The 11-plus has hit the headlines again recently. Some grammar schools, notably Reading School, are attempting to design a “tutor-proof” version of the 11-plus entrance exam, with the aim of eliminating the perceived advantage of families who employ private tutors. It reflects a long-standing concern within selective education, which is that tutoring skews the academic playing field towards those who can afford it.
We can understand why schools raise this concern. There is intense competition for selective school places, and it’s understandable that parents want to give their children every opportunity to succeed. But the idea that an exam can be made resistant to tutoring fails to understand what effective tutoring really does.
Adam Caller, founder of Tutors International, puts it plainly:
“I’m yet to encounter a test for which preparation, coaching, and familiarity with the format will not improve a student’s performance.”
Attempts to redesign the 11-plus are not new. Over the years, schools have experimented with different formats intended to reduce the influence of preparation, from reasoning-heavy papers to assessments based on creative thinking or problem-solving. The most recent proposals aim to focus on curriculum knowledge, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity, with the intention that children cannot simply be coached through a bank of practice questions.
But preparation improves performance in almost any sphere. Athletes train for competitions. Musicians rehearse before performances. It would be surprising if examinations were the only context where familiarity and expert guidance made no difference.
The reason is simple. Good tutoring is not primarily about teaching children a list of answers. It develops the underlying skills that examinations attempt to measure: reasoning, comprehension, confidence with unfamiliar problems, and the ability to work calmly under pressure.
Even tests designed to measure innate aptitude are not immune to this effect.
Caller explains:
“The assessments that come closest to being resistant to coaching are probably IQ-style reasoning tests. But even there, people can improve their scores through practice. Familiarity with the format alone changes how confidently a student approaches the questions.”
When schools attempt to remove tutoring from the equation entirely, they risk drifting towards a narrow definition of “innate ability”. That approach brings its own problems. Children develop at different rates, and many factors influence how well they perform on a single test at the age of eleven. A pupil with dyslexia, dyspraxia, or simply slower cognitive development may not show their full potential under those conditions.
More importantly, the premise behind tutor-proof exams overlooks something fundamental about education.
Private tutoring, when done well, is not about gaming a test. It is about helping a child learn how to think and to do it independently, without being spoon-fed.
A good tutor equips a student to connect ideas, analyse unfamiliar information, research effectively, and solve problems independently. Those are precisely the abilities that lead to strong exam results in the first place.
“If tutoring gives some students an advantage, it is because those students have spent time developing the skills that exams reward.”
And that is unlikely to change.
As long as competitive exams exist, families will look for ways to help their children prepare. Schools may alter question formats or shift the emphasis of assessments, but preparation will always matter. A student who has practised reasoning through difficult questions, managing exam pressure, and structuring their thinking clearly will nearly always perform better than one encountering those challenges for the first time.
In that sense, the search for a completely “tutor-proof” exam may be chasing an impossible goal.
