How do I track my child’s progress in the 11 plus (11+)?

After every paper, five lines

Any format works, a notebook, a spreadsheet, a page in the school planner, provided it gets filled in every time. Aim for five lines:

• The paper and the date. Which subject, which paper, and when your child sat it.
• Score and time. Whether they finished matters, and so does how close to the limit they came.
• The two mistakes worth remembering. Two, no more. A full inventory of errors makes marking a second session, and then the log stops getting filled in.
• Timed or untimed. The two kinds of score sit on different scales, so the log needs to say which each one is.
• A word on how it went. Rushed, tired, confident. A low score the morning after a bad night means something different from the same score on an ordinary day.

Reading the score

Most 11 plus results arrive as a standardised score rather than a raw mark or a percentage, and the difference matters when you’re judging an early result. Seventy out of a hundred sounds respectable, but a raw mark says nothing about how everyone else found the same paper, and that comparison is what a standardised score is built to show. Our guide to standardised scores in the 11 plus explains how to read the number.

Be wary of fixing on a target number early. Schools set their own pass marks and admissions criteria, and these can move from one year to the next. Check your target school’s official admissions page for the current position rather than trusting a figure from a previous year or from another parent.

Patterns across papers

One low score might be nothing more than a bad day. The questions worth asking are about the run of papers:

• Does one subject trail the rest, week after week? Totals are usually combined across subjects, so a trailing subject can cost more overall than its own line in the log suggests.
• Which way are the scores moving? Ups and downs are normal, especially early on in verbal and non-verbal reasoning, which your child won’t have met at school. A flat line over several weeks is worth a closer look.
• How is the time being used? Finishing well early with a low score usually means rushing; never finishing usually points to pacing or technique. Neither is fixed by re-teaching the topic.
• Is one note repeating? ‘Ran out of time’ beside three papers in a row says more than any of the three scores do.

Rough is fine. The point of the log is that decisions about what to practise next get made from a few weeks of evidence, instead of from the memory of the last paper.

Top tips

• Write five lines after every paper: what was sat, the score and time, the two mistakes worth remembering, timed or untimed, and a word on how it went.
• Mark each entry timed or untimed, so like is compared with like.
• Check your target school’s official admissions page for the current admissions criteria, rather than trusting last year’s figure.
• Wait for a trend across several papers before changing the plan; one score is a poor guide.
• Watch for a subject that consistently trails the others, since totals usually combine every subject tested.
• Reread the whole log every few weeks; some patterns only show over that distance.

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