11 Plus Exams Forum

I've been looking at these in Waterstones and am not sure which to choolse - Collins, CGP, Letts, any others? Can anyone tell me what they've had experience of and what are good? Especially for English and for maths. Thank you.

I don't think any are necessary ... there are no official tests and schools cover different material. There is a new National curriculum as well and any books won't be up-to-date.

Have you checked the school intranet, they may well have outlines of work covered and guidelines for extra practice.

DS tried several and always came back to the CGP ones.

I think they are all fairly similar in content so I would advise taking your child along to the bookshop and choosing ones you both prefer. We chose Letts, as it seemed more plain in its presentation, but there was little in it.
I would say it is definitely worth getting the matching workbooks as people learn much more by doing than by being told.

Are you sure your child actually needs them? I have never spent a single penny on a KS3 book of any kind for any of my lot - not to say you shouldn't but be sure he or she actually has a need for them as none of mine has.

There are loads of resources on the net. Use hegartymaths for KS3 maths, it's so well written and covers everything.

DS1 and DS2's school provides every child with a copy of the CGP revision guide for KS3 Science, so they must rate it. They used it for revising for end of year exams in Y7 and Y8.

For History and Geography, BBC bitesize for KS3 was the best fit with the curriculum they were doing at school.

For RS, the school provided their own revision guide on the website.

For Maths, they used the school textbook, which had a revision summary and practice exercises at the end of a group of four or five topics.