Does DIY work?

A lot of parents would have asked themselves if it is possible to do it yourself when it comes to gaining access to NSW opportunity classes and selective schools.

The answer is "Yes, it is completely possible." but there are a few hurdles along the way. Some of them are listed here as random musings heard from a lot of people who have tried and succeeded and those who have failed.

- My child is probably not the most academically capable one out of every 500 students. Many schools in the area have not had 1 OC placement in the last 10 years!

- I am supposed that I was good enough to become a medical doctor myself but I cannot even answer these prep questions very well. Perhaps I am just old, out of touch, out of practice or the game has changed.

- It is best to leave it to the people who know how to play the game. Send the kids off to these places and they know what to do. We have our specialisation and they have theirs.

- I suppose we can do it ourselves but we won't do the best job and the kids will just end up in the lower selective schools which are not really any good.

- Hey, I am a tutor for past 25 years and my students have become highly qualified specialists, engineers, medical doctors and so on but every one has a specialisation. I do high school level and HSC and stuff like math ext. 2 but I won't do it myself when it comes to my own kid and an area I do not know enough about.

- Yes, you can do it yourself but the kids must be willing to do the work and getting into the top 10 selective schools is never easy.

- We just do not have the time for it! I had a look at it and it would take a lot of time and learning about it. We can earn a lot more money spending that time doing our work and pay some one else to do it. But I suppose the kids did not want to work.

- I am a school teacher myself and I tried to help DD get into OC class when DD was in year 4. But it did not work so now I sent DD to a tutoring place as they might know what to do. I always thought that my DD is able to read at year 7-8 and do math at year 6-7 level but the tutoring place is telling me that DD could barely cope with their year 4 OC program let alone doing year 5 selective program.

- At school, they don't teach grammar and math word problems. There is no chance hoping that school can help my DS. I had a look at some materials at the shop but I have no idea how to teach. They are just questions and answers. Teaching is a different thing.

- I suppose I can teach my DD but there will always be a lot of kids who are just as smart and they work harder and prepared by tutors who know what to so it is hard to get a place in one of the top schools.

It is interesting to notice the difference between the UK and Australia. Even though the UK is the mother country, the tradition of grammar schools is extremely popular and powerful. Coaching is thriving in the UK to get into their grammar schools (11 Plus test) but in Australia, Caucasians generally detest the idea of academic coaching, yet they love sport and music coaching. As the result, while a lot of ethnic NESB students openly attend tutoring and the Greeks attend their own Sunday schools ... Aussies who use academic tutoring almost always go into hiding. As the result, lots of ethnic NESB students go to class-based tutoring while Aussies and other ethnic Caucasians prefer private 1-on-1 tutoring to keep things quiet.

It is also worthwhile to notice that Caucasian kids with middle class mothers and a tradition of bed-time stories tend to have an excellent start around preschool and kindergarten. They are well ahead in everything from reading, listening, counting and writing but the students from ethnic NESB from East and South-East Asian backgrounds leap up strongly around middle of primary years regardless of their family social status.