The 11+ explained

What the 11+ actually is

The 11+ is an entrance test used by selective state schools — grammar schools — to decide who they admit into Year 7. It is not a national exam, and it is not part of the primary curriculum: there is no 11+ in the National Curriculum, no statutory requirement to sit it, and no single paper sat by every child in the country.

That last point is the one that surprises most parents. What a child sits depends entirely on where they are applying. Some areas use papers from a national test provider; others belong to a consortium of schools that sets its own. The subjects overlap heavily, but the number of papers, the balance between them and the question styles do not.

Because it is selective rather than diagnostic, the test is designed to spread children out rather than to check they have met a standard. That is why questions get sharply harder towards the end of a paper, and why timing matters as much as knowledge.

Who sits it, and when

The test is normally sat at the very start of Year 6, for entry the following September. In practice that means a child is examined on Year 5 material, weeks after the summer holiday — which is why preparation is a Year 5 project rather than a Year 6 one.

Registration is separate from the test and usually closes months before it, often before the summer holiday. Missing the registration deadline is the single most avoidable way to lose a place, and no amount of preparation recovers it. Deadlines differ by area, so confirm yours with the local authority or consortium that runs admissions where you are applying.

The four papers, and what each one tests

Almost every 11+ format is built from some combination of four subjects. Which ones your child sits, and in what proportion, depends on the area.

• Maths — arithmetic under time pressure, fractions, percentages, ratio, averages, area and perimeter, and multi-step word problems. The maths itself is Key Stage 2; the difficulty is in the speed and the number of steps.
• Verbal reasoning — letter and number sequences, codes, analogies, odd-one-out and word logic. It looks like a puzzle paper, but it rests almost entirely on vocabulary and pattern recognition.
• English — comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and grammar. Vocabulary is the part that cannot be crammed, because it is built by reading over years rather than weeks.
• Non-verbal reasoning — shape sequences, rotations, reflections, nets, matrices and spatial questions with no reading at all. It is the paper where a clear checking order beats raw intuition.

How the marking works

Raw marks are rarely what decides anything. Scores are normally age-standardised, meaning a child born in August is not penalised for being nearly a year younger than a child born the previous September. The adjustment is applied to the raw score before any threshold is considered.

Beyond that, the specifics — how papers are weighted, what score is needed, how ties are broken, how catchment interacts with the result — vary by school and change from year to year. We deliberately do not publish those numbers anywhere on this site. Getting them wrong would mislead a parent making a real decision about their child, and the only reliable source is the admissions authority itself.

What preparation actually needs to cover

Effective preparation is less about volume than about three things happening together: closing knowledge gaps, building speed, and getting used to the format.

• Knowledge — the topics themselves. A child cannot reason their way through a percentage question they have never been taught. This is where most of the early work belongs.
• Speed — most 11+ papers are deliberately tight on time. Accuracy first, then pace; a child who is fast and wrong loses more marks than one who is slow and right.
• Format — knowing what a matrix question or a cloze passage looks like before the day. Familiarity removes a surprising amount of pressure, and it is the cheapest gain available.
• Stamina — sitting a full paper without losing concentration two-thirds of the way through. Timed practice a few times, late on, is enough; doing it every week is counterproductive.

A realistic timeline

Preparation that starts in Year 5 and runs steadily beats preparation that starts late and runs hot. A workable shape looks like this.

• Early Year 5 — find out which papers your area sets, and register the date the registration window opens. Start reading widely; it is the highest-return thing you can do this early.
• Mid Year 5 — work topic by topic, closing gaps. Short, frequent sessions. No timing yet: accuracy is the only target.
• Late Year 5 — introduce timing on individual sections, then move to mixed sets so your child has to switch question types the way a real paper makes them.
• Summer before Year 6 — a handful of full timed papers, spaced out, for stamina and nerves. Keep the volume low; by this point the gains come from confidence, not from new material.

The mistakes that cost families most

• Starting with timed papers. Practising at speed before the knowledge is secure teaches a child to guess quickly, which is the hardest habit to unlearn.
• Practising what the child is already good at. It feels productive and changes nothing. The weak topics are the ones with marks left in them.
• Marking without teaching. A red cross tells a child they were wrong; it does not tell them which step went wrong, and that step is the entire lesson.
• Doing enormous volume. Three hundred questions with no feedback loop is worth less than thirty that get explained.
• Leaving vocabulary to chance. It underpins both English and verbal reasoning, and it is the one thing that genuinely cannot be built in the last few months.

Common questions

When should we start preparing for the 11+?

Most families find the start of Year 5 is about right, giving roughly a year of steady work before the test at the beginning of Year 6. Starting earlier rarely helps and often burns a child out; starting after Christmas of Year 5 means the knowledge work and the timing work have to happen at once, which is harder.

How long should my child practise each day?

Ten to twenty minutes on most days beats a long weekend session. Recall improves through spacing, so the gap between sessions is doing as much work as the session itself. Consistency matters far more than duration at this age.

Which subjects are in the 11+?

Most formats draw on four: maths, verbal reasoning, English, and non-verbal reasoning. Which of those your child sits, and how they are weighted, depends on the area — some use all four, others test only two or three. Confirm the format with the admissions authority where you are applying.

What is a good 11+ score?

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. Scores are age-standardised, thresholds are set by individual schools or consortia, and they move from year to year depending on who applies. The admissions authority for your area is the only reliable source.

Do we need a tutor?

Not necessarily. What a child needs is accurate content pitched at their level, and an explanation when something goes wrong — a human tutor is one way to deliver that, and not the only one. What does not work is unexplained practice, however much of it there is.

Is the 11+ the same everywhere in England?

No. There is no national 11+ paper. Different areas use different providers and different combinations of papers, and some consortia write their own. The subjects overlap, but the format, timing and question styles do not.

How do we know which topics to work on?

Start with a short diagnostic across all four papers rather than assuming. Most children are uneven — strong in arithmetic and weak in ratio, comfortable in verbal reasoning and lost in non-verbal — and the uneven bits are where the available marks are.

Is non-verbal reasoning something you can improve?

Yes, and usually quickly. It looks like innate spatial talent but it is mostly a procedure: check the number of shapes, then shading, then rotation, then position, in the same order every time. Children who apply a fixed checking order improve fast.