Two families can both say "we're doing the 11+" and be playing entirely different games. One is aiming at a qualifying score in a selective county, where reaching the standard means a grammar place somewhere reasonable. The other is aiming at a super-selective, where the pass mark is almost irrelevant and a place goes to the highest scorers in a field of hundreds. The preparation, the pressure, the risk, and what belongs on the application form are different in each case — and a lot of unnecessary misery comes from preparing for one game while actually playing the other.

Two admission models that look identical from the outside

England has around 163 grammar schools, and from a distance they all look the same: a test in the September of Year 6, an anxious wait, an offer or not. Underneath, there are two broadly different ways the test score is used.

The qualifying-score model. In wholly selective areas — Kent, Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire are the big ones, with pockets elsewhere — the 11+ works as a threshold. Children who reach the qualifying standard are deemed suitable for grammar school, full stop. Places at any particular school are then allocated using ordinary oversubscription criteria: catchment or priority area, distance from the gate, siblings already at the school, and increasingly a priority for children eligible for pupil premium. A child who scores just above the threshold and lives close by will usually beat a child who scores far above it and lives further away.

The rank-order (super-selective) model. Other grammars — including several of the best-known schools in and around London, and the most competitive schools in some consortium areas — allocate places strictly by score, from the top mark downwards until the places run out. Many have no catchment at all, or one wide enough that thousands of families are eligible to apply. Here the "pass mark" is a formality; the number that matters is the score of the last child admitted, and it is usually far above the qualifying standard. Competition at this kind of school often runs to ten or more applicants per place.

Plenty of schools sit somewhere between the two — a rank-order allocation within an inner catchment, then remaining places by score, for instance. The only way to know which game a specific school is playing is to read its current admissions policy, which every state school must publish. Read the actual document, not a forum summary of it, because these policies do change.

What "qualifying" really means for your preparation

If your target is a catchment grammar in a selective area, the honest strategic picture is this: the test is a hurdle, not a race. Around a quarter of the cohort in a wholly selective county typically reaches the standard. Once your child is over the threshold, additional marks buy you almost nothing — the place is decided by where you live and the school's published criteria, which no amount of tutoring can move.

That has a liberating consequence which surprisingly few families act on: preparation should aim at comfortable competence with a margin of safety, and then stop. A child working securely at or above age-related expectations, familiar with the question formats and the feel of a timed paper, is prepared. Turning Year 5 into an eighteen-month campaign to add marks that cannot change the outcome is cost without benefit — and the cost lands on the child.

The work that does matter here is unglamorous: check the school's criteria against your address early (some catchment boundaries are unforgiving), find out which test your area uses and what it contains, and make sure the foundations — reading, times tables, core arithmetic — are genuinely solid rather than papered over with technique.

What "rank order" really means for your preparation

A super-selective is a different proposition, and it deserves honesty in both directions.

First, the demanding part: at a school admitting purely by score, marks near the ceiling do matter. The difference between a good performance and a top-of-the-field performance is usually speed and accuracy on questions the child can already do — fluency, not new knowledge. Preparation for this kind of school legitimately includes more timed work, more attention to pacing, and more practice at not losing marks carelessly.

Second, the part tutoring companies tend to leave out: at the very top of the distribution, outcomes are noisy. When hundreds of able, well-prepared children compete for a hundred and twenty places, the difference between an offer and no offer can come down to a handful of marks on one morning — a misread question, a cold, a wobble on the second paper. A super-selective application is a reasonable bet for a child performing near the top of their cohort; it is never a certainty for anyone, and it should never be the family's only plan or, worse, the child's sense of what the family expects.

If a child is working at age-related expectations and no higher, a super-selective campaign built on intensive tutoring is usually a bad trade. Tutoring can polish real ability; it cannot reliably manufacture a top-one-per-cent performance, and two years spent trying tends to cost more in confidence than it gains in marks.

The application form is part of the strategy

The 11+ result is only half the machinery; the common application form is the other half, and it rewards families who understand the model they are in.

  • Never submit a form containing only selective schools. If every choice requires a score your child might not get, the local authority ends up allocating whatever has space left. Include at least one non-selective school you have visited and would genuinely accept.
  • Order by preference, honestly. The national system is designed so that listing a "safe" school first gains you nothing — you are offered the highest choice on your list that can take you. Put the school you actually want at the top.
  • A super-selective costs nothing extra to list if your child has a realistic score — but check whether it requires a separate registration for its test months earlier. Many do, and the deadline is usually before you know any results.
  • Check the appeals and waiting-list behaviour of your target schools before results, not after. Schools full to capacity with a strict rank order rarely move; catchment grammars with churn sometimes do.

The honest paragraph

Here is the thing the brochure will not say. The measurable difference that school type makes to an individual child's outcomes — a super-selective versus a solid catchment grammar, or a grammar versus a good comprehensive with strong sets — is smaller than the anxiety around the 11+ implies. The evidence on peer effects is genuinely mixed, and what shows up again and again as mattering is the child's own reading, work habits, and sense that effort is worth it. A child who narrowly misses a super-selective and lands at a good local school with their confidence intact has lost very little. A child who scrapes into a school at the very bottom of its intake, after a year of pressure that taught them learning is fear, may have gained less than it appears.

Know which game you are playing. Prepare for that game and not the other one. And keep the whole thing sized so that, whatever September brings, your child comes out of Year 6 still liking learning.

Where aitutors.me fits, and where it doesn't

If your child is preparing for either kind of grammar, our PRO plan includes 11+ preparation within the same system our KS3 tutors use: a parent sets the exam and its date, every tutor works to that countdown, and a child who has done a practice paper can bring the wrong questions to Paper Review, where a tutor works a similar problem alongside them rather than handing over answers. For the fluency-under-time problem that super-selectives pose, timed maths practice sets exist for exactly that purpose.

What we do not offer: verbal or non-verbal reasoning practice — we have no VR or NVR product, and many 11+ tests weight those papers heavily — and we will never give you a predicted score or a percentage chance of passing, because nobody honest can.

FAQ

What is a super-selective grammar school?

A grammar school that allocates places strictly by 11+ score, from the top mark downwards, usually with no catchment area or a very wide one. Reaching the pass mark is not enough; a child needs to score higher than most of the other applicants, and competition often runs to ten or more applicants per place.

What is a catchment or qualifying-score grammar school?

A grammar school where the 11+ works as a threshold. Children who reach the qualifying standard are all treated as eligible, and places are then allocated on oversubscription criteria such as distance from the school, catchment area, or siblings. Above the threshold, extra marks usually change little.

Should my child prepare differently for a super-selective?

Yes. For a qualifying-score grammar, preparation aims at comfortable competence: reach the standard with margin, without over-drilling. For a super-selective, speed and accuracy near the ceiling matter, which means more timed fluency work — and a less predictable outcome, so the rest of the application form matters more.

Is it worth applying to a super-selective from outside the area?

Often yes, because many super-selectives have no catchment or a wide one — but only as one choice among several, never as the plan. Check the school's current admissions policy for any distance criteria, be honest about the daily journey, and make sure the form also contains schools your child is likely to be offered.

Duke Harewood runs aitutors.me and has a daughter in Year 8. Updated 1 September 2026.