When should your child start preparing for the 11+?
It’s the question we’re asked more than any other, and the honest answer catches most parents off guard — because of one detail about when the exam actually falls.
The detail that changes everything
Most parents picture the 11+ as something that happens during Year 6. It doesn’t. In Essex, the exam is sat in the September of Year 6 — within days of the new school year beginning.
The practical consequence is significant: your child sits the exam having completed Year 5, not Year 6. There is no autumn term of final preparation, no chance to catch up in the spring. Whatever they know walking into that hall, they learned by the end of Year 5 and over the summer holiday that followed.
So when people talk about “the 11+ year”, the year that actually matters is Year 5.
A realistic timeline
Years 3 and 4 — no formal preparation needed
This is not the time for practice papers, and we would gently discourage them. What genuinely helps at this age is unglamorous: reading widely and often, secure times tables, confident mental arithmetic, and curiosity that hasn’t been squeezed out by drilling. Children who read for pleasure through Years 3 and 4 arrive at the 11+ with a vocabulary and a comfort with language that cannot be manufactured in a few months of tuition.
Start of Year 5 — structured preparation begins
For most children, this is the sensible starting point: roughly twelve months before the exam. It allows time to build the content properly, identify gaps early, and work steadily rather than frantically. Crucially, it leaves room for the material to be learned rather than crammed — and for a child to still have weekends.
Spring and summer of Year 5 — consolidate and add timing
By now the core content should be largely in place, and attention shifts to exam technique: working to the clock, moving past a hard question instead of stalling, and structuring a piece of creative writing under pressure. This is when timed mock papers start earning their keep.
The summer holiday before Year 6 — the final stretch
Six weeks, and then the exam. The aim here is steady maintenance and confidence, not panic. Full mocks, targeted work on the two or three weaknesses that keep reappearing, and enough of a break that your child arrives in September fresh rather than exhausted. A burnt-out child underperforms; this is well worth protecting.
Why not start earlier?
Some families begin in Year 3, and it is worth being candid about the trade-offs. Two years of practice papers before a child is developmentally ready tends to produce diminishing returns and a real risk of resentment — towards the work, the exam, and sometimes the whole idea of learning. We have met Year 6 children who were thoroughly sick of the 11+ before they ever sat it, which helps nobody.
There is also a curriculum reason. Both the CSSE and FSCE exams are built on Key Stage 2 content up to roughly the end of Year 5. Starting in Year 3 means drilling material a child hasn’t yet been taught — slow, discouraging work compared with covering it at the right moment.
What if we’re already in Year 5 — or later?
Then start now, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s hopeless. Plenty of children begin midway through Year 5 and do very well, particularly if they are strong readers and secure in maths. What changes is the approach: with less time, preparation has to be sharply prioritised. That means an honest assessment of where your child stands, then concentrating on the gaps that cost the most marks rather than working through a book from page one.
If you are reading this in the summer before Year 6, it is genuinely late — but a focused six weeks on exam technique, timing and the specific paper format can still make a meaningful difference to a child who already has the underlying ability.
One thing to sort out first
Before deciding when to start, find out which exam your child will actually sit. The Essex grammar schools, Chelmsford County High and the local independent schools use three different assessments with different content — and one of them requires verbal and non-verbal reasoning that the others don’t. Preparing for the wrong format is a costly way to spend a year. Our guide to the different 11+ exams walks through each route.
They can read a page of age-appropriate text and tell you what it meant. They know their times tables without counting. They can sit and concentrate on something demanding for twenty to thirty minutes. And they can cope with getting something wrong without it ruining the afternoon. If those are in place, structured preparation will be productive rather than a battle.
The bottom line
For most families, the start of Year 5 is the right moment — about a year before an exam that arrives sooner than the calendar suggests. Before then, the best preparation doesn’t look like preparation at all: reading, talking, counting, and staying curious. And whenever you begin, check which exam you are aiming at before you buy a single practice book.