A Practical 11+ Guide: Tips, Tricks and Resources to Help Your Child Pass

What the 11+ Actually Is

The 11+ is a selective entrance exam taken by children — usually in September of Year 6 — for places at grammar schools in England. The format depends on your local authority: some areas use GL Assessment, others use CEM, and a few use bespoke regional papers. The subjects covered typically include some combination of Maths, English, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning.

Whatever the format, the underlying truth is the same: the 11+ rewards children who have practised enough to recognise question patterns instantly and who have learned to manage time under pressure.

Did you know? Many children who pass the 11+ do so after just a focused summer of preparation. Starting in Year 3 is rarely necessary — what matters is consistent, structured practice in the months before the test.

Generic Tips That Apply to Every Section

Before drilling into subject-specific tactics, there are a handful of habits that lift performance across the entire paper.

The Notebook Habit

A simple A4 notebook is one of the most under-rated 11+ tools. Each time your child sits a past paper, they should write the date and the paper title at the top — for example, Maths 2016 GL Paper 1 — work through it, then mark it carefully and note any topic that tripped them up. Over a few weeks, the notebook becomes a personalised map of exactly where to focus next.

The Specification Trick

For GL areas in particular, official specifications list every topic that can appear. Print one out, then highlight each bullet point only after your child has completed a worksheet on it confidently. This single habit converts a vague “we’re revising” into a concrete checklist with a finish line. Our Complete Guide to 11+ Exam Preparation in 2026 walks through how to structure this approach week by week.

Tip: Don’t highlight a topic just because your child thinks they know it. Always test with a worksheet first. Confidence without evidence is one of the most common reasons children underperform on the day.

Subject-Specific Tactics

This is where preparation moves from generic to game-changing. Each section of the 11+ rewards a slightly different approach.

Verbal Reasoning and English: Master Prefixes and Suffixes

You cannot memorise the dictionary, and any word can appear in the exam. The smarter strategy is to learn prefixes, suffixes, and common Latin and Greek roots so your child can decode unfamiliar words on the fly.

For example, if asked the meaning of autocratic, a child who knows that auto- means one and -cratic means power can deduce rule by one person even without having seen the word before. This single technique transforms vocabulary from a memory game into a logic game.

Common building blocks worth learning:

• un-, dis-, mis- — negation
• pre-, post- — before, after
• sub-, super- — under, above
• bene- — good (benefit, benevolent)
• -cide — kill (insecticide, herbicide)
• -ology — study of

Pair this with structured vocabulary work — our guide to Building Vocabulary for the 11+ English Exam and our piece on Antonyms and Synonyms cover the rest of the verbal-reasoning toolkit.

Non-Verbal Reasoning: Build a Mental Checklist

Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR) is essentially pattern recognition. The trick is to stop staring at each question hoping inspiration strikes, and instead run through a fixed mental checklist of what could be changing.

Stick this list on a Post-it next to your child’s desk:

1. Has the shape changed?
2. Has the colour or shading changed?
3. Has the size changed?
4. Has the angle or rotation changed?
5. Has the position changed?
6. Has the number of elements changed?
7. Is something being added or removed?

Run through this list on every NVR question, and patterns leap out far faster. With enough practice, the checklist becomes automatic — and many children finish NVR sections with time to spare. For deeper work on tricky NVR types, see our guide to Non-Verbal Reasoning Tips & Practice Strategies.

Maths: Targeted Drilling Beats Random Practice

Maths is largely about practice plus precision. The most effective approach is reactive: when your child marks a paper and gets a ratio question wrong, don’t move on — drill ratio. Find a Year 5 or Year 6 ratio worksheet and work through it until the topic clicks. Then return to a fresh past paper.

This targeted drilling closes gaps far faster than blanket practice. Our guides on How to Improve Your Child’s 11+ Maths Score and 11+ Maths Test Questions and Answers cover this in detail.

Tip: When your child gets a question wrong, ask them to write why in the notebook — for example, “forgot to convert mm to cm” or “misread the question”. Patterns in the why column are more revealing than the score itself.

A Sample Summer-Holiday Routine

Plenty of children pass the 11+ after a focused summer of revision. Here is a realistic daily structure for August:

The key is two focused study chunks separated by a real break, with evenings completely free. Burnout is a much bigger risk than under-preparation in the final months.

Resources That Actually Help

A few well-chosen books, used thoroughly, beat a shelf of half-finished ones. Bond and CGP are the two most widely recommended publishers, and CGP practice papers are particularly useful for timed work. Pair these with digital practice for variety and instant feedback.

Practising With the 11+ Apps

Our suite of seven apps offers 8,190+ questions designed specifically for 11+ preparation, with instant marking, explanations, and progress tracking — perfect for the targeted drilling approach above.

• 11+ Non-Verbal Reasoning — 210 questions across 8 topics, ideal for building the mental-checklist habit on visual patterns, sequences, codes, nets and odd-one-out.
• 11+ Verbal Reasoning Methods & Techniques — 1,050 questions across 22 topics, including word codes, letter series, analogies and compound words, with study notes that double up as revision aids.
• 11+ Verbal Reasoning Practice Papers — 1,920 questions across 24 timed practice papers for genuine exam-condition practice.
• 11+ Maths Learn & Test — 1,280 questions across 32 topics, with built-in lessons covering shapes, algebra, fractions and data handling.
• 11+ Maths Practice Papers — 1,200 questions across 24 timed papers to drill speed and accuracy.
• 11+ English Practice Papers — 600 questions covering comprehension, spelling, punctuation and reading passages.
• 11+ Vocabulary Builder — 360 questions across 10 topics, including synonyms, antonyms, anagrams and compound words.

Used together, these apps support the full preparation cycle: learn the topic, practise it, then sit a timed paper — exactly the loop that produces confident performance on the day.

The Bottom Line

The 11+ is winnable with the right habits: a notebook, a topic checklist, prefixes and suffixes, a mental checklist for NVR, and targeted drilling for Maths. Add a balanced daily routine and consistent practice, and your child walks into the exam hall with the one advantage that matters most — familiarity. Practice really is the whole game.