The long school summer holidays are drawing to a close, but for parents with children of a certain age, this year it seemed as though they never existed.

Last term’s Year 5 primary school pupils will be the first children to take their 11-plus exams at Kent’s new advanced date in September - barely two weeks after they go back to school.

Since the change to a September date - instead of January - was only confirmed in the last few weeks before the end of last term, many schools have had little opportunity to re-focus their lessons to prepare for the exam - and in some cases have not even completed the syllabus.

The result has been to thrust even more responsibility on the shoulders of worried parents, many of whom have spent the last six weeks going through past papers with their offspring.

The change will almost certainly be good for future generations of Kent schoolchildren, who will have the advantage of knowing whether they have passed before having to decide which schools to opt for, but it has been a frenetic period for parents of this year’s guinea pig intake who have felt more than ever that it is down to them to get their kids through the exam, which incidentally will now surely have to be renamed the 10-plus.

Some parents have consoled themselves with the thought “at least all the kids will be in the same boat”, but some have been reluctant to take their children for the customary two weeks in Majorca, knowing full well that others will be at home studying.

For weeks, the only subject of conversation among parents waiting at swimming and ballet lessons has been the relative merits IPS past papers over NFER Nelson, or whether the Bond papers are more or less difficult than the real thing.

It’s all a long way from my own 11-plus experience a long time ago. I remember working my way through the exam papers in the school’s Nissen hut, but I remained blissfully unaware I was doing the 11-plus or what effect it might have on my future education until the notification of which school I was going to arrived on the doorstep.