Atom Learning publishes one-to-one 11 plus tuition at forty to sixty pounds an hour in the Birmingham area and forty to eighty across the UK. A year of weekly sessions is published at two to three thousand pounds locally, and a realistic all-in programme at three to five thousand.
What does 11 plus tuition cost?
Two public sources published in 2026 give the figures below. Neither is ours, both are linked, and both were read on the same day.
| What | Published figure | Published by |
|---|---|---|
| One-to-one, UK | “Between £40 and £80 per hour” | Atom Learning, 27 August 2026 |
| One-to-one, Birmingham area | “£40-60/hr” | Atom Learning, 27 August 2026 |
| Twelve months of weekly sessions, UK average | “Approximately £2,750” for about fifty sessions at around £55 an hour | Atom Learning, 27 August 2026 |
| Twelve months, Birmingham area | “£2,000-3,000” | Atom Learning, 27 August 2026 |
| All-in, one child, tutor-led | “A realistic all-in cost for a tutor-led preparation programme for one child is £3,000-5,000” | Atom Learning, 27 August 2026 |
| Preparing at home, no tutor | “A family preparing entirely at home with structured resources and mock exams spends approximately £350-600 in total” | Atom Learning, 27 August 2026 |
The annual figures are just the hourly ones multiplied out, and it is worth doing the sum yourself before you commit. Atom Learning publishes its own working for the national number, “approximately £2,750” for about fifty weekly sessions at around £55 an hour. Apply the same method to the Birmingham band and one session a week across a school year lands inside the published £2,000 to £3,000. How much work a child needs between those sessions is a separate question, and how much 11 plus practice a day takes it on.
Source: Atom Learning, the cost of 11 plus tutoring, checked 6 September 2026. A second publisher’s Birmingham bands, split by tutor experience, used to sit in this table; the article they came from is no longer at the address this page cited, so they have been removed rather than left standing.
What drives the price?
Five things move the number, and they are listed here in roughly the order of how much they move it.
Region. Atom Learning's article gives sixty to eighty pounds an hour as typical for experienced tutors in London and the South East against “£40-60/hr” for the Birmingham, Trafford and Lincolnshire band. Where you live is worth more than any other single factor.
Experience and qualification. A serving or former teacher costs more than a newly qualified tutor, and the premium is real without being enormous. No figure is printed for it here: the only source that split the Birmingham band by experience is no longer at the address this page cited, and an unsourced band is worth less than none.
One-to-one against a group. A group session divides the tutor's hour, and the price should reflect that. Ask how many children will be in the room before comparing two quotes.
How long you run it for. This is the part families underestimate. An hourly rate is a small number; fifty of them is not. The published annual figures above exist precisely because the weekly habit is invisible until it is a year old.
Everything around the hour. Books, printing, mock exam entries, travel. Atom Learning's all-in range of three to five thousand pounds is higher than fifty hours at the Birmingham rate for exactly that reason.
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What are the cheaper routes?
Four, and the first is free. One thing to note before them: neither source quoted above publishes a separate rate for small-group or online tuition, or a regional band beyond the Birmingham and UK figures in the table, so we are not printing one. Group sessions are generally offered below the one-to-one rate, and the number to compare is the one a provider quotes you in writing.
The published familiarisation material. The West Midlands Grammar Schools consortium says “familiarisation questions can be found at the bottom of this page which show the style of questions to appear in the test and how answers must be recorded”, and the King Edward VI Foundation states that “a full familiarisation guide is available to download”. Source: West Midlands Grammar Schools and source: King Edward VI Foundation, both checked 6 September 2026. Neither costs anything and, in our experience, most families never open either.
School-run support for eligible families. Bishop Vesey's Grammar School publishes an offer of free 11 plus preparation and key stage 2 support for pupil premium pupils on its Year 7 admissions page. Source: Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, Year 7 admissions, checked 6 September 2026. We looked for a comparable published route from the other authorities that share this test and could not find one, so we are not going to tell you it exists. If your family is eligible, ask your own council and your first-preference school directly.
Books and home preparation. The three hundred and fifty to six hundred pound figure above is what Atom Learning puts on a family preparing entirely at home with structured resources and mock exams. It is a real option and it is mostly a question of whether the parent has the hours, which is the honest trade being made. Preparing without a tutor works through what that actually takes.
An online programme. Pathway Eleven covers every area from Year 3 to the test on one plan, and it costs less across a year than a weekly hour at the published Birmingham rate. That is the whole comparison, stated once: what it does not include is a person in the room, and for some children that person is the thing that makes the work happen.
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Is tuition worth it?
Sometimes clearly yes, sometimes clearly no, and the difference is whether there is a specific job for it to do.
Worth it when a real weakness needs teaching, when reasoning formats have never been introduced, or when the work is understood and simply is not happening without somebody expecting it. Those are jobs an hour a week does well.
Not worth it when it is bought as insurance. An hour a week with no diagnosis, no report and no end point is an expensive way to reproduce what a child could already do. It is worth asking, before you book, which of those three you are going to get.
One thing tuition cannot buy at any price is a place. Scores here are standardised against a cohort and places are decided by oversubscription criteria the schools publish, so no spend controls the outcome. What is a good 11 plus score explains what the published thresholds mean, and how to choose a tutor in Birmingham covers what to ask before you book.
What should you check before you compare local quotes?
Before you search for 11 plus tuition near you, know the going rate, because a list of local names tells you who is available and nothing about what is fair. The figures above are the published ones: forty to sixty pounds an hour for one-to-one work in the Birmingham area, less per hour in a group, and a year of weekly sessions at two to three thousand pounds locally.
What that hour buys is an adult's attention and a diagnosis. What it does not buy is the practice on the days in between, which is the half most families underestimate. 11 plus tutor or an online course? sets out that trade in full, and it is the page to read before you commit to a weekly slot.
A local search also returns five different kinds of result, each pricing in a different unit. 11 plus tutor near me sorts them out, and carries the group, centre and membership figures this page does not.
Questions about the cost of 11 plus tuition
How much is an 11 plus tutor per hour?+
Atom Learning publishes forty to eighty pounds an hour for one-to-one sessions across the UK and forty to sixty for the Birmingham area. A second publisher used to give Birmingham bands split by tutor experience; the article they came from is no longer at the address this page cited, so they have been removed rather than left standing.
What does a full year of 11 plus tuition cost?+
Atom Learning puts about fifty weekly sessions at the UK average of around fifty-five pounds an hour at approximately two thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds, gives two to three thousand for the Birmingham area, and describes a realistic all-in cost for a tutor-led programme for one child as three to five thousand pounds.
Can you prepare without paying for tuition?+
Yes. Atom Learning's own figure for a family preparing entirely at home with structured resources and mock exams is approximately three hundred and fifty to six hundred pounds in total. The consortium and the King Edward VI Foundation also publish familiarisation material that costs nothing at all.
Is there free help for families on a low income?+
In places, and it is published rather than advertised. Bishop Vesey's Grammar School lists free 11 plus preparation and key stage 2 support for pupil premium pupils on its Year 7 admissions page. We found no comparable published route from the other authorities sharing this test, so ask your own council and your first-preference school rather than assuming one exists.
Does paying more improve the result?+
Nothing in the published sources supports that, and no spend controls the outcome: scores are standardised against a cohort and places are allocated on criteria the schools publish. What a good arrangement buys is a specific weakness taught properly, which is a smaller purchase than most families make.
Are group sessions cheaper?+
They divide the tutor's hour between several children, so they should be. Ask how many children will be in the room before you compare two quotes, because a group price presented as a one-to-one price is a familiar way for two figures to stop being comparable.
Where to go next
- How to choose an 11 plus tutor in Birmingham, five questions and the warning signs.
- Pathway Eleven or an 11 plus tutor?, the six decisions, side by side.
- 11 plus preparation without a tutor, what going it alone really takes.
- 11 plus mock exams in Birmingham, what a centre charges for and what it does not.
- Pathway Eleven or Bond 11 plus books?, the printed route priced up.
- Ask for a sample paper with answers, and the two complete papers arrive in the same email.
Find the level first, then decide what to buy. The account and the Starting Assessment are free. See the plan and its price inside your free account.
Every price above, with the page that published it
Every price on this page is a published figure, quoted from the page that published it and read on 6 September 2026. Nothing here is an average of our own.
- Atom Learning, the cost of 11 plus tutoring, published 27 August 2026, the UK and regional hourly bands, the annual figures, the all-in range and the home-preparation figure. Checked 6 September 2026.
- West Midlands Grammar Schools, the entrance test, the free familiarisation questions. Checked 6 September 2026.
- King Edward VI Foundation, entrance test information, the downloadable familiarisation guide. Checked 6 September 2026.
- Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, Year 7 admissions, free 11 plus preparation for pupil premium pupils. Checked 6 September 2026.