What should my daughter revise for Entrance Exams?

Q. My daughter is taking exams for two independent girls schools after Christmas. I was wondering, what on earth do I revise? We were very sad to find that she hadn’t passed her grammar school exams, but her maths teacher in particular has said she thinks she will be fine. I think her work for the grammar schools will have stood her in good stead but with only a short amount of time it feels like do or die. I cannot afford a tutor. I think my daughter is fed up of it, but I doubt others won’t be studying if they are in the same boat…

A. My advice to all parents and girls approaching our Entrance Examination is not to cram and revise but come and enjoy the whole assessment process. We are looking for potential as much as achievement and do understand that girls will have covered different topics in their different schools. I know that this is hard advice for parents to accept, but it is counter-productive to force girls to do a couple of hours extra work every evening and devote hours of their holidays to tedious and repetitive work.

If you really want to go through topics, ask your daughter’s teacher for the areas of Mathematics and English which she may find more difficult and spend a reasonable amount of time going through and explaining them with examples. Try to avoid pushing so hard that tears and tantrums are the result. Try not to let your anxiety make your daughter anxious and above all don’t make success in the entrance examinations the be all and end all.

The most important thing for your daughter is that she is happy and successful at secondary school. If she cannot pass the entrance examination without a great deal of cramming, she may struggle with day to day work and expectations; if she will be better suited to a different ethos, you don’t want her to feel that she has failed and disappointed you if she does manage to get into the school for which she has “crammed”.