11plus independent syllabus

[Pollypocket81]

Does anyone know specifically (or close to) what the state school students entering 11plus exams for the independent schools need to know?
Is it all of the Year 6 Maths and English workbooks (CGP or Bonds etc) as well as Verbal and non-Verbal? Or are the 11plus Maths and 11plus English workbooks better?
How do you know which style of verbal or non-verbal independent schools use out of GL and CEM?
We are preparing by ourselves at home with CGP, Schofield and Sims and Bonds Year 4-5-6 textbooks workbooks and I don't know what my child needs to cover. Any advice
appreciated!

It will depend heavily on which schools you're applying to, as the assessment formats will vary hugely. Can you look on the school websites or ask their admissions departments for guidance?

You need a private tutor. They will know exactly what is required. As the HT of our Primary School said to me’ he is capable of doing the work but he wont have seen it before so you need a tutor’. They will also help prepare exam and interview technique

I think it depends on the child, the parent and the school. We didn't use a tutor, but we had past papers available so had a very good idea what to expect, and we were fairly confident in our ability to prep.

There's an 11+ forum. Find the school that you're interested in there and find out the details which should also be on the school website.

Different schools have different requirements and tests and obviously different scores needed for entry.

Definitely look at the admission section of the websites of the specific independent schools you are aiming for. Quite a few actually list the maths topics that need to be covered, and provide sample papers for maths and English so you know the format (eg. Multiple choice or long answers for comprehension).

If the school does the ISEB pre-test, you need to do GL VR and NVR, and possibly subscribe to Atom or similar at some point closer to the time to get live practice in the adaptive test format used for the ISEB.

Non-ISEB schools are deliberately cagey about their sources for VR and NVR.

In my (recent) experience of independent North & Central London and Herts boys’ and co-ed 11+, their exams tend to look much more like CEM than GL. As others have said, you can print off a large lever-arch file worth of past papers if you go to the various schools’ websites. However they are all subject to change from year to year.

Examples for those providing suggested maths topic lists are Emanuel and City Boys for both 10+ and 11+. City’s list is harder!

Obviously much will depend upon where in the country you are looking and for which categories of indies. E.g. I have no experience of ISEB or the London girls’ consortium arrangements.

Thankyou! We are looking at entry into SE London boys schools such as Trinity, Whitgift and Dulwich. (Possibly some others as well.)

@Pollypocket81 as others have said, go on each school website and they will have a list which will guide or past papers. The papers do change on the website yearly so I recommend downloading the papers now and look out for the new ones later in the year. Do a Google search for previous years you should be able to get some. Pia Academy has past papers and an answer section which I used. Used Atom alot - paid for the full package. I would say invest at beginning of Summer for full package and utilise.

What it will.come down too is the following:

Timing - your child needs to try and finish the papers

Accuracy - maths, try not to throw away marks on the easy stuff, show working out

English Writing - good use of voc, SPaG and a coherent story

Tip: work you son through as many past papers as you can. I introduced timing from Feb 2021 very subtly so I could gage where he was at and slowly worked on reducing with no pressure which worked.

I went through the past papers of the schools I was interested in and spotted patterns of types of questions, so I would use other past papers to practice those types of questions. It's harder to do for Whitgift as they don't have a full paper for you to really assess that they publish.

Feedback from my son regarding exams:

Trinity had 100 verbal Reasoning questions in 1 hour (my son sat exams for 2022 entry).

Whitgift has a Critical Thinking part - my son said it was hard, apparently I was told he scored well. Its about how you think (problem solving) so can't be tutored for apparently

Whitgift- for creativity writing was based on a picture

We ended up with an offer from W which we grab with both hands