As a tutor , I have always disliked how the long summer holidays affect my students. Every year, children are allowed a long 6 week break from homework and revision. And every year at the start of September, I receive phone calls from over confident parents, asking me to tutor their child for 3 months for the 11 plus exam. When I assess their child I am shocked to find the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division have all been forgotten. I am a great teacher, but not a magician, I can’t magic those skills in place.

The solution… Create a timetable of topic refreshers. Your child doesn’t need to be working 5 hours a day revising, I would say 30- 1 hour a day of work is reasonable. Unless your child is a guaranteed genius and is learning a-level maths at the age of 10, I think it is safe to say your child would benefit from continuous practice.

The other solution, get the government to change the summer holidays. The media has repeatedly brought this up throughout the past few years. Here is a link from bbc about summer holidays being too long.
Www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23144491

I have been working on courses and structured homework for all of my students to minimise the negative summer holiday effect on retention of knowledge. My 11 plus classes are all based in London and are at an affordable rate of £18 per hour. Visit this website: www.11pluslondon.co.uk