Disclosure: Affiliate partner. This means should you make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

We moved to a grammar school area a year ago. Thinking we were in the catchment for lots of schools but it hasn’t really been the case.

We weren’t familiar with the grammar school, 11 Plus route, so we didn’t realise the amount of preparation needed to do this with less stress and to have a successful result.

So what’s our advice? Should you be tutoring a year in advance? I know people starting this preparation in Year 3. I don’t think you need to go that far but we definitely would have started earlier if we’d known.

Most children start tutoring or some sort of formal 11 Plus studying a year in advance. Even beginning in Year 4 would help if you feel your child needs extra time to study at their own pace.

It may seem excessive but it’s advisable to begin at least a year before. This gives your child time to get to know a completely different way of learning. Apart from the maths modules which we found not too surprising, not easy but more expected content. There are other topics which children are not used to studying, see below our experience of these, which highlights why 11 Plus learning is so different.

when to prepare for the 11 Plus exam? Atom Learning. Boy with headphones and a laptop and pencil studying. — Credit: Unsplash.

Word choice

The vocabulary they will learn is extensive and they will need to understand the meaning of these words so they can answer questions where they need to give their opposites as an answer.

This is more complex than just knowing a new word and even children who are quite articulate can struggle with identifying the opposite word to the one they are presented with.

Non-verbal reasoning

The non-verbal reasoning section which in some papers is called ‘Pictures’ is a series of different drawings or shapes. The aim is to check the ability of the child to understand and analyse visual information and solve problems using visual reasoning or their interpretation of the data.

For my son, this was the easiest part but I don’t learn in the same way as him and I found it the most difficult. So it’s very hard to know whether your child will sail through parts of the exam unless they are continuously exposed to the different elements. Having a year of getting used to interpreting data and knowing what is being asked of you is paramount.

Verbal reasoning

There is an impression that this is just ‘English’ but this doesn’t give a full account of what topics are involved. There are questions on sentence structure and grammar, familiar elements of English. However, it’s very unlikely that a child would pass this section if they haven’t studied for it specifically.

Much of the verbal reasoning modules are noticing how words change in their structure and what patterns you can spot. For example, if you took two letters from one word and created two more with the same letters, how could you create a fourth word with that two words and what would it be?

These take time to understand what is being asked. To start practising and seeing how you can create things yourself. Noticing when you have it very wrong and where you made a mistake. Getting used to doing them so you can work quickly. The exam is around 2 hours but you don’t have long to spare on each question.

It amazed me how well my child started to pick up on these patterns and alternative ways of thinking. However, it takes time to build this knowledge and the longer children have to get used to it the less overwhelming it will be.

Do you need to pay for a tutor?

If you’re now aware you need to start at least a year before your child takes the exam, the thought of paying for a tutor for that amount of time is a little disconcerting!

We used a tutor for part of the time from PIA Academy, and for the rest we used Atom Learning’s Exam Prep Plus package for the 11 Plus Exam.

PIA Academy tutors start at £10 per hour, they have 11+ Exam Courses, Pre Test Papers, an 11+ Reading Club and everything you need.

Children learn with both providers in an online platform through modules on each topic. However, with PIA Academy their are also online Sunday Classes.

Mock exams for each area of the country were very valuable. We needed the Bexley and Kent test and could access these. All the different area tests are available in the platform.

I hope that’s given you some information from a mother who has just lived through the process! Please add any questions below…