Maths at 11+ not usually covered in KS2 syllabus

[wheelsonthebus]

Can anyone tell me the sort of maths that appears in 11+ entrance papers to grammar or private schools that would not normally have been covered by state schools following the KS2 national curriculum?

Have a look on the 11+ forum

There are sample papers for Haberdashers' boys school in Herts on their website www.habsboys.org.uk/info/examinations/11plus/11plus.php

All the schools set their own papers. No guarantees, but at 11+ they should be NC-based. Just do lots of past papers from school websites (there are dozens online), and see how it goes.

Even if the topics have all been covered by the school by the end of KS2, most secondary selection tests happen in the Autumn or Winter of Y6, so there may be one or two topics that a child wouldn't have come across yet. For my DS1, when he sat his test in the November of Y6, he had not yet done algebra at school and had only briefly touched on mean/median/mode. Obviously Maths papers vary between schools and areas, but as a starting point I used the Bond book How to do 11+ Maths which divides the curriculum into 27 topics and includes a short ten minute test on each topic to highlight areas which might need more work.

Depends on the 11+. But in the Kent Test the one maths topic that my children's school hadn't covered by the time of the test was algebra.

Depends what level the child leaves y5 on but ds1 left Y5 on 5c and had to learn algebra and ratios/percentages.

OP, my DS is at a state primary and is taking the 11+ to an independent school in January. I started thinking about preparing him in the summer, which with hindsight was far too late. Even though he is considered by his school to be well above average (4bs in everything at end of year 5), I was amazed to find he could only score around 65% on maths 11+ practice papers (Bond). The school he is going for confirmed that the entrance exam for maths will cover the whole of KS2 maths and not just what will have been taught by January.

With that in mind, I found a tutor to ensure he has covered all of KS2 maths before the exam, and (hopefully) improve his speed and skill generally.

It might be different for 11+ for grammar schools but I must say, I think it is a bit tough to set an exam that effectively covers material that a state-educated child will not even have been taught by the time of the exam (and the school in question takes around half of its intake from the state sector).