What is the 11+?

The 11+ gets its name from the age at which children transfer to secondary school. It is not compulsory, and it is not part of the ordinary school day. Families choose to enter their child because they are hoping for a place at a grammar school, which selects its pupils by this exam rather than by catchment alone.

Because grammar schools are competitive, the 11+ is designed to stretch children a little beyond what they meet in class. That is why it feels different from school tests, and why most families do some preparation for it. You can check exactly what your region's 11+ involves before you plan anything, because the details genuinely differ from area to area.

This is the first thing to pin down, because everything else follows from it. Two families a short drive apart can be preparing for genuinely different exams: different subjects, a different number of papers, and a different balance between them.

The safest move is to confirm your own test before you buy a single workbook. You can check what your region's 11+ actually includes and build your plan around that, rather than around a generic idea of an "11+ syllabus" that may not match what your child will face. Once you know the sections, you know where to spend your time, and where not to.

Maths rewards fluency with the basics and confident problem-solving. The core topics come up again and again, and because time is tight, speed matters as much as accuracy. The most useful practice targets the topics a child gets wrong, rather than the ones they already enjoy, and always talks through the method rather than just marking the answer.

English does most of its heavy lifting through comprehension and vocabulary, and wide reading is the single most powerful long-term investment a family can make. It does not feel like exam preparation, but it builds the exact skills the paper tests. You can practise the core Maths and English question types free, with the method taught before each topic and a worked explanation after every question.

Where a region includes a written task, that is a category of its own. Extended writing is marked by a person, not by a machine, so it needs a knowledgeable human reader to give feedback that lifts it.

Verbal Reasoning is often the least familiar section to parents, and the one where a little practice goes a long way. The question types follow patterns, and once a child recognises the type in front of them, most of the difficulty melts away. Exposure and repetition are genuinely the whole game here.

Because it is so unfamiliar, Verbal Reasoning is also where confidence can wobble early and then rise quickly. You can work through the Verbal Reasoning question types free, so that nothing on the day is a surprise. The more a child sees the formats, the calmer they feel meeting them again.

Because Non-Verbal Reasoning is visual, it draws on a different kind of thinking, and children who are strong at Maths or English are not automatically strong at it. That is why families treat it as its own subject rather than assuming it will come for free.

If your region includes Non-Verbal Reasoning, or the spatial reasoning that a few areas add, plan dedicated visual practice for that section alongside your work on the other subjects. Always confirm which sections your region tests before you plan, so nothing is missed. The complete preparation guide shows how to build a plan around whatever mix your test uses.

The format matters because it changes how a child should practise. Multiple-choice papers reward pace, careful reading of the options, and knowing how to move on from a hard question. Standard-format papers ask a child to produce the answer themselves, which is a slightly different skill.

PrepStep's practice is multiple choice, which suits the many regions that use that format for Maths, English and Verbal Reasoning. If your region uses standard-format papers or a written task, factor that in, and check your own region's format so your practice matches the real thing.

Because the test falls near the start of Year 6, most of the preparation happens across Year 5. That timing catches a lot of families out, because it means the exam arrives earlier in the school journey than they expect.

The precise date is one of the region-variable facts that really matters, since it sets your whole timeline. Some areas test early in the autumn term, others a little later, so check when your region's 11+ falls and count backwards from there rather than assuming a national timetable.

The difficulty is not a reason to panic. Much of what makes the 11+ feel hard is simply that it is unfamiliar, particularly the reasoning sections a child never meets in class. Familiarity does a lot of the work, and it comes from regular, low-pressure exposure to the real question types.

The other half of the difficulty is timing. Papers are tight, so children need to learn to keep moving and let go of a question that is costing too long. That, too, is a learnable skill, best built through occasional timed practice rather than worry. You can build both the familiarity and the pacing free, a little at a time.