and how Bond supported their child's 11+ exam journey.
Arlene and Esther: Working together to prepare for the 11+ exam
Debashis and Rona: Making preparations for the 11+ exam digital
Arlene and Esther: Working together to prepare for the 11+ exam
Helping your child through their 11+ exams may seem a little daunting when you yourself are unfamiliar with the test format and material. That was certainly the case at the beginning for Arlene, whose daughter Esther has recently passed her 11+ exams and will be starting at her new school in September. Arlene shared with us how she approached preparing Esther for the exams and how Bond 11+ helped her throughout that time.
Biggest challenge
According to Arlene one of the biggest challenges as a parent preparing their child for the 11+ exams, is having to do something completely different and teach subjects that they’ve never studied before. The verbal reasoning was an especially “foreign concept” to Arlene and she found Bond’s detailed notes and answer booklets particularly helpful in that area: “I’m not a very literacy-minded person at all, and so the answers and explanations in the Bond pack were amazing for somebody like me who was struggling to work out what on earth the answer was to each of these styles of questions. So it was really helpful for her and also helpful for me as a parent to read and then work out how on earth to start training her and helping her in doing those papers.” And on those particularly tricky questions Arlene told us how helpful it was “to do those questions by looking at the answers which meant that next time it was easier [to figure out the answers].”
Tailoring revision
Arlene also told us about how she was able to use Bond to meet Esther’s individual needs. For example, the fact that the Bond papers are available to buy in packs meant, Arlene explains, that “for a child like Esther who was weaker in one area I could buy a few verbal reasoning packs and then I’ve got lots of verbal reasoning papers to be working on.” The fact that Bond also provides other forms of test paper than just long assessment papers, also meant that Arlene could tailor Esther’s revision to her interest and energy levels: “when I knew there was no way she was going to sit for fifty minutes and do a paper, then it was the Bond 10 Minute Tests and that was really helpful for days when interest just wasn’t exactly there.”
Finally, we asked Arlene how she balanced tutoring Esther at home and feeding back to her when things weren’t always going so well and she had some great advice: “I’m always an optimist so I was always focusing on the style of questions that she could clearly do really brilliantly and saying ‘Look at these, I’m ticking right the way down this page because you’ve done so fantastically’ and saying ‘Well actually these questions we’re both struggling with’ or ‘I’m struggling to help you answer them.’” Great advice for all of us getting children ready for the 11+ exam – thank you Arlene!
Debashis and Rona: Making preparations for the 11+ exam digital
When helping your child prepare for the 11+ exam it’s important to find the format that suits you best. Debashis and his daughter Rona took a very digital approach to the 11+ exam preparation, using Google searches and YouTube videos to find answers to particularly tricky questions that they didn’t understand. Bond Online was also at hand to help them in areas where Google and YouTube couldn’t! They shared with us their experience of using digital resources and why they thought Bond was particularly useful in preparing Rona for the exams.
Targeting revision
For Rona, one thing that was particularly useful about Bond Online was that it allowed her to see what subject areas she needed to spend more time on. Seeing her scores online immediately after completing tests meant she knew that she needed to work more on English rather than the other subjects: “English was one of those things I found personally you needed to do more questions on, instead of searching it up online […] It’s not like maths or verbal reasoning where there’s a specific method to doing everything. I found doing more questions on Bond helped me more than trying to search on YouTube.” Debashis was also able to use the online reports to monitor Rona’s progress while giving her space to be independent in her learning: “I used the reports to follow her preparations from the side line because I didn’t want to interfere, for the very simple reason that I think she has an excellent work ethic in the way she went about the whole thing.”
While Bond Online helped Rona work through weaker areas independently, when the exams drew nearer it was time to put online revision to one side and use the printed Bond 11+ Test Papers to prepare for all areas of the exam. Rona explains: “If I hadn’t done them then obviously it would have been a lot harder as I wouldn’t have got the feeling of […] of a timed environment with a test paper...”
Confidence boosting
So what made Bond 11+ resources stand out? Debashis explained why he and Rona chose Bond as their primary source of help in the exam preparations: “Bond is right up there. The standard of Bond is extremely good… If you ask me, once you’re through Bond it gives you a whole lot of confidence that ‘yes I can take on more or less anything that comes.’” And when we spoke to Rona she also re-emphasised the fact that Bond gave her confidence going into the exams, because she knew what to expect: “I would say that overall it was really really good and it was obviously one of the hardest material that I did. […] And when I actually did the 11+ test I realised that the questions on Bond were actually very similar.” That’s great to hear, thank you Rona – and good luck in your new school!
Liz and Joseph: Using Bond to ‘spot the gaps’
For many parents, preparing their child for the 11+ exam isn’t so much a matter of finding out what their child knows, but finding out what they don’t know and filling in the gaps.
That was certainly the case for Liz, who prepared her son Joseph for the 11+ exam at home. Although Liz is a primary school teacher, she still needed a hand getting to grips with all of the topics covered by the 11+ and making sure that Joseph got extra support to master those subjects that he hadn’t yet encountered at school.
We spoke to Liz and she shared with us how she prepared Joseph for the 11+ exam and how Bond helped.
Identifying gaps
Liz home tutored Joseph and she found the big advantage of using Bond as the way it “identified gaps in his knowledge – so I could see things like he needed more practice on quick strategies for long division, he hadn’t done any algebra at school so it identified gaps which I could fill."
Alongside improving his subject knowledge Liz also found that “The Bond papers … gave him practice for the strategies [needed] for completing say 50 questions in 50 minutes and getting used to the timings of things.”, so not only did Bond help identify the areas where Joseph’s subject knowledge needed to improve, it also highlighted how to improve his exam technique.
Seeing progress
As Liz and Joseph progressed through the Bond books together, they were pleased to clearly see the progress Joseph was making: “Using the Bond Assessment Papers gave me the trend of how his knowledge and skills were increasing so by the end I could see he was getting most of them right and he was managing to do it in the time limit so it was quite reassuring for him and it gave him the confidence as well to go into the test feeling quite prepared.”
Not only did Joseph’s confidence get a boost, seeing his results improve also helped keep him motivated: “We’d say ‘Look you got 63 out of 80 then, but look how much better you’ve done now, you’re doing really well’ so there was lots of positive reinforcement so that he could see how much better he was doing with most subjects.”
Getting exam ready
And as it got closer to the exam itself, Liz started to really focus on Joseph’s exam technique, using Bond to do a mock test at home: “As September drew near we did assign one day where I asked Joseph to do one paper after the other – the English, the Maths and the verbal reasoning. So I used the actual sheets from the packs and made it very exam like –no distractions, we had a timer, he had to gather up his pencil and sharpener and ruler and make sure he was all prepared.”
Finally, Liz shared with us why Bond in particular was so good at helping her identify and fill in gaps in her son’s knowledge: “The school parents' evenings were great, reports are great, but they don’t tell you the nitty gritty of little gaps in their knowledge which the Bond papers, the Bond books, really highlighted to me… I would recommend them unreservedly.”