The first thing to understand about the 11+ is that it is not one exam. It is a family of selective entrance tests, sat at the start of Year 6, used by schools that choose their pupils by academic ability. What your child would actually sit — which subjects, which format, even which company writes the paper — depends almost entirely on where you live and which schools you are aiming at.

That is why the forum threads contradict each other and why your colleague's confident advice may be wrong for your county. Their child sat a different exam.

This guide is the map. Once you know which version of the 11+ applies to you, everything else — timelines, preparation, mock exams — becomes much easier to plan.

Who actually sits the 11+

Three groups of schools use an 11+ style test for entry at age eleven:

  • State grammar schools. There are around 163 of them in England, concentrated in a handful of areas — Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Essex, Birmingham, Trafford, and pockets of London among them. They are state schools: no fees, and no charge to sit the test. Northern Ireland has its own grammar schools with a separate transfer test; Scotland and Wales have no state grammar system at all.
  • Independent schools with 11+ entry. Many private senior schools admit at eleven and run their own entrance exams, often also called "the 11+". These are set by the school or a shared provider and usually sit in the January of Year 6, later than most grammar tests.
  • Partially selective schools. A small number of comprehensives allocate a proportion of places by ability and use a test for that stream.

Note who is not on this list: most children. The majority of families in England go through the normal secondary admissions process without ever sitting a selective test. The 11+ is a choice you opt into, not a hurdle every child faces.

What the test contains

Most 11+ tests draw on four subjects, in some combination:

  • English — reading comprehension, and in some areas spelling, punctuation and grammar. A few schools and consortia also set a short piece of writing.
  • Maths — broadly the national curriculum up to the end of Year 5, tested at speed, with the harder questions demanding fluency rather than new content.
  • Verbal reasoning (VR) — puzzles built from words, letters and codes: vocabulary, logic and pattern-spotting in verbal form.
  • Non-verbal reasoning (NVR) — the same idea with shapes: sequences, matrices, odd-one-out, and sometimes spatial questions such as nets and rotations.

The mix varies more than parents expect. Kent's test covers English, maths and reasoning. Essex's CSSE papers test English and maths only — no reasoning at all. Buckinghamshire's Secondary Transfer Test blends verbal, mathematical and non-verbal material across two papers. An independent school might set English, maths and an online adaptive reasoning test. Before you buy a single practice book, find out exactly what your target schools test — the answer is on the school's or the local authority's admissions pages.

Most grammar-area tests are multiple choice, answered on a separate machine-marked sheet — itself a skill worth practising, since a ten-year-old who fills in the wrong row loses marks they deserved.

Who writes the papers

Most grammar schools and local authorities buy their tests from GL Assessment, which has become the dominant provider since its main competitor, CEM, withdrew from the 11+ market. You will still see CEM mentioned constantly in older forum threads and on the covers of practice books; what that name meant and why it no longer matters is worth five minutes of your time, because it changes what preparation looks like.

The exceptions matter too. The CSSE consortium in Essex writes its own papers. A few London schools and consortia commission their own tests or use newer providers. Independent schools frequently use the ISEB Common Pre-Test or papers of their own. Again: the school's admissions page names the provider, and the provider determines the format.

How the score works

Your child's raw marks are converted into a standardised score. Two things happen in that conversion, and both are good news:

  1. Scores are scaled so results can be compared fairly across different papers and cohorts, typically centred around 100.
  2. Age is adjusted for. An August-born child sitting the same paper as a September-born classmate is nearly a year younger; standardisation compensates, so summer-born children are not penalised for their birthday.

What happens to that score then differs by area, and this is a distinction worth understanding early. In some areas the test is a threshold: reach the qualifying mark and you are eligible, with places then allocated by the usual criteria such as distance. In others — especially the super-selective schools — places go to the highest scorers, full stop, and "passing" as a concept barely exists. The same score can qualify a child in one town and fall short in another; the strategic difference between the two systems shapes which schools are realistic for you.

How the process fits around the normal admissions system

The 11+ runs alongside the standard secondary application, not instead of it. In outline:

  • You register for the test separately, usually in the summer term of Year 5, directly with the local authority, consortium or school. This does not happen automatically — a missed registration deadline is the one truly unrecoverable mistake in the whole process.
  • The test is sat in the September of Year 6 in most grammar areas (independent schools often test later).
  • Results arrive in October, in most areas just before the national deadline of 31 October for the Common Application Form — deliberately, so you can decide whether to name a grammar school with your child's result in hand.
  • Offers arrive on National Offer Day, 1 March, through the same system as everyone else's.

The full calendar, with what preparation belongs in which term, is a subject of its own — we have laid it out in the 11+ timeline from Year 4 to offer day.

The questions underneath the question

When a parent asks "what is the 11+?", there are usually two anxieties underneath. It is worth answering both plainly.

"Is my child clever enough?" The honest answer is that the 11+ tests a specific, fairly narrow band of skills — fluency in curriculum maths, breadth of vocabulary, calm pattern-spotting at speed — and it tests them on one morning, in timed conditions, at age ten. It is a real measure of something, but it is not a verdict on your child's intelligence or future. Plenty of children who miss a grammar place thrive; the system is explicitly designed so that no child needs to pass anything to get a good school place.

"Do we have to spend thousands on tutoring?" No — and the areas that use these tests actively try to make heavy tutoring less decisive. Some preparation genuinely helps: familiarity with the format, timed practice, and steady work on vocabulary and maths fluency over a year or so. But the returns diminish faster than the tutoring industry suggests, and an over-drilled child who scrapes into a school at the very edge of their ability has not necessarily been done a favour. We have written an honest assessment of how much tutoring the 11+ actually needs — the answer is probably less than you fear.

Where to go from here

Three steps, in order:

  1. Name your target schools — a realistic list, based on where you live, since catchment and distance still matter for most grammars.
  2. Find out exactly what each one tests — provider, subjects, format, and whether the score is a threshold or a ranking. The admissions pages tell you; do not rely on forums.
  3. Work backwards from the dates — registration in Year 5 is the deadline that matters first.

Everything else — question types, mocks, tutoring decisions, the emotional weather of Year 6 — follows from those three, and the rest of this series takes each in turn.

FAQ

What is the 11+ exam?

The 11+ is a selective entrance test sat at the start of Year 6, used by state grammar schools and some independent schools to choose pupils for Year 7 entry. It typically tests some combination of English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, but the exact mix varies by area.

Who can sit the 11+?

Any child in the right year group can be entered — parents register directly with the school, consortium or local authority, usually during Year 5. There is no qualifying stage before it and state grammar schools charge nothing to sit their tests.

Is the 11+ the same everywhere in the UK?

No. Most areas use tests from GL Assessment, but Essex's CSSE consortium writes its own papers, some London schools use their own or newer providers, and Northern Ireland has a separate transfer test. The subjects, timing and how the score is used all differ by area.

Does my child have to pass the 11+ to get into secondary school?

No. The 11+ only applies to selective schools. Every child has a place at a non-selective secondary school through the normal admissions process, and most children in England never sit an 11+ at all.

What does "standardised score" mean on the 11+?

Raw marks are converted so that scores can be compared fairly across different test papers and children of different ages within the year group. A summer-born child is not disadvantaged for being younger — the adjustment is built into the score, so parents never need to calculate anything.

Duke Harewood runs aitutors.me and has a daughter in Year 8.