Ever since the state school eleven plus test was introduced in the 1940s it’s been subject to various changes.

The eleven-plus came into being as a way of selecting which children should be more suited to higher level studies (Grammar School) or a less challenging level of study (normal school).

(That’s a VERY simplistic way of expressing things, but bear with me for a moment).

As Britain started rebuilding itself after World War II and people’s incomes and standards of living improved, this grammar school vs not grammar school split fell under the spotlight.

A middle-class closed-shop, or not?

One of the biggest issues that governments and the public have had with grammar schools was that the eleven-plus was elitist and easier to pass for children coming from middle-class family backgrounds.

It was therefore becoming seen as a way middle-class parents could help their children to get into a better educational pathway and then onto university and thus provide a ‘leg up’ on the class ladder at the taxpayer’s expense.

This was one of the main reasons why the Labour government tried, in the 1970s to, carry out educational genocide and wipe grammar schools out of existence.

Luckily, however, many refused to quit and that’s why we’ve got the odd imbalance of some locations still having grammar schools, with many areas having none.

Attempts to address test imbalance

Due to the wide depth of English skills required along with specific words that can appear in the eleven plus it’s always been felt that children coming from middle-class, traditional English backgrounds had an implicit advantage when taking these tests.

So over time, the tests have been revised to try to address this imbalance and the introduction of non-verbal reasoning tests was supposed to address these discrepancies.

It was felt that testing children on something that isn’t taught in schools, or linked to any one language or set of historical data would help to give everyone a ‘fair chance.’

When parents contact any prospective schools who set entrance tests, they’re invariably told ‘Children don’t require tutoring.’ or ‘The right children will do well without preparation.’

And that’s bunkum!

Have you actually looked at some of the questions in the current eleven-plus tests?

If not I’ve included a few examples below, with a specific focus on the NVR question type.

I suggest most adults will find them difficult, let alone an unprepared child still in primary school.

The big four question groups

Just to recap, the questions that are included in the eleven-plus fall into four main groups;

1. Maths
2. English (including creative writing)
3. Verbal reasoning and
4. Non-verbal reasoning.

Whilst maths and English is taught in your child’s school, to achieve a good score in the eleven plus your child will need to be studying much further ahead than the other children in their class.

This is because they’ll need to have covered, for most entrance tests, all of their year 6 work by the time they sit their tests, and those are taken early in year 6.

Not just covered, however; they need to understand it, forward, backwards, upside-down and sideways.

This level of support simply isn’t available in most state schools.

Ask any primary school teacher and you’ll find most have to cope with children with a wide range of abilities and consequently they don’t have the time to drive the top performers forward at the required speed.

Following the dictum of ‘the squeakiest wheel gets the most grease,’ most teachers will naturally direct more attention toward those at the lower end of a class, rather than the higher achievers.

This is also why parents who are on the one hand pleased to hear their child’s achieving ‘above average results’ might subsequently find they slip back unless extra support at home is given.

It’s also not what they or their school is targetted on, and what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed, does it?

In the few geographic areas which are strongly grammar school positive, those local primary schools will spend some time preparing children for their tests.

It’s not a long time, however, compared to the importance of those tests.

This is why most children preparing for the eleven-plus will undergo some type of tutoring, which could be from their parents or with a tutor.

Group #4: Non-verbal reasoning and spatial reasoning

This requirement for some semblance of tutoring is all the more important when we consider the fourth type of question set which is included in many eleven-plus tests; non-verbal and spatial reasoning tests.

These tests are designed to assess how well children can analyse visual information and solve problems logically.

Words, meanings and number logic doesn’t really matter here.

These NVRquestions often use elements such as codes, patterns, rotations and size changes and require children to imagine how one or more images compare.

Rather like looking at still frames taken from an old cinema film, children need to imagine the ‘steps’ in these translations so they can determine the correct answers.

The concept behind including these questions is that they are supposedly ‘untutorable’.

The fiendish exam-setting organisations have gone to great lengths to develop a variety of questions, each of which requires your child to apply specific analytical skills to arrive at the correct answer.

NVR questions are used in various tests in industry so perhaps you’ve seen them when applying for a new job or position somewhere.

And if you were applying for a job which required you to ‘pass’ such a test, don’t you think you’d spend at least some time honing your skills, so you’d achieve a higher score than simply, ‘giving it a go?’

This is how it is with your child’s NVR and spatial reasoning tests, too.

Past experience has shown that with focused practice and guidance, most children can improve their scores – sometimes amazingly so.

I’ve had children go from ‘zero to hero’ in just a few months and whilst I don’t advocate leaving things until the last minute if you’re finding your child’s not getting the hang of NVR questions, drop me a quick email or book a Calendly call with me and let’s speak about this.

What comprises NVR and SR tests?

Just like how the maths syllabus includes sections such as; area, ratio, symmetry, algebra, etc, NVR and SR questions can be separated out into different question types, too.

Knowing the breakdown helps children because they can then look at a question and think, “Oh, that’s a (question type), so what I need to do first is (step #1, then step #2…), etc.’

Following a set of rules helps to remove ambiguity and thus is less tiring for them in their exams, which translates into higher scores.

These questions are often been added to, when the exam-setting organisations come up with new, fiendish variations of older NVR questions, in an attempt to keep their tests ‘untutorable.’

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Things to look out for

Here are some of the types of variation that might appear in questions:

• Shape
• Colour
• Position
• Size
• Number
• Reflection
• Direction
• Rotation

Depending upon the question type it’s possible for some of these to be less important and on the occasions, they need to be considered in combinations.

Once your child’s primed about what to look for, they need to begin to learn the different question types.

I’ve outlined below the main question types along with some examples from various papers.

I’ve also included a few suggestions as to some of the ways to help derive the correct answers.

Similarities and Differences

• Similarities
• Odd one out
• Analogies
• Most similar/most unlike
• Adding and subtracting pattern contents

With these questions, we need to identify what’s the same, or different, between one or more pictures.

Taking the above graphic as an example the straight hair on the left image changes to wavy on the right.

The circular ‘head’ shape turns into a square and its tail switches from oval to rectangular. One could also say the shapes at the bottom are smaller but stretched versions of those at the top.

The thin line joining the top and bottom doesn’t change.

Lastly, the colours of the shapes switch from top to bottom.

Taking each of those observations in turn we arrive at the correct answers.

Missing, Hidden and Reflected Shapes

• Series and Sequences
• Rotations
• Hidden pictures
• Matrices and Tiles
• Horizontal and Vertical Reflections
• Transformations

The graphic on the left comprises two ovals and one circle.

Both ovals are ‘see-through’ so you can see where they overlap.

Their borders are solid, as is the edge of the circle.

In the graphic on the right, however, some changes have taken place.

The shapes are all the same size but the vertical oval is now ‘in front’ of the horizontal one (or one could say one of the two is now opaque).

The borders of both ovals are now dotted, but the circle is still solid.

The small circle has moved slightly down and to the right.

Tracking back through those steps will allow us to arrive at the correct answer.

Codes and Combinations

• Codes
• Combined pictures

These questions use two (or sometimes three) letters to denote specific points of note in the graphics. As with the best Agatha Christie novels, these questions are invariably full of red herrings and false facts. The skill lies in being able to filter out the wheat from the chaff.

In the above example:

The top and bottom images have black circles, the middle one a square. This suggests X is the code letter for circle and Y for square. So the test image with a square will have X as its second letter.

Looking back at the images we can see all are rotated differently, but the middle one can be seen to be a positive rotation of the top one. In comparison, the bottom image appears to be a mirror image of the top one.

By comparison, the test image appears to be identical to the lower left image once rotated, so S would be the left code for it.

This allows us to identify the correct code pair.

Spatial Reasoning

Spatial reasoning questions can be broken down into different types, including:

• Nets of cubes
• Paper folding and cutting
• 3D building blocks
• 2D plans of 3D shapes
• 3D rotations

With these questions, children have to ‘imagine’ how a cube rotates in 3D and determine which net matches which cube. Sometimes the question asks for the one which ‘can be made’ and other times they ask for the one which ‘can’t be made,’ so it’s important to read the question header very carefully, to avoid losing marks.

There are steps to follow which will help to filter out incorrect options and thus arrive at the correct answer.

Another spatial reasoning question format is paper folding. This can best be compared to the neatly prepared napkins that adorn the dining tables of upmarket restaurants.

In these questions, we need to work backwards from having had the folded piece of paper hole-punched, and then imagine how the flattened-out sheet would look with that single hole-punch.

Depending upon the location of the folds, more, or less holes will have been made in the sheet.

Practice makes perfect

Hopefully, you (or your child) now know a little more about the wonderful world of NVR questions than previously. It can actually be a fun part of the eleven-plus once the question types are learned and a section where near full marks can be achieved.

If you’d like to find out more about tutoring for this, or any other part of the eleven plus, you drop me a quick message using our contact form here.

We’ll often have parents contact us during the summer holiday just before their child goes up into year 6 when they realise they’re not as strong in NVR as they need to be, so if you’re unsure about your child’s skills for this we can hold an assessment session to benchmark their scores.

Ask for details today.