What is in the 11 plus exam?

The 11 plus exam is becoming more varied. The theory is to set an exam which assesses the pupil’s ability to learn, along with their prior knowledge. 

We need to look at these two separately:

The problem with prior knowledge is that pupils may be advantaged or disadvantaged by personal background or school attended. As such, when a school or county sets an English, Mathematics or General Knowledge exam, it is usually their previous school or parents who are being examined.  Therefore helping your child to study the syllabus set at Key Stage 2, practicing old exam papers and reading with them, discussing the text etc. will all help.

Ability to learn has been tested using variations on IQ tests and two in particular, have proven most popular.  They are Verbal Reasoning and Non-verbal Reasoning.  You can try out some of these types of questions on the demo page or following the links below. The theory is that it is not possible to prepare for these exams and as such they are  good at assessing a pupil’s ability to learn.  In reality, if you as a parent were to sit down and do the 11 plus today, then went and practised all the different types of questions for a year then sat next year’s exam, you would see an improvement. So, there is no surprise that the same would be the same for your child.  If nobody prepared their child for this kind of exam then we would have a level playing field, but in reality this is not the way it works.

 Take a demo test now:

Take the 11 plus Maths demo test now
Take the 11 plus English demo test now
Take the 11 plus Verbal Reasoning demo test now
Take the 11 plus Nonverbal Reasoning demo test now