How to choose which schools to apply to for the 11 Plus (11+)

Start with your child

Before opening a single admissions page, get clear on what your child needs:

• How they respond to pressure. Some children thrive in a large, competitive year group and some sink in one, and you already know which yours is.
• Size and feel. A 1,500-pupil school runs very differently from a 600-pupil one. Visit both kinds before deciding you know which suits.
• What they love. A child who lives for music, sport or art will do better at a school that values it than at a slightly more selective one that doesn’t.
• The sixth form and beyond. Where do leavers go? The school’s destinations say more than its Year 7 entry score.

Then go to the open events, including at the school you assume you’ll dislike. Judge each one in person; reputation and reality often differ, in both directions.

The practical filters

With a feel for fit, the practical filters do the narrowing:

• The commute. Work out the real door-to-door time, at 7.30am, with the changes. Your child does it twice a day for seven years.
• The admission criteria. Distance, catchment, siblings and priority areas decide places once a test is passed. A high score doesn’t help if you live outside the area the school admits from, so read the oversubscription criteria before you fall for a school.
• How many apply for each place. Schools publish this figure, and it’s the quickest measure of how ambitious your list is.
• The cost, for independents. Fees, plus trips, uniform and extras, over seven years. Check the bursary pages too; means-tested support changes the picture at many schools.

Anchor the list with one school your child likes and stands an excellent chance of getting into. The rest of the list can afford ambition once that anchor is in place.

Where the entrance tests fit in

Only now do the entrance tests come in, and mainly as a workload question. Each school on the list means finding out:

• Which subjects and format. English and maths almost always; verbal and non-verbal reasoning at some schools; multiple choice at some and written papers at others. Our exam information guides set this out school by school, and our guide to exam types and formats explains the differences.
• The dates and stages. Some schools run one test, others a second round or an interview. Two tests in the same week is worth knowing about in advance.
• The registration deadline. Registering for a grammar or independent test is separate from the council application, it happens earlier, and missing it removes the school entirely. The council’s own deadline in England is 31 October. Our guide to when to apply for the 11+ covers the sequence.

Four to six tests is a manageable load, and overlap decides how heavy it feels. Two schools using the same format and provider are barely more work than one; two schools using different formats on different dates are a lot more. If the list runs long, look for the shared formats and cut the outliers, because preparation spread across too many formats rehearses none of them properly.

Top tips

• Visit every school on the list, with your child, before the summer of Year 5 if you can.
• Read the oversubscription criteria before the prospectus.
• Register directly with each grammar and independent school, and diarise the deadlines the day you decide.
• Put 31 October in the calendar now for the council application.
• Ask each school what happens to children who don’t get in anywhere selective.
• Revisit the list once, in the spring of Year 5, when you know how preparation is going. One revision is enough; constant tinkering unsettles everyone.

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