What is on the 11 plus (11+) maths exam?

The question types you’ll see

Whatever the format, the underlying maths is Key Stage 2 content your child has met at school. What the 11+ adds is speed, unfamiliar phrasing, and questions that combine two or three skills at once. The main categories:

• Numerical reasoning: interpreting and drawing conclusions from information in tables or graphs, built on solid addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
• Problem-solving and word problems: extracting the maths from a written scenario, then setting up and solving the right calculation. These often appear as story-style questions or missing numbers in a pattern.
• Shapes and space: area, perimeter and volume, and visualising shapes in two or three dimensions.
• Algebra: simple equations and expressions, including isolating an unknown.
• Fractions, decimals and percentages: converting between the three and calculating with them.
• Data interpretation: reading and drawing conclusions, mean, median, mode or probability, from charts, grids, graphs and tables.

Multiple choice or written answer

Most GL-style two-paper areas test maths as multiple choice, often paired with non-verbal reasoning in the second paper. Kent tests maths inside a separately timed section of its first booklet. Essex and Southend’s CSSE exam wants full written workings rather than a choice of answers, with marks available for correct method even when the final answer is wrong. Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet sets a dedicated maths paper with no reasoning section at all.

Which format your child needs depends entirely on the target school, so confirm it before choosing any material; a stack of multiple-choice papers is the wrong preparation for a child who will sit a written maths paper.

Timing and pressure

Multiple-choice maths sections are usually tight on time, often well under a minute a question, so speed and confident mental arithmetic matter as much as method. Working out 7 × 8 from scratch, rather than simply knowing it, loses seconds on every question, and the seconds add up across a whole paper. Written-answer papers give more time per question but reward a clearly set-out method: a correct final answer with no working may not earn full marks, and a wrong answer with the right method often still picks some up.

Most 11+ maths papers don’t allow a calculator (check your own school’s rules), so mental arithmetic and quick written methods both need to be solid well before exam day.

Top tips

• Find out first whether the maths paper is multiple choice or written answer; everything else follows from that.
• If your school sets written maths, as CSSE does, have your child set out a full method every time rather than jumping straight to an answer.
• If your school is multiple choice, practise selecting from options at speed rather than working every question out longhand first.
• Drill the times tables and number bonds until they’re automatic; multiple-choice papers rarely leave time to work them out.
• Ask which areas of Key Stage 2 maths come up most in your target format (ratio and algebra are frequent ones) and weight revision there.
• Check the format again for your child’s own year; last year’s arrangement may not hold.

How to prepare

Once you know whether your target school tests maths as multiple choice or written answer, and roughly which topics come up most, practice is mostly repetition under the right conditions: timed multiple choice for speed, full written questions for method. For the week-by-week detail on how much to practise and when, read our guide on how to improve your child’s 11+ maths.