Early experiences significantly influence children’s viewpoint of different matters. As an educator, you can shape these young minds to become great achievers who make the world a bit better. This revered responsibility is motivation enough for you as an 11+ tutor to make every effort to help year-six students realise their full potential and find their path to educational success. We’ve gathered some insights to help you shoulder this burden.
A Glance at 11 Plus Exams
When pupils in the UK finish elementary school at Grade 6 and want to enter Grade 7 (the first year of Key Stage 3), they can take the 11-plus test to try their chances of admission into grammar schools or other selective schools. The pupils are 11 to 12 years old when they take the exam, hence the name.
The purpose of the exam is to identify students who are suited for more intensive and better-quality education. The exam consists mostly of multiple-choice questions and is held at the local authority grammar school or a central grammar school every September.
11+ Exam Format
The exam has two papers, and there is a short break between them so that students can freshen up. Each paper has two parts, and students have 30 minutes to answer each. Therefore, the exam takes two hours, excluding the break. It is worth mentioning that participating in the 11-plus exam is not necessary, and students can get into state schools just fine.
What Do the 11+ Exams Measure?
The 11-plus exam covers the following disciplines. The first two are taken in the first paper, and the rest in the second paper.
- Maths: tests students’ knowledge of the topics in the National Curriculum, including operations, fractions, decimals, geometry, ratios, and percentages.
- English: it consists of reading comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar.
- Verbal reasoning: this discipline and the one below are not covered in the National Curriculum, and therefore, they are unfamiliar to the students. It involves letters, words, numbers, and symbols.
- Non-verbal reasoning: it measures the student’s ability to solve abstract problems logically. This part involves visuals such as shapes and graphs.
Note:
Some schools, particularly girls’ schools, take the ISEB 11+ Common Entrance tests, which also include Science in the 11+ entrance exam. The science component assesses the student’s knowledge of the main scientific subjects, namely Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, at the end of Year 5.
Tutor’s Role in Students’ Success in 11+ Entrance Exams
Your role as an 11+ tutor starts with identifying the pupil’s strengths and areas of improvement. You can do this by asking them some questions, interviewing their parents, and checking their report cards. This gives you an idea of where to start.
Once you have figured out the pupil’s knowledge level, you should choose level-appropriate resources to fill the gaps in the pupil’s knowledge. Then, you can go on to introduce the 11+ test and explain its significance. Awareness of the importance of the selective schools’ entrance exams motivates the students to make more efforts. After that, you should practise exam techniques by covering practice papers.
You should also teach the students how they should manage their time. As you prepare the pupils, their confidence increases, which increases their chances of success. Additionally, you should liaise with the pupil’s parents and keep them updated on their children’s progress.
PiAcademy has gathered useful resources for parents, which you can use as a tutor in your private tutoring sessions. Click on eleven-plus resources and exam preparation to find the resources.
Pathways for 11-Plus Tutors
There are different scenarios for 11+ tutors’ employment. Novice tutors can start with volunteer tutoring to learn the challenges of tutoring and gain some experience to gain the pupil’s parent’s trust.
Fortunately, there’s a lucrative alternative to volunteer tutoring for novice tutors. They can register on online tutoring platforms like Ostado and find clients (parents) who are looking for affordable tutors to help their children. This is a magnificent opportunity to earn and learn.
More experienced 11+ tutors have more choices; let’s explore some of them.
Full-Time and Part-Time Tutoring
The first career choice of 11+ tutors is to start their own tutoring business. Starting a full-time job as a tutor on your own is challenging, especially if you are a novice tutor. You need to advertise yourself as a tutor through different channels to expand your business. I have written another article on “how to advertise as a tutor,” where you can find some valuable tips for starting a tutoring business.
Also read: Tutoring Resume Examples
You can also pursue tutoring as a part-time job. You can teach at school and tutor at home. As a teacher, you would receive more tutoring offers from parents. This is because parents tend to hire their children’s teachers as private tutors.
At Ostado, you have the flexibility to tutor your favourite subject, whether as a full-time or part-time tutor. Our online platform gives you the freedom to choose what, when, where, and whom to teach.
Working With Tutoring Agencies
As your teaching and tutoring experiences build up, and you gain more subject matter expertise as well as pedagogical competence, more profitable positions emerge in your career pathway. For instance, you might receive job offers from tutoring agencies to work either as a tutor or educational consultant. The latter is more convenient and, depending on your experience, pays even more than tutoring.
Creating Educational Content
Social media is also a propitious environment for tutors to earn an income. For instance, YouTube has an earning mechanism that pays content producers based on the number of subscribers and views. You can create a channel and produce engaging and fun content for children to teach them the disciplines covered in the 11+ entrance exam. Click on “How to make money on YouTube” to learn more details.
Soar Your Income at Ostado
Parents who pay special attention to their kids’ education and desire academic excellence look for tutors who can prepare them for the eleven-plus exams to get them into good schools. Ostado is a leading online tutoring platform in the UK, trusted by thousands of parents and students at different education levels, including 11 plus exams.
At Ostado, we aim to connect parents and students with tutors who best match their interests. You can tutor online lessons at 11+ level in different subject areas like Maths, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Join Ostado now and become a tutor in the subject you prefer. By the way, as an online tutor on Ostado, you can hold your tutoring sessions any time you like. So, join us now to make the most out of your precious time.
Winning Strategies of Top 11+ Tutors
1. Using Various Resources
As an 11+ tutor, you should have sound and thorough knowledge of exam questions. Using multiple online resources allows you to approach the questions in each subject from different angles. You should have an archive of practice papers and past papers to help pupils familiarise themselves with the exam format. In this link, you can find “Top 10 Resources for 11+ Tutors.“
2. Learner-Oriented Classes
As a professional tutor, you have the subject expertise to teach the pupils. However, you should do it in the pupil’s preferred way. In other words, you should adopt a teaching method and use the resources in a way that matches the pupil’s current state and what they aim to achieve. Children are usually attracted to colourful pictures and animations, so when designing lesson plans for children at 11 plus level, you can include many visuals to make the learning more engaging and productive.
3. Motivating Students
Although there is no limit to a child’s imagination, they cannot see the whole picture. You should motivate them by clarifying how succeeding in the 11-plus takes them one step closer to realising their dreams (external motivation). You can also reward their good performance (positive reinforcement) or remove or reduce homework (negative reinforcement) to motivate them. The recognition and appreciation of the student’s efforts instil a feeling of self-belief and confidence in them. Of course, sometimes you need to criticise the student for poor performance as long as it is the result of a lack of attention or effort.
4. Integrate Technology Into Your Teaching
Pen and paper are things of the past. As a modern 11+ tutor, you need to be technologically competent. Using technology and digital tools makes your job far easier than the old way. Computers allow you to keep track of the pupil’s progress, share resources, and use virtual labs and virtual models, especially for Biology and Chemistry. More importantly, they add variety to your teaching and engage the students in the learning process. The following link lists many valuable tools appropriate for pupils at the 11-plus level.
54 Online Teaching Tools for Educators
11 Online Tutoring Tools to Improve Your Lessons
5. Keep in Touch With Parents
As an 11+ tutor, you work with children for their parents, and therefore, you must regularly inform the parents of their children’s progress and even assign a role for them to take action for their children’s success. Giving feedback to parents is important for several reasons. First, it ensures them that you are the caring and supportive tutor they were looking for. Second, it strengthens the parent-teacher relationship, promoting trust and transparency. Third, your feedback helps parents understand their kids’ strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, with the feedback you give to parents, they can moderate their expectations of their children.
6. Share Success Stories
Testimonials can serve as a great means of finding new clients and expanding your private tutoring business. You can do this on your social media pages, especially LinkedIn, to make it more professional. The good news is that after a couple of years of professional tutoring, words of your skills as a tutor get around, and clients will find you. After all, actions speak louder than words.
Challenges Faced by 11+ Tutors
1. Connecting With Children
Since you are working with children 10 to 12 years old, you need to allow your inner child to present itself more tangibly. You have to think and act like them while preserving something to help you keep your grip on the session. In other words, you need to maintain a balance between the seriousness of a teacher and an approachable, friendly person. Reaching this balance is one of the challenges of 11-plus tutors, but as you gain experience, you will do it without planning or thinking.
2. Difficult Parents and Children
Another challenge is having to deal with difficult parents and children. Some parents might have unrealistic or high demands from you, which cannot be achieved in a short period before the exam. Sometimes, the chemistry is not right, and you do not get the satisfaction you normally get from your job when working with certain parents and children who are stubborn in some way or do not cooperate with you.
3. Adaptability
In private tutoring, you need to run the sessions in such a way that matches the client’s preferences. By preferences, I mean the time and place of sessions, the resources, the teaching method, the duration of the sessions, etc. Basically, you should be ready to devise new lesson plans and adjust your schedule based on your client’s preferences.
4. Time Limits
Sometimes, there is not enough time to work on enough exam materials to prepare the pupil for the grammar school entrance exam. The shortage of time means you have to focus on the subjects with which the pupils struggle the most.
5. Time Consumption
The last thing I mention here is the time you need to spend to prepare the resources and lesson plans. I say this from personal experience. In the first year of my teaching experience, I spent the same amount of time as the duration of the session, preparing the materials and supplementing them with appropriate Audio Visual Aids (AVAs) and worksheets to make my classes more productive.
However, as you collect these resources and gain more experience, the preparation time decreases, and you will have more time to yourself to do as you please.
Key Takeaways of How To Become an 11+ Tutor
- Familiarise yourself with the 11+ entrance exam.
- Gather useful resources and materials (practice papers).
- Plan your tutoring schedule.
- Prepare personalised lesson plans.
- Find potential clients.
FAQs - How to become a tutor for 11+