A search for an 11 plus tutor near me returns five kinds of result in the West Midlands: one-to-one marketplaces, lead-generation directories, national centre chains, local 11 plus centres, and independent tutors found by word of mouth. Each prices in a different unit, so your first job is working out which one you are reading.
What does a search for an 11 plus tutor near me return?
Run that search on DuckDuckGo with UK localisation, as we did on 19 September 2026, and the first screen is almost entirely commercial: marketplaces, directories and tuition businesses, with paid placements above the organic results. Not one of the pages read that day was written to help a parent judge the others, which is why naming the five things in front of you does more work than another hour of scrolling.
- One-to-one marketplace
- Individual tutors list themselves and set their own hourly rate, so you see a price before you speak to anybody. What a profile does not tell you is how familiar that tutor is with the paper this region actually sets, and that stays a question for the first phone call.
- Lead-generation directory
- Here the product is your enquiry rather than the lesson. One directory states that the average price for 11 plus tuition is between £9 and £12 while its own listings on the same page run from £15 to £139 an hour. The stated average and the rates listed underneath it are different numbers, so ask which one a quote is.
- National centre chain
- A chain publishes a membership, a session length and a group size, which makes the offer easy to read. What it does not tell you is which paper the sessions are built around, so ask what a session contains rather than what it is called.
- Local 11 plus centre
- Small businesses running weekly group classes, usually priced by the session, often with the group size published. The better ones name the entrance test they prepare for and put year groups in separate rooms. One Birmingham centre publishes a free 11 plus assessment on its own pricing page, so it is worth asking what an assessment tests and what you are given back in writing.
- Independent tutor
- Somebody whose name reaches you from the school gate or a class group chat. Nothing at all is published, so every question on this page has to be asked out loud, and the answers arrive at the speed of a conversation.
Which price are you being quoted?
Anchor yourself on the published local band before you read anybody's advertising. One 2026 article on the cost of 11 plus tutoring gives £40 to £60 an hour for one-to-one work in the Birmingham area, and 11 plus tuition cost carries that table in full with the annual totals beside it. This page does not repeat it.
Two of the figures a near me search puts in front of you are not the same purchase. One Birmingham page advertises “Hourly Fees from £8” and, further down, “£8 per hour, £180 per month”. A headline that begins with “from” and a monthly figure answer different questions, and neither can be set against the local band until you know which one a quote is. Ask what the figure buys: how many minutes, how many children, and whether it covers a single lesson or a whole month.
Group and centre figures are the part of this market our rates page has never carried, because the sources behind it publish only one-to-one rates. Each figure below is quoted from the provider's own page and was read on 19 September 2026.
| What is on sale | Published figure | Where it was published |
|---|---|---|
| Group place, national chain | “2 sessions a week from £22 per session”, “£190 per month” | A national chain's membership options page |
| One-to-one, national chain | “1 session a week from £42 per session”, “£180 per month” | The same membership options page |
| Weekly group class, local centre | “fees start at £25.50 per session (£20.40 when paying by Tax Free Childcare)”, maximum six per group | A Birmingham, Solihull and Sutton Coldfield centre's pricing page |
| Longer weekly group class, local centre | “£45 for 2.5 hours tuition per week”, maximum eight per group, books and platform extra | A Birmingham centre's own page |
| Study chain, per subject | “£75.00 One-off Fee” to register, then “£75.00 Per Month Per Subject” | One centre's page; the company states fees vary from centre to centre |
Two cautions before any of that is set against an hour of one-to-one teaching. A group figure divides one adult's attention between the six or eight children those centres publish as their maximum, which is what the difference in price is buying. A study-chain membership is priced per subject, so two subjects is two memberships, and at the centre quoted above neither subject is verbal or non-verbal reasoning, which are two of the four areas this region's paper covers.
The last thing to check is what sits outside the headline figure. Registration fees, workbooks and a platform licence are all published separately by the providers above, and they are the reason an advertised session price and a year of invoices are rarely the same story. A mock exam is a separate booking again, and 11 plus mock exams in Birmingham sets out what a centre charges for one.
Where are the tutors, and when does near me mean online?
Supply is not spread evenly across this region, and the search will not tell you so. On one marketplace, read on 19 September 2026, the Birmingham page listed eight 11 plus tutors on its first screen at £24 to £77 an hour. The Coventry page for the same subject listed six, at £31 to £65, under a block explaining why online lessons give a wider choice, with no in-person option on the page at all.
Those are first-page counts on one day rather than a census, so run the same check for your own town. From Coventry, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Worcester, Telford or Rugby, search, count what sits within a school-night drive, and see how much of what comes back is in person. Families in the Birmingham and Solihull corridor usually find a real choice. Where fewer tutors list themselves, near me quietly resolves into a screen, and the decision turns into travel against a webcam rather than which local name is best.
Whichever way that lands, the schools your child is aiming at are the same ones. The Birmingham 11 plus, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Warwickshire each set out the schools in that area, the Solihull page and the Coventry page do the same for a borough and a city with no grammar school of their own, and the postcode tool sorts all nineteen partnership schools by distance from your door.
Not sure what your child needs before you price any of this? Create a free account, and the Starting Assessment gives you a level to brief a tutor with, or to decide you do not need one yet.
Two checks a parent can make in 2026, and one promise nobody can make
Two checks are worth making before anybody is booked, and both can be settled in an evening.
The DBS position changed. Department for Education guidance for tuition and after-school providers, published in February 2026, states that “following regulatory changes in 2026, individuals who are self-employed and undertaking regulated activity, can now apply for an Enhanced with Barred Lists DBS check on their own behalf”. The same document puts unsupervised teaching more than three times in a thirty-day period inside regulated activity, which is where a weekly tutor sits. What a family cannot do is order the check: GOV.UK is explicit that if you hire a self-employed person to deliver services to your family, you cannot request a DBS check for them and they must request one themselves, which you then read. The guidance also asks that a certificate be treated as “a snapshot of a person's criminal or police record, and/or barred list status, at a particular point in time”. In plainer words: look at the date.
Qualified teacher is a claim until a certificate is on the table. The government service for checking a teacher's record is addressed to schools, colleges, supply agencies and other organisations, and it shows qualified teacher status, induction, national professional qualifications and whether somebody has been prohibited from teaching or had restrictions placed on them. It is written for organisations and says nothing about parents. A teacher can, however, download their own teaching certificates from the teacher self-service portal, so the evidence exists and can be shown to you. Prohibition decisions are published separately, in the Department for Education's teacher misconduct collection, and can be searched by name.
Ask to see, rather than to be told: the DBS certificate with its date visible, and the teaching certificate the tutor can download themselves. Both take a minute to produce, and neither is an awkward thing to ask a professional for.
No tutor and no centre can promise a place, whatever the advertising says. Scores in this region are standardised against a cohort and offers follow the criteria each school publishes, so a pass rate is a marketing number rather than a measurement. What is a good 11 plus score explains what the published thresholds mean, and how to choose an 11 plus tutor in Birmingham carries the five questions to ask and the warning signs, which this page deliberately leaves to it.
What to ask a centre, which is not what you ask a tutor
A centre is an organisation, so the questions are organisational ones, and the February 2026 guidance lists what any provider of tuition should have in place. Five of those items are worth asking about by name.
- A safeguarding and child protection policy.Ask to be sent it rather than told that it exists. A centre that has one will attach it without fuss.
- A staff behaviour policy.Sometimes called a code of conduct. It is what tells a tutor what is and is not acceptable with somebody else's child.
- A designated safeguarding lead.A named person who has done safeguarding and child protection training, rather than a role nobody has filled since the centre opened.
- A named individual for parents.The guidance asks providers to give parents somebody specific to raise a concern with, which is not the same as a shared inbox.
- An escalation route if the provider works alone.A lone provider is asked to give parents the contact details of the local authority's children's services or the NSPCC helpline. An independent tutor teaching on their own sits squarely in that category, so it is a fair thing to ask for.
One phrase deserves a sentence of its own, because it appears on local advertising and sounds like an inspection. A provider that is not required to register with Ofsted may join its voluntary childcare register, and the same guidance describes the benefit of doing so as unlocking support with childcare costs for parents. Registration is a compliance step and a route to funding. It is not a verdict on the teaching, and it is not a substitute for the five questions above.
How do you pay less?
Tax-Free Childcare, where the provider is signed up. GOV.UK states that “for every £8 you pay into the account, the government will top it up by £2”, with a total top up of “£500 every 3 months (up to £2,000 a year)”, which “goes up to £1,000 every 3 months if your child is disabled (up to £4,000 a year)”. The same page says you will usually need to be working, and that your child must be 11 or younger, or 16 or younger if they are disabled. Your provider has to be signed up to the scheme, and an independent tutor will usually not be, so ask. One Birmingham centre publishes the two figures side by side, “£25.50 per session (£20.40 when paying by Tax Free Childcare)”. The remaining conditions are on the GOV.UK page and are not summarised here, so check your own position there before you count on it.
A group place instead of an hour. The figures in the table above are the argument for it, and the follow-up questions are simple: how many children, how are they grouped, and what happens when yours turns out to be the strongest or the weakest in the room. A centre that groups by ability should be able to answer all three in one reply.
The material that costs nothing. The West Midlands consortium publishes familiarisation questions at the foot of its own entrance test page, showing the style of question and how answers must be recorded. The test itself is provided by GL Assessment, and what GL Assessment publishes about the paper is worth ten minutes before you brief anybody. Pathway Eleven is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GL Assessment. 11 plus past papers explains what does and does not exist for this test, the exam dates page gives the cycle you are budgeting against, and our own practice paper is free to ask for below.
- Two complete papers in the published format
- Answer sheets and worked answers
- Sent to your inbox in a minute
See what your child can already do before you book anybody local.
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When the answer is not a tutor
Hiring is a decision about what the hour is for, not a verdict on tutoring. An hour a week earns its keep when there is a specific weakness to teach, a question format nobody has introduced, or work that is understood and simply is not happening without an adult expecting it. Bought as insurance, with no diagnosis and no end point, the same hour mostly buys back what a child could already do.
Two pages here take that decision further, and both are worth reading before you book anybody: preparing without a tutor, on what a parent can and cannot do at home, and tutor or online course, on the trade between a weekly hour and practice on the other six days. If a centre is what you are weighing up, 11 plus mock exams in Birmingham covers what to ask before you book a mock.
Where Pathway Eleven sits for a family who searched for a tutor
Straight answer first: this is not a person in the room, and a page about hiring one should say so before anything else. Pathway Eleven is an online 11 plus preparation service that gives each child a personalised daily plan of revision, guided teaching, timed practice and full mock papers, with every question reviewed and approved by a qualified teacher before it is released.
One plan covers every subject, with no per-subject upgrade, and it runs from Year 3 to Year 5 for the test sat at the start of Year 6. A Starting Assessment finds the level and produces a Starting Profile you read yourself, completed work sits in a PIN protected parent area, and full mock rehearsals are part of the full version, unlocking from Year 4.
Free account with a free Starting Assessment. Full version £24.99 a month for a limited time, usually £49, locked in for as long as you stay a member.
Plenty of families run both, and it is a sensible arrangement rather than a compromise: the plan carries the days in between, and a tutor is hired for the one thing the plan keeps flagging. Pathway Eleven or an 11 plus tutor sets the two side by side, cost and all.
Questions parents ask while searching for a tutor nearby
How do I find an 11 plus tutor near me in the West Midlands?+
Search, then sort what comes back. On 19 September 2026 the first screen was marketplaces, lead-generation directories and tuition businesses, with paid placements above them, so treat it as a list of channels rather than a shortlist. Work out which kind each result is, which unit it prices in, and whether it sits within a school-night drive before you contact anybody.
How much is 11 plus tuition near me in the West Midlands?+
One 2026 article on tutoring costs puts one-to-one work in the Birmingham area at forty to sixty pounds an hour, and local centres publish a good deal less for a weekly group place. Set a quote against that band before you judge it, and read the full table on our tuition cost page.
Is a group class near me cheaper than a one-to-one tutor?+
Yes, on the published figures. One national chain publishes its group option as a monthly membership with two sessions a week inside it, while local centres publish a per-session figure for a weekly class capped at six or eight children. Ask how many children are in the room, because that is what the difference buys.
Can I use Tax-Free Childcare to pay for 11 plus tuition?+
Only where the provider is signed up to the scheme, and at least one Birmingham centre already prices for it. The government tops up the account you pay into by two pounds for every eight you put in, capped for most families at five hundred pounds a quarter and at twice that where a child is disabled. You will usually need to be working, and your child must be eleven or younger, or sixteen or younger if they are disabled. Check your own position on the GOV.UK page before you count on it.
Can I check a tutor's DBS certificate myself?+
You can read it, and since 2026 there is more on it to read. Department for Education guidance published in February 2026 says a self-employed person working in regulated activity may now apply for an enhanced check with the barred lists on their own behalf. What you cannot do is order a check on somebody you are hiring privately, so ask to see the certificate itself, and look at the date on it.
How do I check that a tutor really is a qualified teacher?+
Ask for the certificate. The government service that shows qualified teacher status is written for schools, colleges and agencies rather than for parents, but a teacher can download their own certificates from the teacher self-service portal, so the document can be put in front of you. Decisions to prohibit somebody from teaching are published separately and are searchable by name.
Does it matter whether the tutor is local, or will online do?+
Outside the Birmingham and Solihull corridor it often stops being a choice. On one marketplace, read on 19 September 2026, a Coventry search returned fewer tutors than a Birmingham one and offered online lessons only, with no in-person option on the page. Work out what the weekly journey is worth to your family, then judge the tutor rather than the postcode.
What does Ofsted registered mean for a tuition centre?+
Less than it sounds, and it is not nothing. A provider that is not required to register may join Ofsted's voluntary childcare register, and the Department for Education describes the benefit of doing so as unlocking support with childcare costs for parents. Registration is a compliance step and a funding route rather than a judgement on the teaching.
Do most children who sit this test have a tutor?+
There is no published figure for this test. The nearest one is the Sutton Trust's, reported in February 2026: twenty-nine per cent of secondary school students in England and Wales have had private tutoring at some point, a figure for all subjects across secondary school rather than for 11 plus candidates in this region. Tutoring is common, and it is still not what most children have.
Where to go next
- How to choose an 11 plus tutor in Birmingham, the five questions to ask and the warning signs.
- 11 plus tuition cost, every published rate and annual total in one table.
- 11 plus tutor or an online course?, the weekly hour against the days in between.
- 11 plus preparation without a tutor, what doing it yourself really takes.
- Pathway Eleven or an 11 plus tutor?, the six decisions, side by side.
- 11 plus mock exams in Birmingham, what a centre charges for and what it does not.
- The West Midlands 11 plus, the schools that share one entrance test.
- Ask for a sample paper with answers, and two complete papers arrive in the same email.
A free account and a free Starting Assessment tell you what your child can already do, and what a tutor would be for. The plan that follows is built from that assessment rather than from a first lesson, and you unlock the full version when you are ready.
Every outside figure above, with the page that published it
Each outside figure on this page is quoted from the page that published it and was read on 19 September 2026. Nothing is averaged and nothing is merged between publishers. We do not run a directory and we do not recommend tutors or centres: a page listed here is the source of a published figure, which is not the same as a recommendation of the business behind it.
- Atom Learning, the cost of 11 plus tutoring, published 27 August 2026, the one-to-one hourly band for the Birmingham area. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Tutorful, Eleven Plus tutors in Birmingham, eight profiles on the first page at £24, £30, £39, £47, £47, £54, £60 and £77 an hour, with the site's note that tutors set their own rates. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Tutorful, Eleven Plus tutors in Coventry, six profiles on the first page at thirty-one, thirty-nine, forty-seven, forty-nine, sixty and sixty-five pounds an hour, presented as online lessons with no in-person option. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Tutor Hunt, Eleven Plus tutors in Birmingham, a marketplace listing individual tutors in this region with the rate each one sets. Checked 19 September 2026.
- MyTutor, 11 plus tutors, a marketplace whose tutors set their own prices, displayed on each profile. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Findtutors, 11 plus tutors, “The average price for 11 plus tuition is between £9 and £12”, against listings on the same page from £15 to £139 an hour. Checked 19 September 2026.
- 11plustutor.uk, 11 plus tutor Birmingham, “Hourly Fees from £8” and “£8 per hour, £180 per month”. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Explore Learning, membership options, the 11 plus and entrance exams memberships: group at “2 sessions a week from £22 per session” and “£190 per month”, one to one at “1 session a week from £42 per session” and “£180 per month”. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Explore Learning, Shirley, Solihull centre, the group of up to six children with individualised work, and the centre's own opening hours. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Kumon, Harborne centre, “£75.00 One-off Fee” and “£75.00 Per Month Per Subject” for maths and English, with the company's note that fees vary slightly from centre to centre. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Smart 11 Plus Tuition, pricing, “fees start at £25.50 per session (£20.40 when paying by Tax Free Childcare)”, with its own questions page giving a maximum of six pupils per group. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Einstein11Plus, Edgbaston, “£45 for 2.5 hours tuition per week”, a maximum of eight per group, and the books, diary and platform charges listed as extra. Checked 19 September 2026.
- Department for Education, after-school clubs, community activities and tuition: safeguarding guidance for providers, February 2026, the definition of regulated activity, the 2026 change for self-employed applicants, the snapshot caveat, the provider checklist and the voluntary register. Checked 19 September 2026.
- GOV.UK, criminal record checks for applicants, that a family hiring a self-employed person cannot request a check for them. Checked 19 September 2026.
- GOV.UK, check a teacher's record, who the service is for and what it shows. Checked 19 September 2026.
- GOV.UK, teacher self-service portal, that a teacher can download their own teaching certificates. Checked 19 September 2026.
- GOV.UK, teacher misconduct, the published hearings and outcomes. Checked 19 September 2026.
- GOV.UK, Tax-Free Childcare, “for every £8 you pay into the account, the government will top it up by £2”, the “£500 every 3 months” cap and the age and working conditions. Checked 19 September 2026.
- The Sutton Trust, Private Tutoring 2026, published 20 February 2026, the twenty-nine per cent figure for secondary school students in England and Wales. Checked 19 September 2026.
- West Midlands Grammar Schools, the entrance test, the free familiarisation questions and what the paper covers. Checked 19 September 2026.