Practising Eleven Plus Test Papers At Home

Before the Eleven Plus Test

Eliminate all distractions! For instance take the phone of the hook, switch the mobile phone off, switch off the television etc.

Ensure that the environment is well lit and ventilated. On the table/desk provide sufficient clear working area plus a two a three sharp pencils and a very efficient rubber.

Timing the Eleven Plus Test

You should time your child on every test, however do not start the timing until they have read all the instructions and/or filled in all the details on the front cover of the sample practice paper. Every time you purchase a different publisher of a practice paper it is important that you read the instructions with your child.

Most practice papers are of 50 minutes in duration, however if your child has not finished at the end of 50 minutes then draw a ring around the question number that they are on, and then let them carry on. This way when you come to mark you will know how many questions they got right in the time allowed and furthermore your child would have been able to attempt every question.

At the end of each test you should be able to assess their progress in terms of speed, accuracy and technique.

Multiple-Choice Eleven Plus Tests

Usually the answers are entered in specially provided answer sheets (sometimes tear out) or booklets.

In most cases of secondary selection entrance exams answers are marked by computers and therefore it is important for your child to get into good habits ahead of the actual exam, in particular mistakes should be carefully rubbed out NOT crossed out. If the practice paper has candidate number, school name, raw score, standardised score etc on the cover you can generally ignore this, though it is a good practice that your child is familiar with the actual layout he or she may face on the exam day.

Standard Eleven Plus Test

Usually these are question booklets where the answer is written directly into the question booklet.

Encourage your child to write clearly the answers clearly and to note down the units (e.g. cm, m, km etc). In mathematics they should show their workings as far as possible, especially in questions that may have more than one step. It is important that the workings are legible for both the examiner to read, but also for the child to be able to quickly check questions at the end if they have time to review them.

You child should not stray past the right had margin on each page as this is typically where the examiners will note their marks and comments.