When to Start 11+ Preparation for Your Child
So when should we actually start?
It is the question I am asked more than any other. Sometimes it comes from a parent of a Year 3 child wondering if they are already behind. More often it comes from a Year 5 parent wondering if they have left it too late. Both are usually wrong about the urgency, and both deserve a straight answer rather than the vague “the sooner the better” you will find in most articles.
Here is the honest version, from someone who has prepared hundreds of children for the UK’s most competitive selective schools.
The short answer
For most children targeting selective London schools (the Haberdashers’ schools, NLCS, QE Boys, Henrietta Barnett, Latymer, Tiffin, City of London, St Paul’s) formal 11+ preparation should begin in Year 5, ideally the autumn term.
Year 4 is for foundations. Year 3 is for reading and curiosity. Year 6 is for refinement and exam practice.
That is the simple version. In reality, the right start date depends on which schools you are applying to, how confident your child is with reading and maths today, and whether you are working in a small group, with a tutor, or alone at home. Let me walk you through it properly.
The exam timeline most parents do not realise
Before you can answer “when do I start?”, you need to know when the finish line is. And here is where many families get caught out: the 11+ does not happen on one day, in one format, for everyone.
Grammar schools: early September of Year 6
If your child is aiming for QE Boys, Henrietta Barnett, Latymer, Tiffin or the Sutton grammars (Wilson’s, Sutton, Wallington), the exams sit in the first weeks of September, before they have even unpacked their Year 6 pencil case. Registration deadlines fall as early as June and July of Year 5.
This means the real preparation window for grammar schools closes at the end of Year 5. The summer holiday before Year 6 is your final intensive run up, not a starting point.
Independent schools: November pre test, January papers
If you are targeting NLCS, St Paul’s, Haberdashers’ Girls, Westminster, Eton, or any of the 50+ schools that use the ISEB Common Pre Test, your child sits the online pre test in November of Year 6. Schools then invite shortlisted children to written papers and interviews in January of Year 6, with offers landing in February.
Haberdashers’ Boys uses the Cambridge Select Insight (formerly CEM) in late November, with stage 2 papers in early January. City of London runs its own papers in early December.
What this means for timing
If you are applying to grammars, your child needs to be exam ready by early Year 6, call it August. If you are applying to independents, you have until November. If you are applying to both (and many of my families do), grammar timing wins, so start earlier.
What “preparation” looks like at each year group
This is where most articles fall down. They tell you to “start early” without telling you what early actually means in practice. Here is how I structure it for the children we teach.
Year 3: foundations, no formal prep
If your child is in Year 3, please do not buy a Bond 11+ book. I mean it. What matters at this age is not 11+ technique, it is the bedrock that 11+ skills will be built on later.
At this stage, the most valuable things you can do are simple:
- Read every day. Aloud, together, even when they can read independently. Pick books slightly above their level. Talk about the words, the characters, what has just happened.
- Build number confidence. Times tables fluency by the end of Year 4 is the single biggest predictor of how much a child enjoys 11+ maths. Make it daily, make it short, make it varied.
- Encourage curiosity. Museum visits, board games, baking, building. The skills the 11+ will eventually test (comprehension, problem solving, mental flexibility) are built here, not in a workbook.
If you are a Year 3 parent who feels behind because someone at the school gate says they have “already started 11+ tutoring”, please do not panic. You have not missed anything that matters.
Year 4: a soft, low pressure start
Year 4 is when I would start gently, and I mean gently. The goal is not to begin exam practice. It is to begin building the four pillars that 11+ tests draw on: vocabulary, reading comprehension, mental maths, and reasoning.
In our Year 4 Foundations programme this looks like:
- Around 30 minutes of focused English work per week (vocabulary in context, comprehension of short passages, beginning to write paragraphs with structure)
- Around 30 minutes of focused maths (extending the curriculum, problem solving, mental arithmetic fluency)
- Light, playful exposure to verbal and non verbal reasoning, once a fortnight is plenty
- No timed papers. No mocks. Not yet.
If your child is naturally fast and academically confident, an Easter or summer intensive at the end of Year 4 is a sensible nudge into more structured work. If they are still finding reading effortful, the priority remains reading, full stop.
Year 5: the proper start
This is the year that matters most. By the end of Year 5 your child needs to be confident across all four assessed strands and increasingly comfortable with timed conditions. For grammar school families, exam day is just weeks into the Year 6 autumn, so Year 5 is genuinely the runway.
A realistic Year 5 schedule looks like this:
- Autumn term: Weekly tuition or small group teaching. Roughly 90 minutes a week of input plus 60 to 90 minutes of homework. Begin systematic verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning work. Start regular comprehension practice.
- Spring term: Increase pace. Introduce timed sections rather than full papers. First mock exam, yes, even this early. The goal is not a score; it is to discover what unfamiliar exam conditions actually feel like.
- Summer term: Full timed papers begin. Two to three mocks across the term. Creative writing under timed conditions. Vocabulary work intensifies.
- Summer holiday: For grammar school families, this is the final intensive. Two to three weeks of focused daily work. Do not burn them out, but do peak them.
Total weekly commitment in Year 5? I would say around three hours of structured work, growing to four or five by the summer term. Less than that and you are under prepared for the most competitive schools. Much more and you will burn out a child who is, after all, ten years old.
Year 6: refinement and execution
If you have followed the pathway above, Year 6 is not where you cram. It is where you sharpen. The work shifts from learning to consolidating: more full papers, more interview practice for independent school families, more attention to writing under pressure, and crucially, more time spent on what your child specifically gets wrong rather than ploughing through generic content.
This is also the year mock exams matter most. Three to five timed mocks across the autumn term will tell you, honestly, where your child stands.
Five signs your child is ready to begin
Every September I have parents asking whether their Year 4 (or Year 5) child is ready to start. Here is what I look for:
- They can read independently for 20 minutes without losing focus. If reading is still effortful, fix that first.
- Their times tables up to 12 by 12 are fluent, under five seconds per answer. If they are slow, mental maths under exam pressure will collapse.
- They can write a structured paragraph independently. Not perfectly, but with a beginning, middle and end, and most words spelled correctly.
- They can take feedback without falling apart. 11+ prep involves correction. Children who collapse at being told they got something wrong need emotional groundwork before academic groundwork.
- They (not just you) want to do this. If your child has no idea why they are being prepared for an exam, the work will not stick. Have the conversation. Make it a shared project, not an imposed one.
What to avoid (this matters more than the start date)
In my experience, when 11+ preparation goes wrong, it is not usually because parents started too late. It is because of one of these:
- Starting too early with formal exam practice. Year 3 and Year 4 children doing timed papers do not get better at the 11+. They get tired of it.
- Skipping vocabulary. It is the most underestimated skill in the entire 11+ landscape. A child who reads widely from Year 3 has a vocabulary advantage no last minute course can replicate.
- Doing endless papers without correction. Your child has to understand why an answer was wrong. Volume of practice alone is meaningless.
- Overlooking writing. Schools like Latymer, Henrietta Barnett (round 2), Haberdashers’ Boys and Haberdashers’ Girls all weight written English heavily. Multiple choice prep does not prepare for it.
- Treating mock exam scores as identity. A mock score is a snapshot of one morning. Treat it as data, not destiny.
How we structure it at Academic Success?
I built our programmes around the year by year framework above because, honestly, every other version I have seen either rushed children into formal prep too early or left it dangerously late.
If you are a Year 4 parent, our weekly workshops give your child a steady, low pressure foundation. One hour a week, small group, with proper teachers. If you are a Year 5 parent, the same workshops scale up through the year alongside our Sunday English Masterclass for writing heavy schools, and our half term and summer intensives for the deeper push. By Year 6 most of our children sit our regular mock exams, take part in interview training, and arrive at exam day calm because they have already been there, in our practice room, dozens of times.
Whichever pathway you take (with us or independently) the principle is the same. Start at the right time. Layer in the right work. Keep your child confident.
If you have read this far, you are already doing more than most parents who walk into the 11+ blind. The fact that you are thinking about timing, structure and readiness is itself the most important sign that your child is in good hands.
My one piece of unsolicited advice: do not measure your timing against the parent next to you at the school gate. Measure it against the schools you are actually applying to, the child you actually have, and the work you are actually willing to sustain over the next 12, 18 or 24 months.
Start when that maths adds up. Not before. Not after.
Want to talk it through? Book a free 15 minute call and I will tell you honestly whether your child is ready to begin, what year group programme would suit, and which schools to seriously target.
Frequently asked questions
My child is in Year 6 and we have not started, is it too late?
If you are targeting independent schools (November pre test, January papers), you still have months, but it needs to be intensive and well structured from week one. If you are targeting grammar schools that test in early September, the answer depends on the calendar: starting in September of Year 6 itself is almost always too late. Starting in the previous January or April with a focused programme is possible, but uncomfortable.
What is the minimum hours per week we should commit in Year 5?
Around three hours of structured work, including the lesson itself, in the autumn term. Closer to four or five hours by the summer. Children who do less than that often pass the qualifying mark, but rarely place high enough at the most oversubscribed schools.
Can I do this myself without a tutor or class?
Yes, and many parents do, particularly in Year 3 and Year 4. The harder question is whether you can sustain it through a full Year 5, when the volume of work, the breadth of subjects, and the emotional dynamic of teaching your own child all increase. Most parents who try report that the Year 5 spring or summer is when external structure becomes worth the cost.
Is starting in Year 3 too early?
Formal exam prep, yes. Reading, vocabulary and number fluency, no, those are simply good education at any age. The trap is letting Year 3 “preparation” spill over into anxiety. Keep it lighthearted.
My child is bright but anxious. How do I begin without overwhelming them?
Start with the work they already enjoy. Build from confidence outward. Avoid full timed papers for as long as possible, single section practice is plenty in early Year 5. Mock exams should be introduced gently, framed as practice rather than performance. And do not start before they are emotionally ready, even if their academic skills suggest they could.
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