11 plus maths explained

Almost nothing on an 11 plus maths paper is content a child cannot access. It samples the primary mathematics curriculum. But the paper is sat at the start of Year 6, before that year has been taught in school, so parts of it will not have been met yet: ratio and proportion and percentages in particular sit in the Year 6 programme of study. Meeting those early is a large part of what preparation is for, and a gap there is the calendar's doing rather than the child's. The rest is familiar knowledge asked faster, in less familiar wording, and often two or three steps deep, which is why a child who is comfortable in class can still lose marks heavily.

The areas sampled are stable from paper to paper. Number and place value. The four operations, including long multiplication and division. Fractions, decimals and percentages, and converting between them. Ratio and proportion. Measures, including time, money, length, mass and capacity, with unit conversion. Perimeter, area and volume. Properties of two-dimensional and three-dimensional shape. Angles. Coordinates and position. Sequences and simple algebra. Averages and data handling from tables and charts. Word problems draw on several of these at once, which is the real test.

The King Edward VI Foundation publishes that the West Midlands entrance test “is provided by GL Assessment”. Pathway Eleven is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GL Assessment. The test is shared across the partnership schools, so a child sits one paper for the whole region; this site carries a page for each of those schools. The Foundation publishes that candidates sit two papers, each approximately sixty minutes long including instructions and example questions, and that each paper is divided into smaller individually timed sections that test English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics and non-verbal or spatial reasoning.

One more term is worth clearing up, because it sends parents here from older articles: CEM. A great deal of 11 plus writing published in the last decade sorts entrance tests into two families, one named after GL Assessment and one after CEM, and a parent who has read one of those pieces arrives wanting to know which family their child's paper belongs to. We have no current published statement from CEM about its 11 plus assessments, so this page makes no claim about them in either direction, and a page that does without showing you its source is worth reading carefully. What matters here is the paper your child will actually sit, and the paragraph above says who publishes it, quoted from the King Edward VI Foundation and re-read on 6 September 2026. Prepare for the format the Foundation describes, and the label an older article used will not matter.

Maths does not get a paper of its own in the West Midlands. It is one of four individually timed sections spread across two papers, and the published weighting puts it at 25% of the standardised result, the same share as non-verbal reasoning, and half the share carried by English and verbal reasoning together.

Every question is multiple choice, and answers are recorded on a separate answer sheet. That format has two practical consequences that parents consistently underestimate. The first is that transferring an answer to a separate sheet is a skill in itself: a child who loses their place on the sheet can mark a whole run of correct answers in the wrong rows. The second is that a plausible wrong option is designed to catch the exact slip your child is most likely to make, so a child who guesses well in class does considerably worse here than a child who checks.

Nothing is calculated for a child either. The King Edward VI Foundation publishes that “mobile phones, calculators, smart watches or tablets will not be allowed in or around the test rooms”, read on its entrance test page on 6 September 2026. Every number on the paper is worked out in a head or in a margin, which is why secure recall of the tables and the number bonds is worth more here than any technique.

Switching area on a clock is hard to rehearse at a kitchen table. Start your free week and the Starting Assessment, plus the daily plan that follows it, are yours from day one.

The table below is the working list. It is deliberately grouped by how the marks behave rather than by curriculum order, because that is what decides where an hour of practice is best spent. The full topic-by-topic checklist, with the tell for each one that a topic is not secure, is on the 11 plus maths topics page.

Pathway Eleven runs from Year 3 to the test sat in September as a child enters Year 6, and the maths work looks different in each of those years. The mistake families make is running Year 5 work in Year 3, which produces resistance, or running Year 3 work in Year 5, which produces a comfortable child who is nowhere near the pace.

Year 3. Foundations and fluency, in short pieces. Number bonds, doubling and halving, the times tables to twelve, telling the time on an analogue clock, and handling money. No timed papers at this age. The aim is that arithmetic stops costing attention, so that two years later the attention is free for the reasoning inside a word problem. Mock tests do not belong in this year at all.

Year 4. Coverage without pressure. This is the year to meet every topic family in the table above at least once, including the ones school has not reached yet, so that nothing in Year 5 arrives as a surprise. Written methods for multiplication and division get secure here. Gentle timing starts: a handful of questions against a generous clock, so the idea of a clock is familiar before the clock gets tight. Full mock papers are part of full membership rather than the free week, and on Pathway Eleven they unlock in Year 4, where one a term is plenty.

Year 5. Pace, accuracy and the multi-step problem. The content is mostly known by now, so the work moves to reading a question correctly the first time, choosing a method quickly, and checking. Timed drills become a weekly habit, and full papers become monthly. By the middle of Year 5 a child should be answering at roughly the rate the real paper requires, which is what makes the final summer a matter of polish rather than panic.

The year-by-year plans go into far more detail: Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5.

These three account for a disproportionate share of the marks families lose. Each one is handled the same way: name the trap, give the child a fixed first move, and rehearse the first move until it is automatic.

Fractions, decimals and percentages. The trap is that a child learns three separate procedures and never learns that they are one idea. The fixed first move is conversion: whatever the question gives, turn it into the form you calculate best in, and turn the answer back at the end. A child who can say instantly that 0.75, three quarters and 75% are the same thing has removed most of the difficulty from this family. Practise conversion on its own, away from any question, until it is instant.

Ratio and proportion. The trap is that the numbers in the question are almost never the numbers you need. The fixed first move is to find one part. Share £36 between two children in the ratio 5:4 and the useful step is not the sharing, it is noticing there are nine parts and one part is £4. Every ratio question in this format yields to the same move, and children who are taught the move stop finding the family hard within a fortnight.

Multi-step word problems. The trap is reading speed. A child under time pressure reads the first number, the last number and the operation word, and answers a question nobody asked. The fixed first move is to say what is being asked before touching the arithmetic. On paper that is underlining the actual question; in a timed drill it is a half-second pause. It feels like a delay and it is the single biggest saver of marks in the whole paper.

We will send you the fuller pack of practice papers, with answer sheets and worked answers, and the occasional preparation email. If you would rather see what a paper looks like first, the free practice papers page explains the format section by section.

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Little and often beats long sessions, and it is not close. Arithmetic fluency is built by repetition spread over weeks, not by an afternoon. A daily piece your family can actually sustain is worth more than an ambitious weekend plan that lasts a month. The daily practice guide sets out what a session should contain and the signs that it has become too much.

Three rules make the difference. Mark the work the same day, because a wrong method rehearsed for a week is harder to undo than one caught immediately. Keep a short list of the errors that repeat, and start the next session with two questions from that list rather than with new content. And separate the two kinds of practice: fluency work, which should be fast and slightly boring, and problem work, which should be slow and discussed out loud.

This is exactly the shape Pathway Eleven automates. A Starting Assessment finds the level first, the daily plan gives more attention to whichever area is weakest rather than spreading time evenly out of habit, and every question is reviewed and approved by a qualified teacher before it reaches a child. One monthly price of £49 covers all four areas, and the first week is free.

The published sources behind this page

Every outside fact on this page was read at its own published address, on 5 September 2026 unless a later date is given beside it. Nothing here is quoted from memory or from a summary of somebody else's summary.

• King Edward VI Foundation, Grammar Schools: Entrance Test Information. Two papers of approximately sixty minutes each, divided into individually timed sections covering English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics and non-verbal or spatial reasoning; all questions multiple choice on a separate answer sheet; that the test “is provided by GL Assessment”; and that “mobile phones, calculators, smart watches or tablets will not be allowed in or around the test rooms”. Checked 5 September 2026, and re-read for the prohibited-items and provider wording on 6 September 2026.
• West Midlands Grammar Schools, The entrance test. The four areas tested and the published weighting of 50% English and verbal reasoning, 25% non-verbal reasoning and 25% mathematics. Checked 5 September 2026.
• GL Assessment, A guide to standardised tests. How a standard age score works, including that the average is 100 and that a pupil's age in years and months is taken into account. Checked 5 September 2026.
• Department for Education, National curriculum in England: mathematics programmes of study. Which content sits in which year group, including that ratio and proportion, percentages of an amount, algebra, volume and long division are Year 6 material and so fall after the test is sat. Checked 6 September 2026.