11+ Preparation Timeline: When to Start and What to Cover

Most children start preparing for the 11+ in Year 5, roughly twelve to eighteen months before they sit the exam at the very start of Year 6. That is the honest answer to when to start, and steady, little-and-often work across Year 5 beats a frantic summer catch-up every time. What to cover depends heavily on where you live, because there is no single national 11+ — the format changes from area to area and even from school to school. This guide gives you a year-by-year plan for Years 5 and 6, sets out the four things almost every 11+ tests, explains when mock exams actually help, and shows you how to bring in a tutor whose credibility you can check rather than take on trust.

Before you plan anything, understand the one fact that shapes everything else: the 11+ is not a single, standard exam. Two families a few miles apart can be preparing their children for genuinely different tests. Preparing for the wrong format is the most common and most avoidable mistake parents make, so the first job is not buying practice papers — it is finding out exactly what your target schools ask for.

There is no single 11+ — confirm your target schools first

Broadly, 11+ tests fall into a few families, and knowing which one your child will sit changes what you cover and how you practise.

Some areas use a standardised test from a national provider such as GL Assessment: largely multiple-choice, sat with a separate answer sheet, and built around fairly predictable question types that reward familiarity and timed practice. Other areas have used a CEM-style format, deliberately designed to be harder to prepare for by mixing question types and keeping the exact shape less predictable. Several areas — the Sutton consortium is a well-known example — run their own shared paper across a group of schools, and the most competitive "superselective" schools often set their own paper start to finish and admit strictly on the highest scores.

The practical consequence is simple. You cannot buy one set of practice papers, work through them, and assume your child is ready. You decide which schools you are realistically targeting, confirm each school's exact process directly from that school's own admissions page — not a forum thread or an old guide — and shape the preparation around it. Admissions arrangements change year to year, and the school's own page is the only source of truth worth trusting. Get this right first and the rest of the plan falls into place; get it wrong and a year of hard work can be aimed at the wrong exam.

One more structural point that affects your timeline: some selective areas use a two-stage process. A large field sits a first-stage test early in Year 6, and only the children who clear it are invited to a second, usually harder, test a few weeks later. If your target schools work this way, shallow last-minute drilling is risky — a child who scrapes stage one with nothing in reserve often comes unstuck at stage two. That is one more reason to build real depth early rather than cram.

A year-by-year plan for Years 5 and 6

Here is a realistic shape for a child aiming at selective entry. Treat it as pacing, not a rigid calendar — adjust it to your child, and to the format your specific schools use.

Year 4 and earlier — no formal prep, just good habits. You do not need to start 11+ work this early, and drilling a seven- or eight-year-old on reasoning papers tends to do more harm than good. What genuinely helps is reading widely and often, secure times tables, and confident mental arithmetic. A child who reads for pleasure and knows their tables cold arrives at Year 5 with the foundations already in place.

Year 5, autumn term — foundations and an honest diagnosis. This is the natural time to begin structured preparation. Start by finding out where your child actually stands, not where a school report says they are. The 11+ rewards fast, accurate maths and strong reading comprehension, so shore up the basics first: instant-recall times tables, mental arithmetic, and reading widely with real comprehension. Introduce verbal and non-verbal reasoning gently now, because both are unfamiliar to most children and a little early exposure removes the fear later. Keep sessions short and frequent — fifteen to thirty minutes on most days does far more than a two-hour session at the weekend.

Year 5, spring term — building the skills. With foundations steadier, work systematically through each component: problem-solving in maths, comprehension and written English, and every reasoning question type until none of them stays mysterious. If you are bringing in a tutor, this is the natural point to start. Beginning now gives a full two terms of steady work before the exam rather than a rushed final stretch.

Year 5, summer term and the holidays — match the real format. Now align the practice with the formats your target schools actually use. Confirm whether your schools use a standardised multiple-choice paper, a CEM-style mix, a consortium paper or their own, and make sure your child has met the real question styles, timings and answer methods. A multiple-choice paper with a separate answer sheet is a different experience from a written paper, and no child should meet that difference for the first time on exam day. Registration deadlines usually fall over this summer, so mark them early and do not miss them — a missed deadline ends the process before it starts.

Year 6, September — the exam. Most selective tests are sat in the first weeks of Year 6, with any second-stage tests following soon after. By now the work should be timed practice, staying calm and refining technique, not learning new material. A child who has done steady work across Year 5 sits down rested and ready; a child crammed all summer sits down exhausted. The heavy lifting was meant to happen months earlier, precisely so these final weeks can be light.

What to cover — the four components

Whatever the format, almost every 11+ draws on the same four areas. Cover all of them, and weight them towards whatever your target schools emphasise.

Maths. Number, the four operations at speed, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio, basic geometry and multi-step word problems. Speed and accuracy matter as much as method, because the papers are tight on time. See our guide on 11+ maths exam preparation for what the paper actually tests.

English. Reading comprehension is the core — inference, vocabulary in context, and understanding what a text implies rather than only what it states. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are tested too, and some schools include a short piece of writing. Wide reading across Year 5 does more for comprehension than any worksheet; our 11+ English exam preparation guide breaks down each part.

Verbal reasoning. Word- and language-based logic puzzles — codes, sequences, analogies and the rest. These are learnable with systematic practice, and early exposure stops them feeling alien.

Non-verbal reasoning. Pattern, shape and spatial puzzles that many children have never met before Year 5. Like verbal reasoning, it responds well to steady, structured practice.

When mock exams actually help

Mock exams are useful, but their value depends entirely on timing. Sat too early, before a child has built the underlying skills, a mock only produces a discouraging score and tells you little you did not already know. Their real job comes later: from around the summer before the exam and into the early autumn, a full-length mock under real timing conditions builds stamina, exposes how a child handles time pressure, and surfaces the gaps that show up only under exam conditions rather than in gentle practice.

Use mocks to diagnose and to acclimatise, not to rank. One or two well-timed, realistic mocks that mirror your target school's format are worth more than a long series of generic papers. And keep the result in proportion — a mock is a rehearsal, not a verdict.

What a tutor adds — and how to check one

A good 11+ tutor does three things a parent often cannot do alone: diagnose the specific gaps quickly, teach exam technique for the exact format your schools use, and keep a child working steadily without the tension that home revision can create between parent and child. That is real value. But the tutoring market runs largely on reputation and word of mouth, which means most families are asked to trust a stranger with their child and their money on the strength of a self-written profile. When the stakes are this high, that is exactly where things go wrong.

This is the problem Tutorwise is built to solve, and it is worth being concrete about how. On Tutorwise, a tutor's credibility is not a bio they wrote about themselves — it is a computed score built from real, checkable signals. An enhanced DBS check and verified identity form the safeguarding baseline. Qualifications are recorded and verified rather than merely claimed. A tutor's track record — the outcomes they have delivered and the reviews left by families who actually worked with them — feeds the same score. So when you compare two 11+ tutors on Tutorwise, you are not weighing one confident paragraph against another. You are comparing two earned, evidenced scores, and every tutor you can message has already cleared the safeguarding baseline before they reach you.

Contrast that with an ordinary tutoring directory, where a listing is only as honest as the person who wrote it and the safeguarding check is something you are left to chase yourself. The difference is not marketing. It is the difference between trusting a claim and checking a fact — which, when someone is going to sit with your ten-year-old every week through a demanding year, is the difference that matters. Set the safeguarding and qualification checks as your floor, then choose on evidenced experience of the exact exam your child is sitting.

Keep the pressure in proportion

One last thing, because it affects results as much as any worksheet. The 11+ is one test, on one or two mornings, and selective schools are so oversubscribed that plenty of able, well-prepared children do not get a place. That says nothing about how well they will go on to do. A calm household and a child who has done steady, unhurried work tends to perform better on the day than a child carrying a year of accumulated anxiety. Start early precisely so you never have to cram, keep the sessions short and regular, and hold on to some perspective — it helps your child more than one extra past paper ever will.

If you are still weighing up whether to bring in a tutor, start with our guide on how to find an 11+ tutor and what to look for. And if the competitiveness of it all is weighing on you, should I have coached my child for the 11+? is an honest read on keeping it all in proportion.

When you are ready to compare tutors, do it on evidence rather than on a bio. Browse verified 11+ tutors on Tutorwise, compare their computed credibility scores, and message the ones who genuinely fit your child and your target schools — with the safeguarding checks already done.