Not 'ready' for the Selective exam? We got you.

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For context, hopefully, you are not in this situation. I truly hope all students are feeling ready and is actually prepared for the exam but in reality, many are not.  I am going through what I would recommend if a student came to me and had 6-12 months until the exam and still did not feel confident. I’ll also go through if they had 3 months until the exam and a week before the exam.

The methodology and the actions you should do will change accordingly depending on the time you have left. The reason why is because if you are doing the same things over and over again and you are not getting the results, you are doing something wrong.

6-12 months

This is the most ideal timeframe because you have the most time but how do we know if we actually need help then? Generally, when you get your OC scores, you will inherently know whether you are ready or not. If you find yourself making excuses for the mark that you received in the OC test, that is probably the time for you to recognise that you are not ready for the selective test. You don’t have the right mindset and you are likely going to get a similar mark in the selective exam. So, if you have about 12 months from that point, you have to realise that it is going to take consistent work throughout the year. Depending on your marks in English and Maths in the OC test, you would already have a general idea of what you need to focus on first. However, to make this crystal clear and to know your baseline level– give the sample selective papers a go. They are going to be easier than the actual exam so it would be a great time to do them in year 5 and it is going to be a great benchmark for you. The score that you get from the sample papers will show you your weak areas, what you are good at and what you need to focus on in particular.

I suggest in areas that you are decent or pretty good at, you only need to spend about 40 minutes on the topic every single day to get you even better at it. If you got around 50% in the sample paper, chances are you will have to spend even more time on that section because you are quite behind (regardless of which school you plan to go into). The reason why you want to study a bit every day is because of the ‘snowball’ effect. This effect involves the notion that over time, with deliberate focus, you will improve exponentially. So, if you improve 0.1% a day after studying, that means in just 10 days, you will be an entire 1% better and more well-rounded than where you were 10 days ago. With this example, you can already imagine how much you can improve over time. However, depending on your parents, the time you study, resources, tutor and how quickly you learn, it might be more than 0.1% improvement, or it could be less. I use this effect for the students that I personally teach, it might only be 2-3 hours a week. So how do I ensure they are still learning outside of our lessons? One of the ways I do this is by getting students to read 15-20 minutes a day which will result in their vocabulary and general comprehension improving without me actively teaching them.   

3 months

So, let’s say we only had 3 months left to the exam and you haven’t really done any preparation or if you have, you are not getting the results. I would still recommend doing the sample paper so you can have a feel of the structure because it is vastly different to traditional exams and whatever you have learnt in large group tutoring centres in the past, may not be applicable at all as the content was based prior to the 2021 changes with Cambridge Assessments. With so little time left, I would only focus on the weak areas. It’s what we have done with the students that were recently on board with us. We give assessments based on certain sections of the exams and depending on your mark, we know whether we need to break that down and focus on it. If you get most of the questions correct, you should not spend a lot of time on it. If you get a significant amount of questions wrong in the cloze passage for instance, then keep drilling it until you fully know how to approach it and get some experience in answering different text types involving cloze passages.

In terms of the amount of work you need to do, instead of spending 40 minutes on a topic, you will not get the same benefits using the snowball effect, so you need to cram more in the shorter time window. I’m not telling you to take shortcuts, but you do need to ramp up the amount of homework and practice papers you complete. For the practice papers, make sure it is generally always timed as well. This will allow the student to gain confidence by answering questions that are formatted similarly to the actual exam as well as develop the ability to apply your skills in a simulated test environment. If you had unlimited time practising your writing task, you are going to end up with a really good outcome and may give you an inaccurate representation of your skills. Instead, do the questions under exam conditions and that will give you a better simulation of what to expect. Part of the battle is pacing yourself and making sure you actually complete the exam.

1 week

Lastly, in the unfortunate event where you only have a week to go to the selective exam and you are not ready, there are a few things to consider. This section will primarily focus on mindset as you really do not have enough time to practically apply the principles and advice I mentioned earlier. Instead, do the sample papers that were released and keep going over certain questions that you found difficulty answering. Try to understand the crux of what the question is asking and do a practice question or 2 on each of them. In terms of content, that will likely be all you can cover in just a week.

In terms of mindset, you also have to realise that your child is likely not going to score well. They will not be confident and as a consequence find the test really challenging. This is okay. Encourage the student to give it your all because you know that there is nothing to lose. Realise that you were not adequately prepared, and, in the future, you need to take the right measures to ensure this does not happen again. After the selective exam in 2021, you also have some time to change your school options. If you are a parent and you find your child in this situation, have a good discussion with them after the exam and put some more options to be taken into consideration. You have to broaden your scope in terms of school selection choices because if you only choose local schools and they are outside your child’s ability, you are not going to get into anything. This is a huge mistake which is why you need to follow the CSS framework I developed. I’ve covered this already in a previous video but if you have not seen it, you can learn the ins and outs of what it represents in it and I will include a link to it in the description below.

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