11+ support thread 2026

[11plus2026]

Not sure if anyone is around yet but thought I’d open one.

Has anyone started any practice questions yet? Mine will be starting tutoring in September, she’s had an assessment to see where she’s at currently and now just enjoying the sunshine ☀️

We are currently doing at least 1 paper a week to time as well as 10 minute tests. We are planning to increase over the summer holidays.
It is still the writing which is an issue at the moment.

We aren’t doing planned timing tests at home as my son does either an English or maths mock at his tuition centre every week. When he did the commercial mocks he did manage to finish all questions on time but did say the last maths paper was challenging so had to work till the very last minute. Our issue is finishing too quickly and making silly mistakes and the silly mistakes adds up. We will start doing timed mocks in August.

Anyone else waiting for Wilson’s mock result today?

Not us, but hate waiting for mock results, I usually can’t stop refreshing my inbox. Goodness knows what it will be like on the actual results day

I am the same! I hope he has done well which will give him a massive boost. I can’t even think of the real exam yet. It just feels like time is going too fast and there’s not enough time to cover everything. English was always so strong for us and suddenly it’s become a problem.

We’ve found similar - started off strong in maths and now that seems to be the weakest area. It’s very frustrating!

It is very frustrating as well as for us as it’s the English that will make the difference. We are looking forward to some complete break as we have a holiday coming up at the end of this month. Hoping this will bring some change. We are still waiting for Wilson’s mocks. He did an English mock on Sunday at his tuition centre and was ranked 1. So he was very happy. When I looked at the paper, he had made so many silly mistakes due to reading fast. He’s been a hungry reader since a small child so he has developed a very quick reading speed and I don’t think this helps at all.

Has all content been covered for you now? Ours have finished and it’s all mocks and tests at the tuition centre now.

Hi, just posting on here as DD is three school years older than second DD and we had a similar thread and it was a lifeline of getting me through the stress of the 11 plus prep it really helped having the support and solidarity of mumsnet. So DD will take the test Sep 2026 she was doing amazing up on the 80’s and then it’s like she lost her mojo her tutor says the practice papers that she had were very challenging and she’s still happy with DD’s progress but I am a bit anxious. We recently started explore learning only on their English and maths and she really enjoys the platform (I felt she was done with books and that mixing it up may hold her interest). We have a mock next week I’m dreading if as last one and I fear if low I’ll loose hope. Eldest DD passed and is in grammar. In a way it makes it harder as she just wants the same school as her big sister.

Nice to have a bit of company as the weeks ahead will be quite stressful for us! At least you know what to expect with the 2nd round. It’s the first time for us. We got the Wilson mock and results were a disaster. 82% in maths and a disastrous 34% in English. It’s one of those where more than 1 answer is needed for some questions and I assume that’s what went wrong. I told him well done for trying his best and we just need to keep going.
edited to say the feedback was that English scored lower marks than maths and it was a challenging paper. The highest mark achieved was 76%.

Thank you for the solidarity as you say very helpful in stressful weeks ahead. The maths is amazing and should be so proud. I think the English is rushing like you say not reading the question. This is all fixable. Some fancy highlighters and some heavy comprehension practice may be a start to DS to keep thinking what is this asking me. I very much doubt its ability just exam technique but don’t let him loose confidence. He has to believe he can. I think that’s half the battle. Anyway that’s my two pennies for the day. We are doing a practice English paper this morning at home. I have a strong maths and NVR and a weaker English too so Mummy’s school has been literally starting from scratch on English with a CGP book. I feel like she had forgotten basic punctuation!

Ha! I like the sound of your school! I hope mummy’s school goes smoothly this morning! Very wise words from you and I appreciate your support. Really good tips as well thank you. If you finish in the morning, at least you have the whole afternoon free. That’s what I tell my kids to keep them going!

We aren’t doing any practice papers at home yet. I have a bunch of practice tests which I bought all across the shops but won’t use them until August. At the moment we are strengthening those avoidable lost marks in maths as it’s a combination of miscalculating/choosing the wrong answer/quick ways of doing a question to move on quick etc

We have a solid plan for English and I pray to God that it works otherwise we are doomed. The oddest thing is his verbal and English has always been his strength so really don’t know what it is. He says it makes sense to him and he gives a very rational explanation for them too! I tell him it’s not that deep, just pick the evidence from the text. He’s an old soul for a 10 years old 😄

Interestingly, we’re starting on practice papers today too, she’s doing maths as we speak. Mine is stronger in English and VR, not so in NVR and spatial and makes silly mistakes in maths.

When the cohort scores lower they adjust the standardised scores accordingly so don’t beat yourself up too much @Sunnyhotday
I know a friend’s dd who sat a mock recently had an incredibly tough reasoning test and even though she only got a few correct answers in the spatial (out of a possible 20 or so) her standardised score was good as everyone found it hard.

We’re going to take each day as it comes and do enough to keep her going but hopefully not too much of a load. I’ve realised her tutor has been giving her the harder end of content but it just isn’t helping her build her confidence so I’m going to go back to basics which I think is more beneficial for her at this stage.

This mornings was a 50% on the English so not great but like I’ve seen on here some of their reasoning for why they put that answer makes complete sense and I do think the ones we are working on are harder/more complex than the actual will be.

I think @11plus2026 if you are finding the complexity is destroying confidence go back a step as so if on 10-11 book go to a 9-10 and focus on getting high marks in that as the confidence loss in my opinion is the biggest killer.

@Rinse123 Starting from 50 is very good as you have a strong baseline. You can only move up from this point and really try to iron out where those errors are coming from. Is it rushing/tiredness/lack of focus/not understanding the content/finding it too easy/ etc. Good thing is there’s two months to go and so much improvement/progress can be made during this time. That’s what I tell my son anyway.

From our side we tried to establish what makes sense means and for my son it means making an inference for e.g there’s a cave and sand so there must be a beach but in a comparison question that’s not true as there’s no reference to a beach only a cave and sand. We have worked out that for comparison comprehensions there’s no need to make an inference as it’s purely comparing against one text to another. For other types of comprehensions, the inference can be used. He lost majority of his marks in the comparatives comprehension in the Wallington mock. So we have gone back to basic to try and understand what we can do to stop this happening. Spelling/vocabulary/grammar is good.

We have also gone back to basic in maths and today we started covering algebra which includes the bidmas/bodmas rules. For e.g it can be quite confusing when there’s lots of addition/substraction/multiplication/division and can easily muddle up a question and get the wrong answer. For e.g although addition comes before subtraction, they have equal priority and just need to work left to right etc.

Anyway we are getting on and hoping it works.
I completely agree with you @11plus2026 and thanks for the encouragement. I also tell my son that it’s not how you perform on the day but how everyone else performs on the day.

All really helpful advice and support thank you @Sunnyhotday i appreciate that. I think a lot of it is as well that we are prepping for both Bexley (as live in) and Kent (as eldest DD in a Kent grammar) and the tests are very different so she’s prepping two things and getting frustrated for example that on Bexley the verbal reasoning has no code work - one of her massive strengths but focuses on most similar meanings and odd one out where the broad vocab is needed and not being a big reader, she struggles with. On the Kent test all of these things will come up but she is annoyed having had a strength and not seeing that come up in the familiarisation for the Quest (Bexley have just switched provider). Kent test remains GL.

Morning @LivelyTiger thank you for that. I’ll try the diagnostic tool with my DD. We did a mock with the tutor yesterday. She did one in April and this is the second. Mixed bag really but I think quite positive. So verbal reasoning from 66% in April to 81%, Non verbal from
68% to 61%. English 48% in April to 56% and finally Maths 60% down to 56%. So very mixed. She has a session to go over the incorrect answers Saturday she said with the maths she had struggled to know what the Q was asking her the way it was worded. Her maths is usually strong so bit frustrating but we plod on. Ideally we would have had a min of 70% across the board but who knows what the actual day will bring in Sep!

@Rinse123 Morning! I actually think there's quite a lot to be encouraged by there. The jump in verbal reasoning from 66% to 81% is fantastic and English has also improved from 48% to 56% so that's real progress. Although non-verbal reasoning and maths dipped slightly, those are relatively small changes and mock scores can fluctuate depending on the paper. If maths is normally her stronger subject and she felt the wording of the questions threw her, that's something she can definitely work on.

Going through the mistakes on Saturday will probably be more valuable than the score itself as she will learn how to approach those types of questions next time. With several weeks still to go before September, there's plenty of time for things to click.

I also understand your pain re sitting different tests as we have the same issue. My son will be sitting for 3 different tests and they are all set differently. The third one includes verbal and non verbal and he doesn't do very well in non verbal at all. On a good day, he might score 9/20 on a non verbal paper. So I am hoping his maths/english/NVR can carry him through in case we don't make it to the other 2 schools. I also don't feel that we have enough time to focus on NR right now as maths and english takes a large portion of the day and by then he's completely exhausted and just want to play with his siblings. I have 3 of them. You can see that I will need to go through this pain for 2 more times!!

We have 3 weeks off from our tuition centre and they go back on the 10th for 3 times a week 4 hours each day.

@Sunnyhotday thank you for your encouragement I do really appreciate your comments and we will definitely find value in going through where DD went wrong. I’ve given her today off and then was thinking 30 mins in the morning. Sounds like 3 hours a day - wonder if I’m doing too little? Is that a mock a day for those 3 days on sort of thing or reach for an hour test for an hour sort of thing?

I too have 3 DD’s so one in - this one up next and 6 year old to face in the future. With eldest we did 3 tests as she applied for a selective independent as well. As she’s now in a Kent Grammar I only need a pass to get the second one in. We had to score highly to be bumped up the admissions criteria so felt we needed an indie as insurance. I do feel calmer second time round but just want to ensure I’m giving second all the same support that eldest had. They are very different children though.

Thanks Rinse, the stuff tutor was giving her was much more difficult than the 10-11 books. I agree losing confidence at this stage is not great so we’ll keep doing what she feels comfortable in and make sure all errors are corrected.