I am so glad that TheMadness posted this. I've not been on this forum since my child finished with the 11plus. I happened to see Madness' post a few days back and felt I had to respond. I''m pretty sure we used the same tutor. And yes, Brookmans, I was one of those parents who signed the contract to not use another tutor, as I was inexperienced and was none the wiser and basically toed the line with whatever madness this tutor came up with.
Just as TheMadness said, we could not have our deposit back unless we gave her the child's result.
During covid, her lessons were conducted online. There was absolutely no control of the number of students in the onlineclass. For English, the way the paper was marked was simply by students reading out their answers. This meant that 1. spelling/ grammatical mistakes were never corrected. 2. Because there was no limit as to the number of students in the online class; often there was no time left for everyone to read out their answers. Very often, the lesson would end abruptly without finishing the paper because half the time she would be waffling on about something else and not the paper and time had run out.
How she conducted the lesson was also very much dependent on her mood. If she was in a foul mood, she would literally scream(yes, scream, not a mere telling off) and simply ban (throw out) a child from the class, over a very simple issue eg. not turning their camera on, eating while listening to the class. (but it was ok if it was her munching away while teaching a class). Remember, these children were only 10/11 years old.
And yes, we were made to make payment via the 'Friends and Family' option; we had to do this with all the tutors she used as well.
The papers that she used for her lessons; we were not able to download them. This meant that we never had the question paper for revision. More ingenious parents would probably get round it by taking screenshots. But, if you didn't, and you wanted the paper again (eg, maths), you had to pay again to attend the same class.
She operated by praying on the fear and anxiety of parents just as TheMadness said. She claimed to be the specialist expert for a particular school and her communication with parents is often of the sort that 'if you don't do this/ sigh up for this class/ this number of classess, you will fail'. It was also constantly competing one child against the other via ranking of results and an academically able child was often favoured and seen as 'the best'.
It was only recently (after 2 years) that my child said to me, attending classess with this tutor (and not even so much the prep for 11 plus itself), put her under an extreme amount of stress and caused her a lot of anxiety- every single time she had to attend the lesson and during the lesson itself as how the tutor would behave is very much down to her own whims and mood for the day. It was a pretty miserable one year; she was absolutely petrified. Once, she counted her marks wrongly by 2/3 marks (they had to mark their own paper and count their own marks) and it was insinuated that she had cheated. These all added to the overall stress. On hindsight, I should have done what TheMadness did and taken her out of there, but kept her in, with the promise of the holy grail which is the 'covetable' spot in this particular selective school.
We eventually decided not to take up a place at a selective school and opted for a local outstanding comprehensive instead, for a variety of reasons. Her Y7 cats score puts her at the top 5% I'm told. She is in top sets and have been predicted 7-9s. So for those parents who are not successful or for whatever reasons do not opt for a selective school, it really is not the end of the road.
I have to add that this tutor is actually on this forum too - she still is. It is actually on here that another parent recommended her to us saying that she was is an expert on selective schools in this area. I hope other parents do not make the same mistake as us with a tutor as such.
Just as TheMadness said, we could not have our deposit back unless we gave her the child's result.
During covid, her lessons were conducted online. There was absolutely no control of the number of students in the onlineclass. For English, the way the paper was marked was simply by students reading out their answers. This meant that 1. spelling/ grammatical mistakes were never corrected. 2. Because there was no limit as to the number of students in the online class; often there was no time left for everyone to read out their answers. Very often, the lesson would end abruptly without finishing the paper because half the time she would be waffling on about something else and not the paper and time had run out.
How she conducted the lesson was also very much dependent on her mood. If she was in a foul mood, she would literally scream(yes, scream, not a mere telling off) and simply ban (throw out) a child from the class, over a very simple issue eg. not turning their camera on, eating while listening to the class. (but it was ok if it was her munching away while teaching a class). Remember, these children were only 10/11 years old.
And yes, we were made to make payment via the 'Friends and Family' option; we had to do this with all the tutors she used as well.
The papers that she used for her lessons; we were not able to download them. This meant that we never had the question paper for revision. More ingenious parents would probably get round it by taking screenshots. But, if you didn't, and you wanted the paper again (eg, maths), you had to pay again to attend the same class.
She operated by praying on the fear and anxiety of parents just as TheMadness said. She claimed to be the specialist expert for a particular school and her communication with parents is often of the sort that 'if you don't do this/ sigh up for this class/ this number of classess, you will fail'. It was also constantly competing one child against the other via ranking of results and an academically able child was often favoured and seen as 'the best'.
It was only recently (after 2 years) that my child said to me, attending classess with this tutor (and not even so much the prep for 11 plus itself), put her under an extreme amount of stress and caused her a lot of anxiety- every single time she had to attend the lesson and during the lesson itself as how the tutor would behave is very much down to her own whims and mood for the day. It was a pretty miserable one year; she was absolutely petrified. Once, she counted her marks wrongly by 2/3 marks (they had to mark their own paper and count their own marks) and it was insinuated that she had cheated. These all added to the overall stress. On hindsight, I should have done what TheMadness did and taken her out of there, but kept her in, with the promise of the holy grail which is the 'covetable' spot in this particular selective school.
We eventually decided not to take up a place at a selective school and opted for a local outstanding comprehensive instead, for a variety of reasons. Her Y7 cats score puts her at the top 5% I'm told. She is in top sets and have been predicted 7-9s. So for those parents who are not successful or for whatever reasons do not opt for a selective school, it really is not the end of the road.
I have to add that this tutor is actually on this forum too - she still is. It is actually on here that another parent recommended her to us saying that she was is an expert on selective schools in this area. I hope other parents do not make the same mistake as us with a tutor as such.
Statistics: Posted by ReformedMum — Fri Jan 19, 2024 2:59 pm