What is the 11 plus? A plain guide for UK parents

The short answer

The 11 plus is an entrance test used by state grammar schools, and by some independent schools, to decide which children to admit into Year 7. Children sit it at the start of Year 6, aged 10 or 11, for a place the following September. You will also see it written as the eleven plus, the 11+, or in some areas simply “the transfer test”.

It is not a national exam. Each grammar school area, and each independent school, chooses its own test, its own date and its own way of using the results. That is why so much advice online contradicts itself: it is often right for one area and wrong for the next. This guide sticks to what holds almost everywhere. For anything local, confirm the current arrangements with the admissions authority.

Who sits the 11 plus and why

Grammar schools are state schools that select their pupils by ability. They charge no fees, and they exist in only some parts of England: around 160 of them, concentrated in a handful of counties and boroughs such as Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Birmingham and Trafford. Independent, fee-paying schools also test children for Year 7 entry, and parents usually call those tests the 11+ too, though the test itself is usually different and the timing is later.

A child sits the 11+ only if a parent enters them for it. In most grammar areas you register your child yourself, usually during the summer term of Year 5, and the deadline is easy to miss because it falls before the school year ends.

What the 11 plus tests

Four subjects appear across 11+ tests, though not every area uses all four.

• English. Reading comprehension, plus spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary.
• Maths. Arithmetic and problem solving at Key Stage 2 level, often a little ahead of what has been taught by the start of Year 6.
• Verbal Reasoning. Puzzles built from words, letters and numbers: closest meanings, hidden words, codes, letter sequences and similar.
• Non-Verbal Reasoning. Puzzles built from shapes and patterns: sequences, odd one out, analogies and codes drawn as figures rather than written as words.

Some areas test all four. Some test two or three: Essex, for example, tests English and Maths only. So the first thing to establish, with the admissions authority, is which subjects your area actually tests.

The two reasoning papers worry parents most, because primary schools do not teach them. That is deliberate: they are meant to measure how a child thinks with unfamiliar material. Even so, children who have met the question types beforehand do noticeably better than children who meet them cold.

Who writes the papers

GL Assessment writes the tests for the majority of state grammar school areas. Its papers are one subject at a time, mostly multiple choice, and built from a set of recognisable question types. When a resource describes itself as “GL-style”, this is the format it means.

Some areas run their own test. The best known is Essex, where the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex, usually shortened to CSSE, sets its own English and Maths papers. A handful of other areas use a different provider or commission their own.

Independent schools often use the ISEB Common Pre-Tests, a shared computer-based test usually sat at the child’s current school, or they set their own papers.

Until recently a fourth name, CEM, supplied tests to several grammar school areas. CEM has withdrawn from the paper-based 11+, and the areas that used it have moved to other providers, mostly GL. If you see CEM on a workbook or in a forum thread, it is probably out of date.

When the 11 plus is sat

For most grammar school areas, the test is sat in the first half of September of Year 6, within a few weeks of the new school year starting. Results usually arrive in October, in time for the national deadline of 31 October for secondary school applications. A small number of areas test later in the autumn, so confirm the current arrangements with the admissions authority.

Independent schools mostly test in the January of Year 6, with offers in February or March. Some test earlier, in the autumn term.

The practical consequence for grammar school families is that preparation has to happen in Year 5 and over the summer holiday before Year 6. There is no Year 6 preparation window worth speaking of.

How the results are used

Your child’s raw mark, the number of questions they got right, is not what the admissions authority uses. It is converted into a standardised score, which adjusts for how the whole cohort performed and for the child’s exact age in months on the day of the test. Age standardisation matters because a child born in August is nearly a year younger than a classmate born the previous September, and the adjustment removes that disadvantage.

Standardised scores are centred on 100, the average for that year’s cohort. Each area then does one of two things. Some set a qualifying score: reach it and your child may be considered for a grammar school place. Others rank every child who sat the test and offer places from the top until the school is full.

Qualifying is not an offer. Grammar schools are heavily oversubscribed, and the school’s own admissions criteria, usually distance, siblings and catchment, decide who gets in among the children who qualified. The “pass mark” other parents quote is either a fixed threshold for that area or last year’s cut-off in a ranked one, and neither tells you much about next year. Confirm the current arrangements with the admissions authority rather than the playground.

How much preparation is sensible

Less than the anxious end of the internet suggests, and more consistently than most families manage. Because the exam falls at the very start of Year 6, Year 5 is the substantive preparation year. A pattern that works for most children looks like this.

• Year 4. Light exposure only. Reading widely, talking about words, the occasional puzzle. Ten to fifteen minutes a few times a week is plenty.
• Year 5, autumn and spring. A daily habit of fifteen to twenty-five minutes, building the underlying skills subject by subject and meeting each reasoning question type properly.
• Year 5, summer term and holiday. Twenty-five to thirty-five minutes a day, with a full practice paper roughly once a month to learn pace and the answer sheet.
• The final few weeks. Slightly more, with a paper most weekends, then a deliberate wind-down in the last few days so your child arrives fresh.

The most important variable is not minutes per day but whether the practice happens week after week. A child who does fifteen focused minutes most evenings from September of Year 5 will be better placed than one who does two-hour bursts every few weekends. Our guide to how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day goes through this stage by stage.

Where 11+ Daily fits

11+ Daily is a daily practice app for the habit-building part of that picture. It opens to a Today screen that picks one subject and one skill for that session, so neither you nor your child has to decide what to revise tonight. Sessions take seven to ten minutes, the questions are written in the formats 11 plus papers use across all four subjects, and a parents area shows what has been practised and how accurately. It works on laptop, tablet or phone, and the 14-day free trial needs no card.

The honest summary

The 11+ is a selective entrance test, sat at the start of Year 6, used by grammar schools and some independent schools. It tests some combination of English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning, and results are age-standardised scores rather than raw marks. Prepare through Year 5, a little every day, and check every date and format with your own admissions authority rather than with the internet.

Questions parents ask