The 11 Plus Exam Explained: The Complete Parent’s Guide (2025)

If you’re reading this, chances are your child is in Year 5 or Year 6, and someone has mentioned the 11 Plus. Maybe it was another parent at the school gates, maybe your child came home with a leaflet, or maybe you’ve just started wondering about secondary school options and stumbled into this whole world of grammar schools and entrance exams.

I remember that moment clearly. My eldest was in Year 5, happily oblivious to what was coming, and I found myself sitting at the kitchen table at 11pm googling “what is the 11 Plus” and getting more confused with every article I read. The acronyms, the exam boards, the different formats depending on where you live, the tutoring debates, the pressure. It felt overwhelming.

This guide is what I wish someone had given me back then. A straightforward explanation of what the 11 Plus actually is, what your child will face, when you need to start thinking about it, and most importantly, how to approach it all without losing your mind or putting unnecessary pressure on your child.

What Actually Is the 11 Plus?

Let’s start with the basics. The 11 Plus is an entrance exam used by grammar schools and some independent schools in England to select pupils. It’s called the “11 Plus” because children typically take it in Year 6, when they’re 10 or 11 years old, to determine which secondary school they’ll attend from Year 7 onwards.

Here’s the thing that confused me at first: there isn’t one single 11 Plus exam. Different areas use different exam boards, and those exam boards test different things in different formats. Some areas test all four subjects (English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning, and Non-Verbal Reasoning), while others only test two or three. Some use multiple choice, others use written answers. The format your child will face depends entirely on where you live and which schools you’re applying to.

The purpose is straightforward, even if the system isn’t: grammar schools are state-funded secondary schools that select their pupils based on academic ability rather than catchment area. They use the 11 Plus to identify the children who will thrive in their academically intensive environment. Whether this system is fair, effective, or desirable is a debate for another day. Right now, if you’re reading this, you’re probably just trying to work out whether it’s right for your child and how to approach it if it is.

Why Does the 11 Plus Exist?

Understanding the history helps make sense of the present situation. Grammar schools have been part of the British education system since the 1940s, originally designed to provide academically gifted children from all backgrounds with an education comparable to fee-paying schools. The idea was social mobility: that a bright child from any family could access an excellent education based on ability rather than their parents’ bank balance.

Most grammar schools were phased out in the 1960s and 70s when the comprehensive system was introduced, but around 164 remain in England, concentrated in certain counties like Kent, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, and parts of London. Northern Ireland has kept its grammar school system more extensively.

These remaining grammar schools continue to use the 11 Plus because they need a way to select pupils that’s at least theoretically meritocratic. The exam is meant to identify children with strong reasoning abilities and academic potential, regardless of their background. Whether it achieves this in practice is contentious, but that’s the principle.

When Do You Need to Start Thinking About This?

This was my first practical question, and the answer depends on several factors. Most children take the 11 Plus in September or October of Year 6, though some areas test earlier or later. Registration usually opens in the spring or summer of Year 5, with deadlines typically falling around July.

If you’re going to prepare your child for the exam, most families start some form of preparation in Year 5. Some start earlier, some later, some not at all. There’s no single right answer here, but I’ll be honest with you: leaving it until the summer before Year 6 will feel rushed and stressful for everyone involved.

The timeline I’d suggest, based on what I saw work well: start exploring the idea in the autumn or spring of Year 4. Not preparing yet, just researching. Is there actually a grammar school within reasonable distance? What does your child think about it? What format does your local exam use? By the summer of Year 4 or start of Year 5, you should have decided whether you’re going for it, and if you are, gentle preparation can begin.

Notice I said “gentle.” This is crucial. Some families go full throttle with intensive tutoring from Year 3. I watched those families. I saw the stress on the children. Unless your child is genuinely enthusiastic and finds it engaging, that approach rarely ends well, regardless of the exam results.

What Does the Exam Actually Test?

This is where it gets specific, and where you need to research your particular area. But I’ll give you the general overview of what’s typically tested across the different exam boards.

Verbal Reasoning

Verbal Reasoning tests your child’s ability to think about words, solve problems involving language, and understand relationships between concepts. It’s not like the English they do in school. These are puzzles involving words: finding the odd one out, completing word patterns, solving codes, working out missing letters in sequences, understanding analogies.

For example: “Cat is to kitten as dog is to ___?” Or: “Find the word that completes the first word and starts the second: HOR (___) BACK.” The answers are puppy and RIDE, if you’re wondering.

The thinking required here is different from regular literacy. A child who’s a confident reader might struggle with Verbal Reasoning, while a child who loves puzzles might excel even if their creative writing isn’t spectacular. It tests logical thinking applied to language, and it absolutely can be learned and improved with practice.

Non-Verbal Reasoning

Non-Verbal Reasoning is about visual patterns and spatial awareness. Children are shown sequences of shapes, patterns, or diagrams and need to work out what comes next, what’s different, what’s been rotated or reflected, what the rule is. These questions don’t involve words at all—they’re pure visual logic.

This section often surprises parents because it’s not something taught in primary school curriculum. But it’s testing important cognitive abilities: pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, systematic thinking. Some children find this intuitive, others need to learn the specific question types and strategies.

English

The English section tests comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and sometimes creative writing, though formats vary. Children might read a passage and answer questions demonstrating they’ve understood not just the surface meaning but inferences, the author’s intent, the effect of word choices.

Grammar questions cover things like punctuation, verb tenses, sentence structure, parts of speech. The vocabulary tested is often more sophisticated than what they’d encounter in Year 5 or 6 reading books. This is where regular reading of challenging books genuinely helps, though not all avid readers automatically do well on these tests under timed conditions.

Maths

The Maths section covers the primary curriculum but often includes trickier problem-solving questions and topics children might not have covered yet in school. The challenge isn’t usually the basic arithmetic—it’s applying mathematical thinking to unfamiliar problems, working efficiently under time pressure, and not making silly mistakes when you’re nervous.

Word problems are common, often requiring multiple steps. Questions might involve fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio, algebra, geometry, data handling. The difficulty comes from the combination of concepts and the need to work out what the question is actually asking.

The Different Exam Boards

Here’s where it gets complicated, so bear with me. There are several exam boards used across the country, and they all have different formats and emphases. The main ones you might encounter are GL Assessment, CEM (Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring), and some schools set their own exams.

GL Assessment tests are probably the most common. They typically cover all four areas: Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, English, and Maths. The questions are multiple choice. The format is fairly predictable, which means practice papers are useful.

CEM exams are designed to be harder to prepare for. They might combine sections in unexpected ways, use less predictable question formats, and generally try to test raw ability rather than practiced technique. Some parents find this fairer (it reduces the tutoring advantage), others find it more stressful (because you can’t prepare as systematically).

Some grammar schools, particularly certain London schools and some independent schools, set their own papers. These can be wildly different in format and difficulty. If you’re applying to these schools, you absolutely need to research their specific requirements.

The exam board used in your area will be stated clearly on the grammar school’s website or the local authority’s admissions information. This is one of your first research tasks.

How Do You Actually Prepare?

Right. The practical question that probably brought you here. How do you help your child prepare for these exams without turning your family life into a stress-fest?

First, understand that some level of preparation is almost certainly necessary. The 11 Plus tests things not taught in the standard curriculum (particularly the reasoning sections), and it’s done under timed, exam conditions that most primary school children haven’t experienced. Expecting a child to walk in cold and do well is unrealistic, unless they’re genuinely exceptional or have somehow encountered all this material elsewhere.

But there’s a huge difference between “some preparation” and “intensive, hours-daily cramming.” Where you land on that spectrum should depend on your child’s starting point, their attitude to learning, how much they can manage alongside school and other activities, and honestly, what you can manage as a family.

The approach that seemed to work well, from what I observed: start with familiarisation. Get some practice papers or recommended 11 Plus preparation books and just see how your child gets on. Don’t make it a test—make it exploratory. This shows you where they are naturally and what needs work.

Then create a sustainable routine. Maybe 20-30 minutes, four or five times a week. Not hours of drilling. Not every single day. Short, regular sessions where they work through practice questions, learn techniques for different question types, build speed and accuracy. Mix up the subjects to keep it from getting tedious.

Vocabulary building helps with Verbal Reasoning and English. This doesn’t mean drilling word lists, though some of that might be useful. It means reading challenging books, discussing new words, playing word games, making it part of normal conversation. The children who did best on Verbal Reasoning were generally the ones who’d been exposed to rich language throughout their childhood, not the ones who’d memorised vocabulary lists the year before the exam.

For Non-Verbal Reasoning, consistent practice with different question types builds the pattern-recognition skills. There are specific techniques for different question formats—children need to learn these, practice them, become automatic with them.

With English and Maths, you’re building on school learning but pushing a bit further. Comprehension practice with trickier texts, grammar exercises covering all the technical bits, maths problem-solving that goes beyond the straightforward curriculum questions.

The Tutoring Question

Let’s talk about tutoring, because it’s everywhere in this world and you’re probably wondering whether you need it.

First, the reality: in areas with grammar schools, 11 Plus tutoring is huge business. Many, probably most, children taking the exam have had some tutoring. This creates a difficult situation because even if you’re philosophically opposed to it, you might feel your child is at a disadvantage without it.

Here’s what tutoring can provide: expert knowledge of the exam format, systematic coverage of all question types, regular practice under timed conditions, feedback and technique refinement, and perhaps most valuably, someone other than you delivering the teaching (which often reduces family tension).

What tutoring can’t do: make a child who’s really struggling with the material suddenly brilliant at it, remove all stress and pressure, or guarantee a pass. The children I saw flourish with tutoring were the ones who were already in the right ballpark ability-wise and needed structure, practice, and technique. The children who struggled were often being pushed toward something that genuinely wasn’t right for them, and no amount of tutoring was going to change that comfortably.

If you’re considering tutoring: start by trying some preparation at home. If it’s going fine, you might not need a tutor. If your child is struggling with specific areas and you don’t feel confident teaching them, or if family dynamics mean practice sessions are becoming battles, then tutoring might help. If you can’t afford tutoring, don’t panic—plenty of children pass the 11 Plus with home preparation using good quality practice materials and consistent work.

Group tutoring is often significantly cheaper than one-to-one and can work well, particularly if your child is motivated by being with other children doing the same thing. One-to-one is more expensive but more tailored. Online tutoring is often cheaper than in-person. There are options at different price points, but there’s also the option of not tutoring at all if it doesn’t fit your situation.

Is Grammar School Actually Worth It?

This is the question beneath all the practical preparation stuff, isn’t it? Is this whole thing even worth doing?

The honest answer is: it depends. It depends on your child, your local schools, your family priorities, what happens if they don’t get in, and whether the process itself causes more stress than any potential benefit is worth.

Grammar schools typically get excellent exam results. This is sometimes held up as proof of their superiority, but it’s worth remembering they’re selecting the most academically able children to begin with. The real question is whether your child would do better there than they would at your local comprehensive, and that’s much harder to answer.

Some children absolutely thrive in grammar schools. They’re surrounded by other academically motivated students, the teaching can move faster, expectations are high, opportunities are excellent. For a bright child who loves learning and would be bored or unchallenged elsewhere, it can be transformative.

But grammar schools aren’t perfect. They can be pressured environments. The children are all high achievers, which means your child might go from being top of the class to middle of the pack, and some struggle with that adjustment. The academic pace is relentless. There can be issues with social diversity because of how the selection system works. And if your child gets in but then struggles to keep up, that’s a difficult situation.

Meanwhile, many comprehensive schools are excellent. Truly excellent. They offer a broader social mix, strong pastoral care, fantastic opportunities, and good exam results without the pressure-cooker atmosphere. Some children do better being a big fish in a smaller pond. Some benefit from the diversity of ability and background. Some need a school that focuses on more than just academic achievement.

If you’re thinking about secondary schools and what happens after primary education, you might find our complete guide to GCSEs helpful—it explains what the secondary school years look like regardless of which type of school your child attends.

My suggestion: visit schools. Visit the grammar schools you’re considering and visit your local comprehensive. Talk to other parents, talk to your child’s teachers, and most importantly, involve your child in the decision. They might surprise you. Some children desperately want to go to grammar school and will be motivated by that goal. Others are perfectly happy with the idea of going to school with their friends and would find the whole 11 Plus process miserable.

What If They Don’t Pass?

This is the fear lurking behind all the preparation, isn’t it? What happens if they try and don’t get in?

First, practically: they go to your catchment comprehensive or another local secondary school. This is not the end of the world. It really isn’t. I know it can feel like it when you’re in the middle of 11 Plus preparation and everyone around you is talking about grammar schools, but children have wonderful, successful lives going to comprehensive schools. Most children in the UK do.

Second, emotionally: how your child handles not passing depends largely on how you’ve framed the whole thing. If you’ve built it up as the most important thing ever and their entire future depends on it, then yes, they’ll be devastated. If you’ve approached it as “we’re going to give this a go and see what happens, and you’ll have a great time at secondary school either way,” then it’s disappointing but manageable.

This is why the pressure question matters so much. Some families create incredibly high-stakes situations around the 11 Plus, and when children don’t pass, the sense of failure is crushing. Please don’t do this. Your 10-year-old should not be carrying that weight.

There’s also the reality that the 11 Plus doesn’t actually measure everything important about your child. It measures certain types of reasoning ability and how well they perform on a particular day under exam conditions. It doesn’t measure creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience, kindness, artistic ability, sporting talent, or any number of other valuable qualities. A child who doesn’t pass the 11 Plus might be brilliant at a dozen other things.

Managing the Pressure and Stress

Let’s talk about what this process can do to families, because it’s real and we should acknowledge it.

The 11 Plus can create intense pressure. Children feel it—from parents, from themselves if they’re aware other children are preparing, from the simple knowledge that this test determines their school. Parents feel it—worry about whether they’re doing enough, guilt about whether tutoring is fair or necessary, stress about the time and money involved, anxiety about what happens if their child doesn’t pass.

This pressure can damage the love of learning. I saw children who started Year 5 enjoying school and ended Year 6 burned out and anxious. I saw families where 11 Plus preparation became the defining feature of family life, squeezing out fun and relaxation. This is not inevitable, but it’s a real risk.

How to manage it: keep perspective. This is one exam for one type of school. It is not the measure of your child’s worth or potential. It is not worth sacrificing your child’s wellbeing or your family relationships. If preparation is making everyone miserable, you can stop. You can decide it’s not worth it. That’s allowed.

Keep other activities going. Don’t drop football or music or seeing friends because of 11 Plus preparation. Children need balance, especially when facing something stressful. The structure and normality of their regular activities provides stability.

Be honest with your child about what’s happening and why, in age-appropriate ways. They’re going to know something’s going on. Better they understand it properly than half-understand and fill in the gaps with worry.

Watch for signs of stress: trouble sleeping, behaviour changes, physical complaints like tummy aches, loss of interest in things they usually enjoy. If you’re seeing these, ease off. No school place is worth your child’s mental health.

Practical Steps: What to Do Now

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking “right, so what do I actually do?” Here’s a practical action plan.

If your child is in Year 4 or early Year 5: Research whether there are grammar schools in your area that you could realistically get to. Find out which exam board they use. Visit the schools if possible—open days are useful but not essential at this stage. Download or buy some sample papers to see what they look like. Have an honest conversation with your child about whether this is something they’d be interested in. Talk to your child’s teacher about whether they think the 11 Plus is realistic for your child (though take this with a grain of salt—teachers sometimes underestimate children who’d flourish with the right preparation, and sometimes overestimate children who’d struggle under exam pressure).

If your child is in later Year 5: You need to decide fairly soon whether you’re doing this. If you are, start gentle preparation now—familiarisation with question types, building basic skills, not intensive cramming yet. Check registration deadlines (usually summer of Year 5) and mark them clearly in your calendar. Consider whether you want tutoring and if so, start researching options—waiting lists can be long in popular areas. Make sure your child understands what’s happening and why, and that they’re on board with the plan.

If your child is in Year 6 and taking the exam soon: Focus on building confidence and managing stress. Do regular practice papers under timed conditions so exam day feels familiar. Make sure your child knows the practical details—what to bring, what the timing is, what the room will be like. Keep everything else as normal as possible. Look after yourself as well as your child—your anxiety will transmit to them, so find ways to manage your own stress.

Download our free parent toolkit above to help structure preparation calmly and realistically. It includes planning tools, vocabulary builders, and tracking sheets that take the guesswork out of preparation without adding pressure.

Final Thoughts

The 11 Plus is a peculiar British institution. It opens doors for some children and closes them for others based on a test taken at 10 or 11 years old. Whether you think that’s fair or sensible is up to you, but if you’re in a grammar school area, you have to make decisions about it for your family.

What I learned watching families go through this: the children who came through it best, regardless of whether they passed or failed, were the ones whose parents kept perspective. Who prepared them sensibly but didn’t let it take over their lives. Who made it clear that their love and pride didn’t depend on exam results. Who maintained normal family life through the process. Who chose schools based on what was genuinely best for their child rather than what looked best on paper.

Grammar school is not the only route to success, happiness, or a good education. It’s one option. For some children it’s the right option. For others it genuinely isn’t, regardless of whether they could pass the exam.

Trust yourself. You know your child better than any exam board, any tutor, any admissions system. If grammar school feels right and your child is willing and able, then prepare sensibly and give it a go. If it doesn’t feel right, or if the process is creating more stress than any potential benefit could justify, then it’s absolutely fine to decide it’s not for you.

Your child will be fine. They will go to secondary school, they will learn and grow, they will find their path. The 11 Plus might be part of that story, or it might not. Either way, what matters most is that they feel supported, valued, and loved throughout the process, whatever the outcome.

And if you need more practical help with the preparation side, check out our guide to the best 11 Plus preparation books—real recommendations from parents who’ve been through this, covering what actually works for different exam boards and learning styles.