What is the 11+? A plain-English guide for parents
If you have just discovered that the secondary school you like is "selective", welcome. The 11+ is the entrance test used by grammar schools in England (and many independent schools, in a slightly different form) to decide who gets a place. Children sit it at the very start of Year 6, which means the preparation happens in Year 5 or earlier.
This guide covers what the test is, what is in it, and the handful of things worth knowing before you spend anything on preparation.
Who sets the test, and why it varies
There is no single national 11+ paper. Each grammar school, or group of schools, chooses its own test provider and format.
Most areas use papers from GL Assessment, the largest provider. Some regions and school groups run their own arrangements instead: Essex has the CSSE, Kent has the Kent Test, and a number of consortia write their own papers. Independent schools often use the ISEB Common Pre-Test or their own assessments.
The practical consequence: before you buy any books or courses, find out exactly which test each of your target schools uses. The school's admissions page will say. Two schools ten miles apart can test quite different things in quite different formats.
What the test covers
Nearly every 11+ draws on four subjects:
- Maths: the national curriculum up to Year 5, plus speed and accuracy under time pressure. Worded problems feature heavily.
- English: comprehension of an unseen passage, plus spelling, punctuation and grammar. Some tests include writing.
- Verbal reasoning: puzzles built from words and letters, such as codes, analogies and odd-one-out. Largely not taught in schools, which is why it feels unfamiliar at first.
- Non-verbal reasoning: puzzles built from shapes and patterns: sequences, rotations, mirror images. Again, rarely taught in class.
Formats vary between multiple choice (answers marked on a separate sheet) and standard answer (written in the booklet). It is worth practising in the format your child will actually sit, because answer sheets trip up children who have never used one. Independent school tests lean more heavily on written answers than grammar school ones.
When it all happens
The timeline is compressed and it starts earlier than most families expect. For grammar schools, registration for the test usually opens in the spring of Year 5 and closes in the early summer. The test itself is sat in September of Year 6, results arrive in October, and the school application form follows straight after. We have a separate grammar school application timeline that walks through the dates for the current cycle.
The thing to hold onto: if your child is in Year 5 now, the test is closer than it feels.
Scores, pass marks and what "passing" means
Raw marks are converted to a standardised score, which adjusts for the small age differences between children in the same year group. A typical standardised score runs from around 69 to 141, with 100 as the average.
What counts as a pass depends entirely on the school. Some set a fixed qualifying score. Others rank all candidates and take the top scorers up to the number of places, which means the effective pass mark moves each year with the strength of the cohort. Super-selective schools have no catchment and admit purely on score; most others combine a qualifying score with distance or other oversubscription criteria.
How to think about preparation
Three things matter more than everything else:
- Little and often beats cramming. Twenty focused minutes a day, most days, comfortably outperforms a long Sunday session. There is a full guide to practising for the 11+ at home on this blog.
- Cover all four subjects. Children naturally practise what they are already good at. The score gains live in the weakest subject.
- Practise the real format before the real day. Timed papers, the right answer format, no help. Not in month one, but well before September.
The 11+ rewards steady, unstressed preparation over a long runway. Start early enough and twenty minutes a day is genuinely all it takes.