11 plus exam papers: which exist, which are free, and which are worth using

What people mean when they search for 11 plus past papers

Almost always they mean a real paper from a real test, free, as a PDF. That is a reasonable thing to want. It is also, for most families, not a thing that exists.

Most 11 plus areas never release a past paper. The questions get reused, and the standardised scoring depends on them behaving the same way from one year to the next, so publishing a full paper would retire it. What authorities publish instead is a familiarisation booklet: a short document that shows the layout, the answer sheet and a few example questions, so that nothing on the day is a surprise.

That leaves four separate things sold or shared under the same phrase, and they are not equivalent. Real past papers, from the small number of authorities that release them. Free familiarisation material, from the exam boards and the authorities. Commercial practice papers, written to resemble the test. And whatever a search result happens to be hosting. This post is about telling them apart.

The free official material, and where it comes from

Everything below is published by the organisation that sets or administers the test, and is free at the time of writing. Formats and years change, so check what is currently posted rather than trusting a link from a forum.

• The Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex publishes genuine past papers with mark schemes for both English and Maths, covering several recent entry years, on its own site. This is the most generous thing any authority in the country does, and if your child is sitting the Essex test you should start here.
• GL Assessment publishes free familiarisation materials as PDFs for printing at home, across verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, English and maths. GL describes this as around ten hours of material. It is familiarisation rather than a paper, so treat it as a tour of the format.
• Kent County Council publishes a free familiarisation booklet for the Kent Test.
• Buckinghamshire Council publishes a free familiarisation booklet for the Secondary Transfer Test.
• The Independent Schools Examinations Board publishes a free admissions toolkit for families, and a walkthrough that lets a child use the actual test player and try the accessibility settings before the day. For an online adaptive test, sitting in front of the real interface once is worth more than a printed paper.

If your area is not on that list, look for your own admissions authority’s site first. Most publish something, and what they publish is authoritative in a way that nothing else is. Confirm the current arrangements with the admissions authority in any case, because formats change and a booklet from three years ago may describe a test that no longer runs that way. Two of the four subjects, and sometimes the whole structure, differ by area: what the 11 plus is and who sits it covers that ground, and what happened to CEM explains one recent change that made a lot of old material obsolete overnight.

What you have to pay for

GL Assessment sells practice papers as printed booklets, separate from the free PDFs, organised by subject. CSSE sells practice packs alongside its free past papers. The familiar workbook publishers, Bond, CGP and Schofield and Sims among them, sell practice papers and topic books in every high street bookshop.

One thing worth knowing about the independent-school route: the Independent Schools Examinations Board endorses a single commercial online practice platform, Bond Online Premium Plus, and states that it is the only one containing questions written by the board’s own writers. If your child is sitting the Common Pre-Test, that is a relevant fact rather than an advertisement, and you can weigh it against how 11+ Daily compares with Bond.

The papers on everyone else’s websites

Real exam papers are protected by copyright, and CSSE says so plainly about its own. Plenty of sites offer “free 11 plus past papers” that are neither past papers nor theirs to give. Some are perfectly legitimate practice questions labelled loosely. Some are not.

The practical answer is simple. If you want a paper that genuinely came from the test, get it from the authority or the board that set it. If you want practice material, buy it from a publisher or use something that is honest about being practice. The one thing not worth doing is building a preparation plan around a PDF whose origin you cannot establish, because you have no way of knowing whether it reflects the current test.

How many papers a child actually needs

Fewer than most families use, and later than most families start.

A paper measures. It does not teach. Sitting one tells you what a child can already do under time pressure, which is genuinely useful information, and it is the only way to practise the specific skill of managing a clock. But a child who works through a stack of papers slowly, at the kitchen table, with help, is not really sitting papers at all. They are doing worksheets with a cover on.

A reasonable shape for the eleven plus is: familiarisation material early, so the format is not strange; ordinary daily practice through the middle; and a small number of full papers in the final couple of months, sat properly, timed, in one sitting, marked afterwards. Three or four papers used that way beat twenty used badly. How much 11 plus practice a child needs each day covers the routine either side of that.

The other reason not to start papers early is that a full paper in Year 5 mostly measures what a child has not been taught yet. That is discouraging and it tells you nothing you did not already know.

Where 11+ Daily fits

11+ Daily is not a paper and does not pretend to be one. It is the daily practice in between: short sessions on one specific skill, chosen for what your child needs next, across the four subjects 11 plus papers test. Questions are original to 11+ Daily, nothing in it is a past paper, and nothing is licensed from another publisher.

The setup we would actually recommend to a parent is the boring one. Use the free familiarisation material from your own authority so the format holds no surprises. Do a little practice most days. Buy a small number of mock papers for the last stretch and sit them properly. See how the Today screen decides what to practise, or start with 11 plus practice by subject and question type.

Questions parents ask