Pass the 4 Plus With Hermes Education

The 4 Plus assessment is increasingly used by academic London day schools such as Westminster, Alleyn’s, Highgate, NLCS, Habs, JAGS and Dulwich College to give children a place in reception with all-through-to-18 offers. This avoids the need for the 7+ or 11+ exams, relieves pressure on children and represents a golden ticket for many families. Competition is intense with around 10 children chasing each place. Children are assessed in their pre-school year between November and January in either one or two rounds. The assessments are based around:

• Readiness for school. Is the child ready to learn as soon as they arrive in school at the start of reception?
• Aptitude for learning. These are heavily behavioural and we call these the 4 Plus Pillars.
• Early signs of academic attainment.  The most academic schools, such as Alleyn’s, Highgate (and likely Westminster) test simple literacy and numeracy. Parents fixate on these more academic areas, but actually they are less important that the more behavioural based 4 Plus Pillars related to aptitude for learning.

Many parents feel it is a lottery who passes a 4 Plus assessment. However, we notice that children who pass one 4+ assessment tend to pass many. By contrast, a child who fails one, tends to fail many of their 4 Plus assessments. In short, the schools are using their 4+ assessment days to look for the same attributes. In our experience, much of what parents believe will be tested at 4 Plus is wrong.  This is usually based on dinner party chat, poor understanding of who the assessors are, and deeply misleading forum posts. This can lead well meaning parents to coach children in the wrong skills, such as rote learning numbers and can lead to bright children failing the 4 plus.

When you work with us, we will demystify the process and explain what is really going on and why. In fact, as much as we prepare children to ace the 4 plus, we also equip parents with the insights, skills and resources to help their children themselves.

We partner with you in every aspect of preparation for the 4 plus assessments offering:

• Initial behavioural assessments to determine where your child sits against our benchmarks and their peers based on the 4 Plus Pillars.
• A prediction of their odds of success at a competitive school offer.
• A personalised action plan from our 4 Plus Director of Education.
• A critical thinking and motor skills test conducted in association with Cambridge University with a full report and standardised scoring of your child’s current attainment.
• Literacy and numeracy tests designed to replicate the assessments of the more academic schools.
• A review of your latest nursery report. These are written in code and can make or break an application.
• 1-2-1, paired and group coaching sessions – depending on your child’s needs and where they are applying.
• Three parent coaching webinars giving practical advice for how parents can help their children in 4 Plus Pillars behaviours and in more academic attainment areas.
• Intensive literacy and numeracy courses to help children have edge at the most competitive schools.
• Extensive verbal feedback on your child’s progress. These happen after each session, and we supplement with more in depth reviews of your child’s performance and progress.

 We have 4 Plus expertise, unparalleled in depth and breadth and our own pedagogy. This includes:

• Our deep internal knowledge of 4 Plus assessments and the academic and behavioural development of children of this age has led us to develop our own 4 Plus pedagogy. We call these our 4 Plus Pillars and children work through them at their own pace, depending on their personal strengths and weaknesses. The matrices we use reflect the actual marking sheets used by our parents’ most popular schools in real assessments.
• A 4 Plus Head Office team of qualified teachers, all with direct involvement in competitive London assessments.
• Partnerships with both Oxford and Cambridge Universities to provide standardised testing for children – and we supplement this with our own in-house testing.
• Teachers and former teachers from UCS, Highgate, JAGS, Dulwich College, Alleyn’s, Glendower, Habs’ Girls and Boys, NLCS and South Hampstead who are or were involved in the 4 plus at their schools teach our sessions and keep us up to date with the latest developments.
• Deep knowledge of the London 4 Plus landscape, North, South, East and West.
• A full time Director of 4+ and an Education Director developing our 4 plus pedagogical strategy and overseeing your child’s progress.
• CPD training for schools on 4 Plus assessments. We help schools develop their own 4+ programmes and train their teachers in best practice assessing.
• Every child’s progress is reviewed in a discussion every week between their teacher and our Head of Early Years, who then creates a bespoke lesson plan for the next lesson.

 The most successful candidates have a 12- 18 month run in and work closely in partnership with our education team, supplementing at home throughout the year.  We shift gear in the September before the test, because by now children are mature enough to work on collaboration and sharing skills and so we run group assessments to help children master these critically important elements of the 4 plus.

We limit our numbers to 15 boys and 15 girls per school. After this we do not accept any clients. If we helped everyone, we would help no one. We sell out most years by September. You can reserve a place in any cohort by registering with us here.

Dulwich: We run sessions out of Dulwich Village Infants' School every Saturday and Sunday morning.

Hampstead: We run sessions out of Hampstead Parochial School every Saturday and Sunday morning. 

Chelsea: We run sessions out of our centre in Oakley Street every Saturday morning.

Our intensive holiday courses are run out of Dulwich and Hampstead.