Here’s how to pass the 11+
When looking through various Facebook posts of parenting groups I’ll often see posts from parents asking about ‘how to pass the 11+’ or ‘what does my son/daughter need to study to pass their tests’ and whilst many parents receive useful answers, some fall a little short of covering all the key points.
If that’s you, then hopefully these tips will act as some signposts as to the next steps you should take on your child’s 11+ journey.
Ten steps to pass the 11+
For the UK grammar school and independent school 11+ entrance tests, parents can help their children prepare by:
- Familiarizing themselves with the format of the exam and the types of questions that will be asked (different schools can mean different papers and formats).
- Providing your child with practice materials, such as past papers and sample questions, but only once your child is fully conversant with the format of the actual question – test papers come later.
- Encouraging their child to read widely and to practice writing essays and compositions.
Your child shouldn’t be ‘guessing’ words in the test – they need a deep and wide vocabulary and that develops over time – cramming never works. - Helping their child to learn and practice maths.
They must have fast and accurate timestables skills, along with a strong understanding of all of their maths syllabus, up to year six (and sometimes more than that for the ultra top schools – you have been warned!) - Verbal reasoning, if required, is best learned by studying the question formats – many are rather like quizzes and so being of a logical mind helps in this paper.
- Here’s where the fun starts! I love non-verbal reasoning (NVR) questions myself so I’m biased, but if your child’s going to take an NVR paper they need to familiarise themselves with all of the relevant question types and how to unpack them at speed.
- At some time during year five they’ll need to start working through exam papers, but don’t rush this.
It’s best that when they hit the papers they’re able to secure strong scores – big gaps lead to big upsets and that’s not nice for your child.
Best you ensure they’ve covered the syllabus so those papers are ‘a piece of cake’ (not sure if paper and cake go together, however?) - Take some mock exams.
This will build your child’s confidence, or knock the stuffing out of them if they’re not yet fully prepared, so go easy on this one.
Remember also that if your target school sets an online test, your child needs to sit some online mocks, too.
Familiarity = confidence = speed = more marks and what’s not to like about that? - Help your child to develop good study habits and time management skills.
There is definitely enough time for your child to prepare and score highly in the 11+, and there are 101 excuses and reasons for them to fail, too.
Only you, their parents are in control of this.
Not your child, not your tutor (if you have one) and not luck.
Planning and time management are the keys to success, or failure, in these tests. - Finding a tutor or support service if wanted.
I’ve put this last because until you’re clear on #1-9 #10 is irrelevant.
Maybe you want to dive into 11+ prep yourself and that’s perfectly doable, or you might feel your child’s best served by attending small or large group tutoring.
A third alternative would be 1-to-1 tutoring sessions.
Both group and 1-to-1 could be in person or online and all variations have their place and pricepoint.
A roadmap for how to pass the eleven plus
Hopefully the above helps to provide some shape and depth to what you’ll need to do to ensure your child ends up wearing the right school blazer when they start at their new school in year 7.
If you’ve any questions about the above or would like any further guidance, here’s a link to my contact form.
P.S. There’s more to life than the 11+, so make sure your child’s got some non-study things running parallel to their 11+ work or it’s going to be a very stressful journey for you all!