Moving from primary to secondary school can be a real trauma. And for my daughter Hope and many of her friends the most traumatic part were the entrance exams used extensively by schools and education authorities.

In 2002 when Hope was applying to secondary schools almost all independent and perhaps 30% of state schools used tests as a part of their admission process. After having a look around Hope decided to apply to four state schools all of which were oversubscribed. She had never liked tests and was quite dismayed to find that she had to sit them for three out of four of her chosen schools.

In some cases the test is a straightforward competition for places used by the school to select the most able. Others use them to stream children into quite broad categories of ability and then take a quota from each group (usually the best from each group). When used in this way it is possible for a high scoring child to fail to get a place while a lower scoring child does.

Hope was delighted to win a place in the school of her choice in fact she was offered a place in all three of the testing schools. Many of her friends were less fortunate, some endured long waiting lists while others had no alternative but to settle for a place in a school they had not chosen.

How practice helped
Hope benefited greatly from practice. An approach summed up by ‘little and often’ worked the best and she practiced about two hours a week for 6 months (tests are sat between September and February). This increased to up to 6 hours a week as a real test approached. Practice helped because it allowed her to become familiar with the question types, to work quickly and generally develop a far better exam technique. It also helped Hope to deal with her anxiety.

Practice on mock tests against the clock allowed her to learn not to spend too long on any one question, to keep going to the very end and not to give up when faced by a series of difficult questions. It helped to explain that all children find some of the questions difficult and get questions wrong. With practice she saw her score improve and she began to appreciate that doing well in a test is not simply a matter of intelligence but also down to hard work, determination and preparation.

We took a trip to a bookshop and Hope chose a dictionary and thesaurus and she used these to look up the meaning of words she was unsure of. She sometimes used a method of working out maths questions different to the one I had been taught at school. I got her to explain the method to me and we adopted it. I was lucky to have always enjoyed maths but if you are a little rusty then explain this to your child and work to build up speed and confidence together. We used a calculator to check an answer or to better understand how an answer is arrived at but otherwise practiced without one as they are not allowed in the real tests.

Keep the experience positive and constructive and be sure to congratulate your child whenever he or she gets a question right and explain the answer to any that they answer incorrectly.

Example questions
Typically tests include questions of the following sort:
Numerical sub-tests
Q59 What equivalent fraction does 3/9 cancel to?
Q35 What is 2,101 MORE than 56?

Verbal tests
Q60 Which letter can you move from ‘heart’ and put in ‘hash’ to make two new words?
Q87 Find a four-letter word made up of the end of one word
and the beginning of the next: worship, masculine, education
Q101 Find a four-letter word made up of the end of one word and the beginning of the next: knowledge, homicide, adverse and some Nonverbal tests

Sources of practice material
You will need to get hold of lots of realistic practice questions. You
will find over 600 many with detailed explanations in my book
How to Pass Secondary Selection Tests published by Kogan Page.