Parents have been advised to avoid passing on their anxiety and worry of getting in to top independent schools on to their children. The pressure to get into the best schools is enormous and highly competitive for four year olds even, especially in North London. Many parents take their very young children aged 3 to private tutors to coach them so that they are able to get in to their preferred school of choice because they haven’t the time to do it themselves… or literally do not know how to.

Its been observed that parents make such a huge fuss which affects their child and makes them more stressed and anxious to the extent that the child is more interested in pleasing their parent than actually getting into the school.

Parents need to learn to be calm when dealing with such delicate matters especially with their children. They need to be able to instil self-confidence into their child even if they are not performing to target. This particularly applies to 11 plus children who are doing extremely difficult work. Unfortunately preparation before hand between the ages of 7 to 9 has not always been done so the children find it hard to catch up. A lot of this knowledge required comes from reading lots of books and delving into encyclopaedias. Most parents are too driven by what is set in exams and do not get the point that in order for their child to be successful they need to be a well rounded individual. Some do not prepare their children through play and social activities which give them important knowledge and skills towards passing exams because they think these things are not academic and a waste of time. The truth is the total opposite; this time spent being a proper child gives a tremendous edge to important vocabulary development. To just be exam driven from an early age will not develop their punctuation, language and creative skills. 

Understandably, parents obviously want the best for their child hence the stress due to the intensity of the admissions, tests, assessments and exams; it’s quite a grilling process. But for it all to be worth it in the end, it should be taken into consideration the fact that these children need proper time to be prepared and this can not be rushed in one year at the end or the child may not be able to cope. Proper exam preparation planning enables the child to do other things throughout whilst learning and to also have some fun!