A child is on track if they can do the year's work comfortably, not quickly. By the end of Year 4 that means secure number facts, written methods, wide reading and having met every question type. By the middle of Year 5 it means answering at roughly test pace, accurately, without a parent sitting beside them.
Who this page is for. Parents who are doing something, are not sure whether it is enough, and do not want to find out in September of Year 6. The checkpoints below are written for a child sitting a shared consortium test at the start of Year 6, which is the pattern across the West Midlands.
What does “on track” actually mean?
It does not mean scoring a particular number on a practice paper. Scores from home practice are close to meaningless: a paper bought off a shelf has no standardisation behind it, the conditions at your kitchen table are not the conditions in a hall, and nobody publishes what raw mark corresponds to what standardised score. Anyone who tells you a home score predicts an outcome is guessing.
What on track does mean is simpler and more useful. Can your child do the work of the year they are in comfortably, without a parent beside them, and without the session ending in a row? Comfort is the signal, because comfort is what turns into speed later. Speed forced on top of shaky content collapses under exam conditions; content that is genuinely secure speeds up on its own with practice.
So the checkpoints below are all phrased as things a child can do rather than as scores they can hit. Read them as a rough map, not as a set of gates. Children arrive at each of these at different times, and one missed checkpoint in Year 4 is a thing to work on rather than a verdict.
What should a child manage by the end of Year 4?
Year 4 is the coverage year. The job is that every question type has been met at least once, without pressure, so that nothing in Year 5 arrives as a surprise. Nothing here needs to be fast yet.
Read both tables on this page with one thing in mind. These checkpoints deliberately run ahead of the national curriculum, because the shared test is sat at the start of Year 6, before Year 6 has been taught. A child who is on track at school is not behind; they have simply not met the later content yet, and meeting it early is a large part of what preparation is for. Where a line below says the national curriculum expects something, that is meant literally, and the Department for Education programme of study it comes from is linked at the foot of this page.
| Term | Maths | English and vocabulary | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autumn | Written methods for addition and subtraction secure. Multiplication and division by a one-digit number worked out on paper. | Reading a chapter book alone most days. Collecting unfamiliar words has become a habit. | Has met a few verbal reasoning types and enjoys them as puzzles. |
| Spring | Equivalent fractions recognised and compared. Time read and calculated with, on a clock face and on a digital display. | Answering a short comprehension and, importantly, going back to the passage to check. | Has met sequences, rotations and reflections, and can explain one of them out loud. |
| Summer | Tables to twelve recalled rather than worked out, which is what the national curriculum expects by the end of Year 4. A two-step word problem attempted without help. | Apostrophes and speech punctuation used correctly in their own writing. | All the main non-verbal types met once, with no clock on any of them yet. |
If we had to keep one line of that table, it would not be any of the mathematics. It would be whether reading is happening most days by choice. That is our own view rather than a published finding, and it rests on something that is published: English and verbal reasoning together carry half of the weighting, and all of it sits downstream of reading mileage. Year 4 is also the point at which a full mock paper starts to be worth sitting on Pathway Eleven, and one across the whole year is plenty. The full plan is on 11 plus preparation in Year 4.
What should a child manage by the end of Year 5?
Year 5 is the decisive year, and it is the year the registration window falls in. The work moves from meeting things to doing them at pace. By the middle of the year a child should be answering at roughly the rate a real section requires, which makes the final summer a matter of polish rather than panic.
| Term | Maths | English and vocabulary | Exam skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autumn | Long multiplication and short division, which the national curriculum introduces in Year 5. All four operations quick and accurate. | Reading longer and older books. Inference questions answered with evidence from the text. | Short timed drills weekly, with the clock treated as normal rather than as a threat. |
| Spring | Percentages of an amount and simple ratio met and practised ahead of the Year 6 teaching that formally covers them. Multi-step word problems attempted calmly. Fractions, decimals and percentages converted without hesitating. | A comprehension finished inside a sensible time, with the going-back habit intact. | A full paper sat about once a month, with the result used to choose the next fortnight of work. |
| Summer | Weak topics identified and closed, rather than the whole syllabus revisited again. | Spelling, punctuation and grammar essentially finished, since the rules are finite. | Registration completed on time. Pace steady. Confidence, rather than cramming, is the priority. |
The registration window is the one hard deadline in the whole process, and it sits in the summer of Year 5. Nothing on this page matters if that is missed: the published dates for the current cycle are on the West Midlands dates page, and the full year plan is on 11 plus preparation in Year 5.
Not sure where your child sits against any of this? Start a free week of Pathway Eleven: the Starting Assessment answers the question in one sitting, and the daily plan that follows is built from the answer.
How can you tell without a formal test?
Watch three things over a fortnight, and do not tell your child you are watching.
Stamina. Can they stay with a piece of work until it is finished, without a running negotiation? A child who cannot sit with a task is not going to show what they know in a timed section, and stamina is trainable in a way that is much easier at nine than at eleven.
Recovery. When they get something wrong, does the session continue, or does it end? Recovery matters more than accuracy at this stage. A child who treats a wrong answer as information will keep improving; a child who treats it as a verdict will start avoiding the work.
Reading by choice. Do they read for pleasure, at all, ever? This is the one to protect above everything else, because it is the slowest thing to build and the highest weighted in the result.
None of the three is a pass or a fail. Together they tell you far more about how the next two years will go than any home-marked practice paper will.
The checkpoints, as a term planner you can print
The free Year 5 term planner turns the two tables above into a sheet you can put on the fridge: what each term is for, with a blank weekly rhythm to fill in. Year 4 families ask for it most, because it shows the shape of the year ahead. Tell us where to send it and we will email it over, along with the occasional preparation email.
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What if your child is not on track?
First, work out which kind of behind it is, because the two kinds need opposite responses.
Behind on content. Something has not been taught, or was taught and did not stick. This is the easier problem. Close one gap at a time, in order, and check it a week later. Do not add pace until the content is secure, because pace on top of a gap produces confident wrong answers.
Behind on pace. The child knows the material and runs out of time. This is a habits problem, not a knowledge problem, and it responds to short timed drills rather than to more teaching. Build up in small steps: a few questions against a generous clock, then more questions, then a tighter clock.
Second, be honest about the calendar. If your child is in the spring of Year 5, technique, timing, grammar and topic gaps can all still improve a great deal. Reading mileage and vocabulary cannot be made up quickly, which is why they should be protected first and started earliest.
Third, consider whether the target is right. Some children are better served by a different school than by another year of pressure, and deciding that early is a kindness rather than a defeat. If preparation has started to cost more than it is buying, 11 plus exam stress is the page to read next.
Pathway Eleven exists to answer exactly the question in this page's title. A Starting Assessment finds the level, the daily plan of revision, guided teaching and timed practice then spends more time on whichever area is weakest, and every question a child sees is reviewed and approved by a qualified teacher. Full mock rehearsals are part of full membership rather than the trial, and they unlock from Year 4. The parent view is the checkpoint table made visible: you can see what was actually done, rather than asking. One monthly price of £49 covers all of it, and the first week is free.
Questions parents ask about these checkpoints
How do I know if my child is on track for the 11 plus?+
Look at whether they can do the work of their current year comfortably and without a parent beside them, rather than at any score. By the end of Year 4 that means secure number facts, written methods, wide reading and having met every question type; by the middle of Year 5 it means working accurately at close to test pace.
Are home practice paper scores a reliable guide?+
No. A paper bought off a shelf carries no standardisation, home conditions are not exam conditions, and nothing published maps a raw mark onto a standardised score. Home papers are useful for spotting which topics are weak and for building stamina, and they are not a prediction of a result.
Is Year 5 too late to start?+
It is late, and it is not hopeless. Technique, timing, topic gaps and grammar can all improve substantially inside a year. Reading mileage and vocabulary move slowly and cannot be made up in one summer, which is why families who start in Year 3 or Year 4 have an advantage that is difficult to buy back.
What is the single best sign that preparation is working?+
That the child recovers from getting something wrong and carries on. Accuracy at nine or ten tells you where they are today. Recovery tells you where they will be in a year, because a child who treats mistakes as information keeps improving and a child who treats them as verdicts starts avoiding the work.
Should I compare my child with other children in the class?+
Only loosely. The result is a standardised age score: performance is compared against a large reference sample, with an allowance made for the age in years and months of the child sitting, rather than against the particular children who sat on the same day and rather than against their own class. A strong classroom position in a small school tells you very little about a regional cohort.
What was read, and where it was read
Anything on this page that came from somewhere else was read on the publisher's own page, on the date recorded beside it. Nothing is quoted from memory, and nothing is taken from another site's summary.
- West Midlands Grammar Schools, The entrance test. The four areas the shared test covers and the published weighting of 50% English and verbal reasoning, 25% non-verbal reasoning and 25% mathematics, which is why the reading checkpoints carry the most weight above. Checked 5 September 2026.
- King Edward VI Foundation, Results and offers. The published statement that raw scores are not provided and that no information is given about how many marks are available, which is why home-marked papers cannot be converted into a predicted score. Checked 5 September 2026.
- Department for Education, National curriculum in England: mathematics programmes of study. The statutory year-group expectations the tables above are measured against, including recall of the multiplication tables to twelve by the end of Year 4 and the introduction of long multiplication and short division in Year 5. Checked 6 September 2026.
Read these next
- 11 plus preparation in Year 4, the full plan behind the Year 4 checkpoints above.
- 11 plus preparation in Year 5, the term-by-term plan for the decisive year.
- How much 11 plus practice per day?, what a session should contain and the signs it has become too much.
- 11 plus preparation: a guide for parents, the pillar guide covering the whole journey.
- What is a good 11 plus score?, what the published thresholds mean and why a target score is the wrong thing to chase.
- West Midlands 11 plus dates and deadlines, including the registration window in Year 5.
- 11 plus exam stress, if the preparation has started to cost more than it buys.
- What Pathway Eleven costs, and what a family gets for it.
A Starting Assessment answers it in one sitting, and the daily plan that follows is built from the answer rather than from a template.