11+ Mock Exams
You can now book our 2026 mock exams. You can book them here.
We have been running mock exams since 2004. Over the years we have worked hard to make the exams as close to the actual exam as possible. We update our papers each year to take into consideration any announcements from the grammar schools, any feedback from students and any new practice papers released. Since 2023, we are offering two styles of mock exam:
We can see from their results how much students improve by coming to multiple mock exams and many parents have told us that they are the most valuable thing they have done in their preparation for the 11+.
The cost of the exam is £60 inc. VAT. We can accept childcare vouchers and tax-free childcare. All of our 2026 mock exams will take place at Leehurst Swan School.
The exams includes the following reports:
You can read more details of the exam on Mock Exam Details.
Why bother with mock exams?
The main reason is to allow your child to experience the stresses and strains of the actual exam. In the same way that you will not perform to your optimum if you took on a marathon without any training, you don’t want your first experience of an 11+ exam to be when you walk into the actual exam.
The exam will be a physical and mental challenge for your child. Not only does it help for them to be familiar with the format, but they need to be able to maintain their concentration for a considerable time. They need to be ready for hard papers where they will struggle to finish and easy papers when they will have time to do some checking. They should not be phased by other children being ill (sniffing, tapping or worse), invigilators announcing new instructions during the exam, the rules on time warnings being changed or pencils being forgotten.
Interpreting the result
You will be given your child’s score for each mock exam so you will see how they are progressing compared to their peers. However, scores can vary widely from exam to exam so you should not place too much emphasis on one result. It is not unusual for a child’s scores to change by more than 10% between exams.
Many candidates from last year have very kindly shared their result in the actual exam with us so we are able to give you an indication of how your score in one of our papers might relate to a score on the actual paper. This will be something along the lines of, ‘You scored 55% in our maths paper. The average score achieved by people scoring a similar raw score last year was a standardised score of 106.’
The exam will also highlight areas that your child has struggled with. However, you should again take care not to place too much weight on one result. You should not, for example, stop working on the verbal paper just because your child passed that one and failed the maths.
How many exams should we take?
This will depend a lot on your child. Here are few thoughts that might help you decide ...
By comparing the scores of students sitting their first exam with those sitting their second or third we can see that the candidates with experience score better. This might be a coincidence if it happened once, but it happens in every exam, year after year. A very crude guide to the level of gain you might benefit by is 8% from sitting a mock exam, an extra 4% from sitting another, 2% from another and 1% from a fourth.
Our first exam takes place around Easter. It is a full length exam, but we won’t include anything that our students haven’t covered yet. The main reason for sitting an exam at this time is an early warning that your child doesn’t like sitting exams. A poor result could also help highlight that passing is not as predictable as you might think. Many students will benefit from learning early on that their result depends on many things including nerves, luck, care and organisation not just brains.
Further exams take place regularly moving towards the summer holidays. The advantage of sitting two exams is that you have two results to play with when discussing with your child whether they are going to work on the 11+ over the summer holidays or not! With two results to analyse you might want to take more seriously areas that went wrong in both. You will also be able to say to those whose confidence needs building, ‘Your scores are improving’ or, ‘You passed maths in ME1 and verbal in ME2 - now you just need to do them both at the same time.’ For those children who are perhaps a little over confident you have more opportunities for showing them that passing is not guaranteed.
August exams are late enough for your child to have covered all of the material and worked a little on their exam technique, whilst at the same time leaving you several weeks to work on any problem areas that come up.
September exams are mostly about making sure everything is working nicely and that your child is as prepared as they can be. They know exactly what they are doing; their exam technique is carefully honed and they can handle any small surprises.
You can also read what other parents have thought of our mock exams at The Review Centre.
- For practical information on our mock exams please visit Mock Exam Details.
- For information on standardised practice papers visit our Practice Papers Planner
We have been running mock exams since 2004. Over the years we have worked hard to make the exams as close to the actual exam as possible. We update our papers each year to take into consideration any announcements from the grammar schools, any feedback from students and any new practice papers released. Since 2023, we are offering two styles of mock exam:
- A BWS 11+ exam (two papers: maths/non-verbal and English/verbal)
- A SWGS 11+ exam (based on the traditional GL Assessment with papers on maths, English and verbal-reasoning. This exam is also suitable for students applying to Dorset schools.
We can see from their results how much students improve by coming to multiple mock exams and many parents have told us that they are the most valuable thing they have done in their preparation for the 11+.
The cost of the exam is £60 inc. VAT. We can accept childcare vouchers and tax-free childcare. All of our 2026 mock exams will take place at Leehurst Swan School.
The exams includes the following reports:
- a report showing them what they scored on each paper and how they did compared to their peers
- a breakdown of scores down to each individual question. The subject matter of each question is detailed.
- feedback if their box filling or rubbing out is dangerously poor
- some examples of the actual questions that your child got wrong and
- some analysis of how their mock exam score might equate to their score in the actual exam.
You can read more details of the exam on Mock Exam Details.
Why bother with mock exams?
The main reason is to allow your child to experience the stresses and strains of the actual exam. In the same way that you will not perform to your optimum if you took on a marathon without any training, you don’t want your first experience of an 11+ exam to be when you walk into the actual exam.
The exam will be a physical and mental challenge for your child. Not only does it help for them to be familiar with the format, but they need to be able to maintain their concentration for a considerable time. They need to be ready for hard papers where they will struggle to finish and easy papers when they will have time to do some checking. They should not be phased by other children being ill (sniffing, tapping or worse), invigilators announcing new instructions during the exam, the rules on time warnings being changed or pencils being forgotten.
Interpreting the result
You will be given your child’s score for each mock exam so you will see how they are progressing compared to their peers. However, scores can vary widely from exam to exam so you should not place too much emphasis on one result. It is not unusual for a child’s scores to change by more than 10% between exams.
Many candidates from last year have very kindly shared their result in the actual exam with us so we are able to give you an indication of how your score in one of our papers might relate to a score on the actual paper. This will be something along the lines of, ‘You scored 55% in our maths paper. The average score achieved by people scoring a similar raw score last year was a standardised score of 106.’
The exam will also highlight areas that your child has struggled with. However, you should again take care not to place too much weight on one result. You should not, for example, stop working on the verbal paper just because your child passed that one and failed the maths.
How many exams should we take?
This will depend a lot on your child. Here are few thoughts that might help you decide ...
By comparing the scores of students sitting their first exam with those sitting their second or third we can see that the candidates with experience score better. This might be a coincidence if it happened once, but it happens in every exam, year after year. A very crude guide to the level of gain you might benefit by is 8% from sitting a mock exam, an extra 4% from sitting another, 2% from another and 1% from a fourth.
Our first exam takes place around Easter. It is a full length exam, but we won’t include anything that our students haven’t covered yet. The main reason for sitting an exam at this time is an early warning that your child doesn’t like sitting exams. A poor result could also help highlight that passing is not as predictable as you might think. Many students will benefit from learning early on that their result depends on many things including nerves, luck, care and organisation not just brains.
Further exams take place regularly moving towards the summer holidays. The advantage of sitting two exams is that you have two results to play with when discussing with your child whether they are going to work on the 11+ over the summer holidays or not! With two results to analyse you might want to take more seriously areas that went wrong in both. You will also be able to say to those whose confidence needs building, ‘Your scores are improving’ or, ‘You passed maths in ME1 and verbal in ME2 - now you just need to do them both at the same time.’ For those children who are perhaps a little over confident you have more opportunities for showing them that passing is not guaranteed.
August exams are late enough for your child to have covered all of the material and worked a little on their exam technique, whilst at the same time leaving you several weeks to work on any problem areas that come up.
September exams are mostly about making sure everything is working nicely and that your child is as prepared as they can be. They know exactly what they are doing; their exam technique is carefully honed and they can handle any small surprises.
You can also read what other parents have thought of our mock exams at The Review Centre.