How can we prepare for the 11 plus (11+) at home?

The shape of a working week

Two kinds of session make up the week: most days get a short one, one day gets a long one. Routines that try to make every day a big day rarely survive a fortnight.

• 15 to 20 minutes on weekdays. Vocabulary, spelling, mental arithmetic or a short reasoning exercise. Enough to move forward, short enough to fit in after school without a fight.
• One longer sitting at the weekend for a full practice paper, once your child is ready to work against the clock. Saturday morning tends to go better than Sunday evening, when the weekend has already been spent.
• Increase gradually. That weekend paper eventually becomes two or three a week, and close to one a day over the summer; the full ladder is in our guide to how many practice papers your child needs.
• One day with nothing at all. A weekly day off is part of what makes the other six sustainable, so put it in the plan rather than hoping it happens by itself.

Put the week somewhere visible, on the fridge or in a planner. A written plan answers the daily ‘what are we doing today?’ before it gets asked, and lets your child see the sessions already ticked off.

A study space of their own

Pick one place for the work: quiet, with the television and any phones out of reach. Working in the same spot each time draws a line around the 11 plus work, separate from homework and from time off, and saves the few minutes of settling in that a different spot costs every day.

Give your child a say in how it looks. A plant, a couple of postcards, a pot for the pens and the timer: a corner they arranged themselves is one they’re more willing to sit down at.

Stock it with what the exam actually allows: pencils, a sharpener, a rubber, a timer. Then a missing pencil never becomes the reason a session doesn’t happen.

Go through the paper together, soon

Mark within a day or two, side by side, while your child still remembers what they were thinking. The talk over the wrong answers is where most of the learning happens.

• Ask for their reasoning before you give yours. Children often find the mistake themselves mid-explanation, and a mistake they spot that way tends to stay fixed.
• Lead with what went right. Marking that opens on three good answers changes the mood of everything after it.
• Keep the record to one line. Date, score, and the two slips worth noting. Enough to find patterns, brief enough to keep doing.
• Reread a few weeks at a time. One poor score means little on its own; the same note appearing week after week tells you what to practise next.

Top tips

• Same time, same place for the weekday sessions, so starting becomes automatic.
• Hold weekday sessions at 15 to 20 minutes while you’re starting out; the practice-paper guide sets out how the load grows from there.
• Go through each paper together within a couple of days.
• Guard the downtime as firmly as the sessions. Tired children make careless mistakes.
• Swap in a game now and then; our guide to educational games for 11+ prep has suggestions.
• Keep the weekly plan somewhere visible, so finished sessions can be ticked off.

How to prepare

One of the most effective ways to prepare for an 11+ entrance exam is to use practice tests written by experts. We publish a full range of 11+ revision resources: area and school-specific practice tests, subject-specific packs, spelling and vocabulary resources, and reading books.

Each of our practice tests:

• is available as a PDF download or in physical format
• familiarises your child with the types of questions they will face in the real exam
• includes answers to every question, with detailed, step-by-step explanations for the maths and reasoning questions
• builds your child’s confidence before the actual exam.

Use the finder below to jump straight to the papers for your child’s school or area.

Find papers for your school or area

Grammar schools and area tests

• Bexley
• Bishop Wordsworth’s
• Buckinghamshire
• CSSE
• Ermysted’s
• Gloucestershire
• Henrietta Barnett
• Kent
• QE Boys
• Redbridge
• Slough Consortium
• St Olave’s
• Sutton
• The Latymer School
• Tiffin School & Tiffin Girls’ School
• Trafford
• West Midlands

Independent schools

• City of London School for Girls
• Hampton
• Latymer Upper
• Merchant Taylors’
• St Paul’s Girls’ School
• St Paul’s Juniors