11+ English and Verbal Reasoning: The Complete Guide

The 11+ is the most confusing exam in British education, and not because the questions are hard. It is confusing because there is no such thing as "the 11+". There is no national test, no single provider, and no common syllabus. What your child sits depends entirely on where you live and which schools you apply to.

That means most general advice is wrong for most families. This guide sets out how the system actually works now, what the English and verbal reasoning papers contain, and where the expensive mistakes are.

Start here: four things most 11+ advice gets wrong

These are worth reading before you buy a single practice book.

1. CEM practice books are preparing for a test almost nobody sets

For years, a large number of grammar school areas used tests built by CEM, originally at Durham University. CEM's test was marketed as harder to tutor for, and a whole publishing industry grew up around it.

Those contracts have ended, area by area. Buckinghamshire moved to GL Assessment for tests sat from September 2018. Warwickshire and the Birmingham King Edward VI schools moved to GL for 2023 entry. Slough has moved too. We could not identify a single English grammar school area using a CEM-branded test for main Year 7 entry in 2026/27 or 2027/28.

The product still exists, renamed, as Cambridge Select Insight, but Cambridge markets it to selective independent schools, for fair banding, and for grammar-school late transfer into Years 8 to 10. Not the main 11+ round.

Shelves of "CEM 11+" practice papers are still being sold. If you are applying to a state grammar school, check what your area actually uses before buying any of them.

One honest caveat: we found no formal announcement from Cambridge that the 11+ product was withdrawn. What is documented is a run of ended contracts and no current grammar-school area using it. If your area's admissions page names CEM, believe the page over this guide and ask them.

2. There is no "the GL test"

GL Assessment is now the provider in most selective areas, but it does not publish a single national paper. Each area commissions a different combination of papers from GL's question bank. GL says so itself, warning that the timings and the number of questions in your local test may differ from its own familiarisation materials.

So "we're doing GL" tells you who printed the paper, not what is on it.

3. Plenty of areas do not test English at all

This surprises almost everyone. Among selective areas:

  • Walsall and the West Midlands partnership, Lincolnshire, and Wirral set no English paper: verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and maths only.
  • Sutton and Wallington's Selective Eligibility Test is the mirror image: maths and English only, with no verbal or non-verbal reasoning at all.
  • Buckinghamshire and Ripon fold comprehension, spelling and verbal reasoning together into a single "Verbal Skills" paper, so the paper titles tell you very little.

Before planning any preparation, find out which papers your child will actually sit.

4. Scores are not comparable between areas

A standardised score means nothing on its own. The qualifying mark is 121 in Buckinghamshire, 111 in Slough, 220 across two tests in Lincolnshire and 303 in Essex. Bexley and Walsall both centre their scales around 200.

If another parent tells you their child got 125, that number carries no information unless you know the county.

Who sets the tests now

Provider Where it is used
GL Assessment The majority of selective areas: including Kent, Medway, Buckinghamshire, Birmingham, Walsall, Warwickshire, Redbridge, Slough and Ripon. Paper and digital.
Quest Assessments Significant and under-reported: Bexley, Wirral, and the London 11+ Consortium of independent girls' schools.
ISEB Common Pre-Tests Many leading independent schools. Four online adaptive tests (English, maths, verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning) totalling about 2 hours 15 minutes.
ISEB Common Entrance at 11+ Independent schools. Three written papers: English, maths and science. Sessions in November and January, most candidates sitting in January.
Bespoke, school-set papers Essex CSSE, the Sutton and Wallington SET, and individual schools including Ermysted's and Skipton Girls' in North Yorkshire, and many independent schools.

A note on the ISEB Pre-Tests worth knowing: they are adaptive. Difficulty adjusts as your child answers, so two children sit different numbers of questions. They can be taken only once in an academic year, and if sat twice the first result stands.

English and verbal reasoning are not the same thing

Parents routinely treat these as one subject. They test genuinely different things, and the distinction changes how you prepare.

English tests attainment in the subject. Reading a passage and answering questions on it, plus spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary. It is curriculum-linked: GL describes its English tests as based mainly on content reached in the early part of Year 6.

Verbal reasoning uses words as raw material for logic puzzles. It is not asking whether your child understood a text. It is asking whether they can work out a rule. Kent's own familiarisation booklet describes it as testing how well a child can work out and apply rules and relationships, using words, letters and numbers as symbols.

The practical consequence: reading widely improves English but does comparatively little for verbal reasoning. Verbal reasoning improves through familiarity with question formats and through vocabulary breadth. They are separate jobs.

What is in the English paper

Drawing on the official familiarisation booklets, the recurring components are:

  • Reading comprehension: a passage followed by questions. The most heavily weighted element wherever English is tested.
  • Spelling: often presented as identifying the error in a sentence, with an option for "no error", which is itself a trap worth practising.
  • Grammar and punctuation: identifying an error, or choosing the correct form.
  • Vocabulary: sentence completion, choosing the word that fits.

Medway, for example, specifies its English component as comprehension, punctuation and grammar in 30 minutes. Buckinghamshire's booklet shows comprehension, spelling-error identification and sentence completion, all multiple choice with options A to E.

What is in the verbal reasoning paper

From the published familiarisation material, common formats include finding hidden words spanning two words, completing sentences with word pairs, completing letter series by working out a pattern, and code and letter-shift puzzles.

A caution about a number you will see everywhere. Practice publishers and tutoring sites commonly refer to "21 verbal reasoning question types". GL Assessment does not publish a question-type count and does not name such a list. The figure is a tutoring-industry convention, not a provider specification. It is a reasonable organising device for practice, but it is not a syllabus, and no one should treat "we've covered all 21" as completion.

Is writing assessed?

Mostly not in state grammar tests, and this is another place where general advice misleads.

  • GL-based state tests are multiple choice and computer marked. There is no extended writing.
  • Kent is a confusing exception. There is a writing exercise, 40 minutes including 10 minutes of planning, but it is not marked. It may be used by a local headteacher panel at the assessment stage. So it matters, but not as a score.
  • Essex CSSE does assess continuous writing as part of its English paper. Note that CSSE removed its Applied Reasoning questions from September 2024, so the paper has changed. Check CSSE's current entry guide rather than an old past paper.
  • Independent schools frequently do. City of London School, for example, sets a 30-minute creative writing paper assessed on creativity, vocabulary and accuracy.
  • ISEB Common Entrance at 11+ weights it formally: reading comprehension 25 marks and writing composition 25 marks, each 45 minutes, with schools able to award up to 10 further marks for spelling and punctuation accuracy.
  • ISEB Common Pre-Tests do not: four multiple-choice adaptive tests, no writing.

So: if you are applying to independent schools, or to Essex, creative and discursive writing matters a great deal. If you are applying to most state grammars, time spent on it will help your child's schoolwork but will not earn a mark.

Multiple choice or written answers?

This varies by area and it is a real skill difference, not a formality. In multiple-choice format children shade a lozenge on a separate answer sheet, which introduces its own timing risks and its own mistakes, including losing their place and mis-shading.

Multiple choice with a separate answer sheet: Kent, Medway, Buckinghamshire, Birmingham, Bexley, Lincolnshire, Sutton's SET.

Written answers: Essex CSSE, ISEB Common Entrance, and many independent school papers.

If your child's test is multiple choice, practise on a separate answer sheet from early on. Doing papers by writing in the book and then meeting an answer sheet for the first time on the day is a genuinely avoidable loss.

Where you live decides the test

A selection of areas, as their own admissions authorities describe them. Always check your own authority's page: these change.

Area What is tested
Kent Paper 1: English and maths. Paper 2: verbal, non-verbal and spatial reasoning. Plus an unmarked writing exercise.
Medway English 30 min, maths 50 min, reasoning 45 min. Weighted English ×2, maths ×2, reasoning ×1.
Buckinghamshire "Verbal Skills" (comprehension, spelling, grammar, verbal reasoning) and "Mathematical and Non-Verbal Skills". Score is 50% verbal, 25% maths, 25% non-verbal.
Essex (CSSE) English and maths, written, each 50% of the total. English includes continuous writing.
Birmingham Two papers covering English comprehension, verbal reasoning, maths, non-verbal and spatial reasoning.
Walsall / West Midlands Verbal, non-verbal and numerical reasoning. No English paper.
Lincolnshire Verbal and non-verbal reasoning only. No English paper.
Bexley Verbal ability and English comprehension; numerical reasoning; non-verbal reasoning. Quest Assessments.
Wirral Verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, maths. No English paper. Quest Assessments.
Sutton / Wallington (SET) Maths and English only: no verbal or non-verbal reasoning.
Redbridge Paper 1: English and verbal reasoning. Paper 2: maths and non-verbal reasoning.
Slough Verbal and non-verbal reasoning, English, maths. Qualifying score 111.
London 11+ Consortium Online, about 100 minutes: maths, non-verbal reasoning, English, verbal reasoning, problem solving and creative comprehension. Some schools then interview.

Age standardisation, and what it does not do

Every 11+ cohort spans almost a year in age, and at ten years old that is a material difference. Scores are therefore age standardised: raw marks are adjusted so children are compared with others of the same age. Buckinghamshire standardises by years and months; Gloucestershire by year, month and day.

Three things parents need to know:

  1. It is automatic. A summer-born child does not need to apply for it. A younger child needs a lower raw mark than an older one to reach the same standardised score.
  2. The adjustment is not fixed or published. Sutton's own guidance is candid: there is no set amount, and it is calculated for each test separately.
  3. It does not level the field. It corrects the part of the age effect that shows up as a cohort-wide gradient. It does not correct for an individual child's readiness. A summer-born child is still, on average, ten months less developed than the oldest in the year, and standardisation only partly compensates.

The deadline that catches families out

This is the single most expensive mistake in the 11+, and it has nothing to do with the exam.

Registration for state grammar tests opens in the spring or early summer of Year 5 and closes before that summer term ends, a full year before your child would start Year 7. The test itself is sat in the first two or three weeks of September, at the very start of Year 6, and results arrive in mid-October, before the national secondary application deadline of 31 October.

Closing dates vary by nearly four months. For tests sat in September 2026, they ranged from 31 March in Bexley to 31 July in Sutton, with most areas closing in June.

A parent who assumes "it's a June thing" misses Bexley entirely. There is generally no second chance.

Independent schools run later. ISEB Common Pre-Tests sit between October and June of Year 6. The London 11+ Consortium tests in late November or early December. ISEB Common Entrance runs in November and January.

Find your own authority's registration date now, and put it in a calendar.

What the evidence actually says about preparation

Being straight about this, because a lot of money changes hands on the basis of assumptions.

Tutoring for entrance exams is common and unevenly distributed. The Sutton Trust's 2023 research found 30% of 11 to 16-year-olds had ever received private tutoring, up from 27% before the pandemic and 18% in 2005, and that 27% of those who had been tutored had it for a school entrance exam. Take-up was 32% in the top income quartile against 13% in the bottom.

"Tutor-proof" tests did not work as intended. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology's 2016 briefing reported researchers' view that attempts at creating a tutor-proof test had been unsuccessful, and warned that making a test less predictable may have the opposite effect: encouraging well-off parents to pay for more tuition.

And here is the finding that should change how you think about the papers. A 2017 study of the Kent test by Allen and Bartley found the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals and their peers was largest in the reasoning papers and smallest in English: 7.7 points against 3.9. Children from private schools had a 3.7-point advantage in reasoning specifically.

That runs directly against the folklore. Reasoning papers are widely believed to be the fairer, less coachable component. On this evidence they are where the socio-economic gap is widest.

For context on scale: there are 163 grammar schools in England, educating around 188,000 pupils, about 5.3% of state-funded secondary pupils. There is no national figure for how many children sit the 11+, because it is run locally rather than nationally. Kent is the largest single operation, with just over 17,000 candidates in a recent year, roughly a third of them from outside the county.

How to prepare well

  1. Find out what your child is actually sitting. Which authority, which papers, which format, which provider. Everything else is guesswork until you have this, and it is on your local authority's or consortium's own website.
  2. Download the official familiarisation booklet. Free, from the admissions authority. It shows the real question formats. It is worth more than any commercial practice book.
  3. Separate the two jobs. Reading widely builds English. Format familiarity and vocabulary build verbal reasoning. Doing only one leaves half the paper unaddressed.
  4. Practise on an answer sheet if the test is multiple choice.
  5. Build vocabulary deliberately: it is the one thing that pays into English comprehension, sentence completion and verbal reasoning simultaneously.
  6. Practise timing separately from content. Most lost marks at this age are unfinished papers, not wrong answers.
  7. Keep it proportionate. Several authorities now say in their own words that intensive coaching is neither needed nor encouraged, and the London consortium says its interviewers can identify a coached child. A ten-year-old preparing for an exam they may not pass needs the adults around them to stay calm about it.

The free guides

Working on this with me

I teach 11+ English and verbal reasoning one to one, alongside English and EAL. If you would like to talk through what your child's test involves and where their time is best spent, book a free 15-minute call: add it to your basket and check out, the total is £0, and you will receive an email with the link to book a time.

You may also find the English and 11+ page useful for what else I teach.

Sources: GL Assessment, Quest Assessments, ISEB and Cambridge Insight published materials; the admissions pages and familiarisation booklets of Kent, Medway, Buckinghamshire, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Bexley, Wirral, Redbridge, Lincolnshire, Sutton, Slough, Gloucestershire and North Yorkshire; CSSE; the London 11+ Consortium; the Independent Schools Council; the House of Commons Library briefing on grammar schools (2023); the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology briefing on selective education (2016); the Sutton Trust (2013 and 2023); the Education Policy Institute (2016); and Allen and Bartley, National Institute Economic Review (2017). Last checked September 2026. Tests, providers and deadlines change every year: your own admissions authority is always the authority.