This blog post explains how The Exam Coach delivers the best online learning experience for children studying to sit the 11 Plus exam for grammar and/or independent school entry in the UK. If you have a child about to take the 11 Plus, please read on to discover more about our philosophy and approach, as well as why it works.
If you’re pushed for time, just take a look at the video below in order to get a feel for an Exam Coach workshop and how it’s different from standard online tuition.
Contents
How We Deliver The Best Online Tuition
Types of 11+ Tuition
How We Deliver The Best Online Tuition
There are five core principles we use to guide our approach to 11 Plus exam tuition.
1. The super tutor
We believe the best tutors in the world exist for each subject, exam type and age group. We call these tutors ‘super tutors’. At The Exam Coach, we only have a small team of tutors focusing on our 11 Plus specialisms:
11+ Comprehension (Multiple Choice and Written Answer)
11+ Creative Writing
11+ Persuasive and Informative Writing
11+ Verbal Reasoning
This is because we believe so strongly in the importance of who is teaching our learning materials; they have to be experts in their field.
In 2016, The Sutton Trust and Ipsos Mori estimated up to 1.5 million people in the UK earn income from teaching pupils outside of school. Here’s the report. Frankly, anyone can call themselves a tutor. It’s an attractive side-income, and the lack of regulation creates a low barrier to entry into the profession. Due to this, there are significant differences in the quality of tuition delivered across the country.
The huge shift to online learning over the past five years has meant parents have finally seen just how much the quality of teaching can vary. All you needed to do was glance over your child’s shoulder during a period of online schooling to see for yourself. The difference in teaching quality, not to mention online teaching quality, is enormous.
Take a moment to think about your own schooling… There were teachers who inspired and captivated you, and there were those who left you bored-stiff and scratching your head during the end of term test! They were all professionals, but they all delivered drastically different levels of instruction. Online tuition has enabled parents to see the problem still exists. Furthermore, teachers are now trying to do something they’ve never been trained to do — teach online!
For this reason, it’s our mission to find, train and scale the best tutors in the world. We only work with the people who have passed competitive exams, attended top universities and have strong teaching experience. After training them in our best practices for online tuition, we scale their teaching to as many students as possible. We believe this is the future of education and, through use of technology and a dedicated support team around each super tutor, we believe it is an achievable goal. Every student deserves access to the best tutor.
2. Small group dynamic
When done well, online small group tuition is more enjoyable and effective than 1-1 tuition. We include two key ingredients in all of our workshops:
Entertainment
Our goal is to make our workshops as entertaining as possible. Great tuition should be a performance — it should educate and entertain — the group dynamic in our workshops facilitates this. We spend a lot of time choosing examples and selecting materials we think will resonate with our students. After every workshop we gauge what worked and what didn’t work based on student response from a broader sample than 1-1 allows for. In this way, we are able to develop world class online learning materials and experiences. If students are enjoying and engaging in what we do, we know they’re far more likely to be learning too.
Competitive group testing
Competition drives performance. All of our workshops and courses include tests; small prizes are awarded for winning students. This is then consolidated by active recall testing at intervals throughout our workshops to ensure retention of information. The competitive group dynamic incentivises our students to engage fully and pay attention whilst also giving parents a clear indication of progress achieved. During a 1-1 tuition session students do not have these incentives in place, naturally they can become disengaged. Furthermore, our testing format only serves to boost a child's confidence because all answers are submitted privately within the group online classroom environment.
Students are able to ask specific questions by putting their hand up and asking upon invitation by the tutor. The tutor can mute and unmute all students at their discretion. The online learning environment helps reduce the number of questions that interrupt the flow of learning. Therefore, the tutor can choose when is the best moment to answer a question. Questions can also be asked on an anonymous and private basis via the 1-1 chat option. This means students can be fearless with the questions they ask. Do you remember that tricky concept you never fully understood but were too embarrassed to ask? Our online workshops are set up to resolve these types of questions.
3. Excellent explanation beats personalisation
We believe the personalised approach to education is given too much prestige.
Many tuition companies will state their ‘personalised’, ‘bespoke’ or ‘individualised’ approach as an upside. We’d argue this is not entirely true. One example of how personalisation is misunderstood is the ‘learning styles’ myth.
The four distinct learning styles that have been popularised are:
Visual
Auditory
Kinaesthetic
Reading/writing
Which learning style does your child prefer?
Though learning styles are not a total myth, you should be aware of some of the academic studies performed in the area. One of the most prominent studies asserts, although learning styles may exist, there’s little evidence to show delivering instruction adapted to a child’s perceived learning style improves the child’s ability to understand and learn new concepts and information.
In other words, our learning style (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or reading/writing) is a convenient and easy-to-understand concept we like to tell ourselves. Yet, there’s no evidence to suggest studying information delivered in our preferred style improves learning or test scores.
If you’re interested in reading more about this, you should look at the work of Professor Daniel Willingham who began his career at Harvard University and is the current professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. This article does a good job of summarising his research as well as of others who support his findings.
Parents spend large quantities of time and money on a personalised 1-1 tuition programme or subscriptions to adaptive learning platforms with artificial intelligence capabilities. Tailoring content and delivering it to match a child’s learning style is one of the main arguments 1-1 tutors use to charge higher rates for their services. Yet, in terms of learning outcomes and exam results, the research shows this is of little value.
On the contrary, we’ve learned that great instruction and explanation is great instruction and explanation (no matter the learning preferences of the students). If a message is delivered with passion, enthusiasm, energy and precision, and is then supported by a variety of material to communicate this in different ways (eg. visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or reading/writing) learning outcomes will improve quickly.
4. First class learning materials
Classroom-tested materials
We use tried and tested learning materials to ensure our learning goals are achieved within a group environment. Concepts are rephrased and re-expressed in different ways to anticipate common misunderstandings before they arise. Examples and stories are made relatable for our students. We have honed and refined our online materials after hundreds of workshops and continue to look for new improvements to this day.
It is not just our teaching materials that are classroom-tested. On each of our courses, students receive several resources to help them learn and remember the content covered. The following are provided for each of our course sessions:
A worksheet
Model answers/exemplary texts
Class notes
A homework task/mock exam paper
Course planning
If you ask a 1-1 tutor to show you their learning materials for the next two months, they probably won’t be able to show you much. The typical approach tends to lack precision and thorough planning. Our learning materials are all already made, classroom-tested and ready to go. We have a clear plan for how to prepare students to perform at the level we know they will need to and, based on previous parent reviews, we know it works!
5. A focus on exam technique
Our goal is to help students pass the 11 Plus exam. Therefore, our teaching is always delivered with the exam front of mind. Students are taught how to apply what they are learning within an exam situation.
We give students a step-by-step processes to answer exam questions quickly and accurately. If they follow the process, they will score higher marks on a more consistent basis. These processes eradicate common challenges we see our students encountering each year. For example:
Making careless mistakes
Misreading questions
Slow reading speed
Unmethodical reasoning processes
Poor comprehension exam technique
Failure to target the mark scheme
We go into granular detail on the steps and thought-processes students need to carry out in order to achieve highly on exam day. This ensures students work methodically and use their knowledge to the best of their ability.
Types of Tuition
The Exam Coach offers two types of tuition to help students with their 11 Plus preparation for grammar and independent school entrance exams. Find out more below.
11+ 5-Day Courses
Our full 5-day 11+ courses focus on teaching the key concepts and exam techniques for each of the 11+ disciplines we specialise in:
11+ Comprehension (Multiple Choice and Written Answer)
11+ Creative Writing
11+ Persuasive and Informative Writing
11+ Verbal Reasoning
These courses help students develop the critical foundation needed for each of their 11 Plus exams — for example, understanding effective exam technique and the mark scheme. We provide clear explanations, give students easy-to-remember exam techniques and show worked examples. Our courses are designed to ensure that students master the skills they need in order to achieve their full potential in their 11 Plus.
Types of courses currently offered:
📚 ENGLISH COMPREHENSION (MULTIPLE CHOICE STYLE)
Suitable for the following exam boards: GL Assessment, CEM, ISEB Common Pre-Test, Kent Test, Sutton SET and Tiffin Stage 1.
📚 ENGLISH COMPREHENSION (WRITTEN ANSWER STYLE)
Suitable for the following exam boards: independent/school written exams, CSSE and Tiffin Stage 2.
📝 CREATIVE WRITING
Suitable for the following exam boards: Kent Test, CSSE, Sutton Stage 2, Tiffin Stage 2 and independent/school written exams.
📝 PERSUASIVE WRITING
Suitable for the following exam boards: Kent Test, CSSE Sutton Stage 2, Tiffin Stage 2 and independent/school written exams.
🤔 VERBAL REASONING
Suitable for the following exam boards: GL Assessment, CEM, CAT4, CSSE, ISEB Common Pre-Test, Kent Test and Sutton SET.
Details:
£275 per child.
5x 90-minutes of expert 11+ tuition by an experienced tutor/teacher over 5 days (either during one week or other consecutive weekends).
Interactive video and microphone access via Zoom.
Detailed class notes, worksheets and other resources for each session.
Key concept explanations and demonstrations.
Exam style question practice and walkthrough.
Competitive class tests.
Self-assessed and marked testing.
Full walkthroughs of answers.
Fun examples and stories.
Detailed and effective exam preparation in chosen 11+ area.
Exam and memory technique explanations.
Model answer explanations (where applicable).
Homework set after each session.
Detailed homework marking and feedback after each session consisting of a 5-minute voice note from our team. All our marking focuses on areas for improvement to ensure continued progress.
When they take place:
Weekends during school term time.
School holidays.
How to register:
Weekly tuition
In our weekly workshops, your tutor will share some background information about themselves and our workshops with new students. This is followed by 40 minutes of teaching time. Weekly workshops run twice a week, usually on weekday evenings. The dates and times of these workshops change each week to ensure everyone can benefit from them.
The content within each workshop varies between 11+ creative writing, comprehension, verbal reasoning or English vocabulary. These classes are a great way to experience our tuition and let your child learn something new before booking one of our courses. Weekly tuition allows us to regularly top up your child’s knowledge during the year prior to their exams.
Each weekly tuition workshop is standalone, meaning your child does not need to have attended any previous sessions to join one. Class notes are sent out 24 hours after each workshop to help students recap what they have learnt.
Types of weekly workshop:
Tricky Vocabulary Workout
Expands student’s vocabulary and knowledge of word meanings, key for both English and verbal reasoning, 11+ exams. Even if students know how to solve a type of verbal reasoning question, if they don’t know the vocabulary used in the question, they still could get a wrong answer! Therefore, these sessions aim to broaden each child’s knowledge of English vocabulary as much as possible, using words we’ve previously seen appear in 11+ exams.
Verbal Reasoning
Our weekly tuition sessions for verbal reasoning focus on synonyms and antonyms (words with close and opposite meanings). Word meaning plays a huge part in most verbal reasoning exams. In these sessions, we work through several different types of exam-style question, ensuring students understand the technique and thought process behind answering each one.
Comprehension
Comprehension appears in almost all 11+ examinations, and practice makes perfect. In each comprehension workshop, the tutor will walk students through an exam-style text, showing them how to best handle and annotate it. Then they will answer 10 questions, focusing on elements such as the process of elimination, minimising mistakes and literary devices.
Creative Writing
Finally, our creative writing weekly tuition focuses on using exam-style questions as prompts to help students work together to craft model answers. In each session, students will be given some exam questions and model sentences which could be used to create a high-scoring beginning, middle and end. They will then work on their own answers with the tutor, improving and extending them as they go.
Details:
£15 per session (payable via Zoom).
45 minutes.
Short introduction to The Exam Coach for new students.
Competitive class testing.
Self-assessed testing.
Walkthrough of answers.
Class notes.
When they take place:
At least once a week (date and time announced on Mondays via our email newsletter).
Usually on weekday evenings.
How to register: