As I'm sure you've heard us say many times before, we think mock exams are one of the most important pieces of preparation for the 11+ exam. They teach you about the format, the pressure, the time restrictions and how easy it is to make silly mistakes.
We keep our mock exams reasonably secret to make sure that children are seeing them for the first time. Although the same questions won't appear in the actual exam, we understand why parents want to go through the paper and work through any mistakes with their children. For this reason, we do provide a small sample of the easiest questions your child got wrong. We don't hand out the entire paper.
To compliment mock exams, we also highly recommend practice papers. As your child is completing these at home you can work through any mistakes to your heart's content. You can also observe them to see where they are going wrong. Perhaps they are not using their time wisely. Maybe they can't bring themselves to guess really hard questions. Perhaps they are doing too much in their heads. Maybe they are guessing blind rather than reading the question, ruling out silly answers and then guessing.
As we've also mentioned many times before, passing the 11+ is about your position rather than your percentage. The pass mark is set to pass (very approximately) half of the candidates. If your child gets 72% is this good enough? To help you understand and hopefully start to relax a little, we are offering to collate everybody's scores and let you know in what position you finished.
So in order to help you in this way, we've constructed a list of practice papers, that we are happy to standardise for you. At some point, we also hope to provide invigilator videos that will talk your child through the exams.
Although the quiet observation of your child's exam technique is probably the biggest advantage of a practice paper at home, you may like to make the experience more palatable for them, by getting a group of friends to sit an exam together and then celebrate with lunch afterwards.
We are also happy for you to use any of the recommended practice papers in one of our mock exams. We will purchase the papers for you, run the exam in the same way and provide the same reports, so there is no reduction in price.
GL Assessment have official practice papers and a couple of free ones. For BWS, we are using a subset of the same papers plus a non-verbal paper. Here is our list of recommended practice papers
Recommended papers for SWGS 11+
Recommended papers for BWS 11+
Same as SWGS but a subset of the questions, arranged into two papers as detailed below. Paper 1 has two sections of 20 and 25 minutes. Paper 2 has two ten-minute non-verbal sections followed by a 25 minute maths section. You can catch your breath between sections. During a section, you can't go back to completed sections or make a head-start on the next section.
The cost
You buy the practice papers yourself. The simplest way is probably by going via our Amazon shop.
We do keep a few in stock, which we might be able to provide to you. We are also happy to buy unused practice papers from you. We can normally offer about £1 per practice paper.
We will standardise the score for you for free. Just submit your answers on the appropriate form and you will be e-mailed your percentage score and a standardised score. I'm afraid you can't just e-mail your score to us.
You can have a standard report showing how your child has done in each section and how all children have done in each section e.g. we think a score of 3 is the pass mark for Find Words Opposite in Meaning. You scored 1. A detailed report shows details for every question e.g. 99% of people get Q2 correct. You got it wrong.
Standard reports cost £10. Detailed reports cost £10. You don't need to order these in advance. You can wait and see how they've got on.
We keep our mock exams reasonably secret to make sure that children are seeing them for the first time. Although the same questions won't appear in the actual exam, we understand why parents want to go through the paper and work through any mistakes with their children. For this reason, we do provide a small sample of the easiest questions your child got wrong. We don't hand out the entire paper.
To compliment mock exams, we also highly recommend practice papers. As your child is completing these at home you can work through any mistakes to your heart's content. You can also observe them to see where they are going wrong. Perhaps they are not using their time wisely. Maybe they can't bring themselves to guess really hard questions. Perhaps they are doing too much in their heads. Maybe they are guessing blind rather than reading the question, ruling out silly answers and then guessing.
As we've also mentioned many times before, passing the 11+ is about your position rather than your percentage. The pass mark is set to pass (very approximately) half of the candidates. If your child gets 72% is this good enough? To help you understand and hopefully start to relax a little, we are offering to collate everybody's scores and let you know in what position you finished.
So in order to help you in this way, we've constructed a list of practice papers, that we are happy to standardise for you. At some point, we also hope to provide invigilator videos that will talk your child through the exams.
Although the quiet observation of your child's exam technique is probably the biggest advantage of a practice paper at home, you may like to make the experience more palatable for them, by getting a group of friends to sit an exam together and then celebrate with lunch afterwards.
We are also happy for you to use any of the recommended practice papers in one of our mock exams. We will purchase the papers for you, run the exam in the same way and provide the same reports, so there is no reduction in price.
GL Assessment have official practice papers and a couple of free ones. For BWS, we are using a subset of the same papers plus a non-verbal paper. Here is our list of recommended practice papers
Recommended papers for SWGS 11+
- PP1 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 1: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP2 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 2: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP3- GL Assessment Practice Papers 3: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP4 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 4: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP5 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 5: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP6- GL Assessment Practice Papers 6: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP7 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 7: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP8 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 8: Maths, English and Verbal
- PP9 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 9: Maths, English and Verbal
Recommended papers for BWS 11+
Same as SWGS but a subset of the questions, arranged into two papers as detailed below. Paper 1 has two sections of 20 and 25 minutes. Paper 2 has two ten-minute non-verbal sections followed by a 25 minute maths section. You can catch your breath between sections. During a section, you can't go back to completed sections or make a head-start on the next section.
- PP1 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 1: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-32 (20 mins), Verbal: Q1-37 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-27 (25 mins). - PP2 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 2: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-36 (20 mins), Verbal: Q1-37 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-27 (25 mins). - PP3 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 3: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-20, Q33-44 (20 mins), Verbal: Q1-37 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-28 (25 mins). - PP4 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 4: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-32 (20 mins), Verbal: Q38-80 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-25 (25 mins). - PP5 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 5: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-36 (20 mins), Verbal: Q38-80 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-27 (25 mins). - PP6 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 6: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-20, Q45-56 (20 mins), Verbal: Q38-80 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-27 (25 mins). - PP7 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 7: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-20, Q33-44 (20 mins), Verbal: Q1-37 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-29 (25 mins). - PP8 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 8: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q21-56 (20 mins), Verbal: Q1-37 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-27 (25 mins). - PP9 - GL Assessment Practice Papers 9: Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal
Paper 1. English: Q1-32 (20 mins), Verbal: Q1-43 (25 mins).
Paper 2. Non-verbal: all questions (2 × 20Q, 2 × 10 mins), Maths: Q1-29 (25 mins).
The cost
You buy the practice papers yourself. The simplest way is probably by going via our Amazon shop.
We do keep a few in stock, which we might be able to provide to you. We are also happy to buy unused practice papers from you. We can normally offer about £1 per practice paper.
We will standardise the score for you for free. Just submit your answers on the appropriate form and you will be e-mailed your percentage score and a standardised score. I'm afraid you can't just e-mail your score to us.
You can have a standard report showing how your child has done in each section and how all children have done in each section e.g. we think a score of 3 is the pass mark for Find Words Opposite in Meaning. You scored 1. A detailed report shows details for every question e.g. 99% of people get Q2 correct. You got it wrong.
Standard reports cost £10. Detailed reports cost £10. You don't need to order these in advance. You can wait and see how they've got on.
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