11+ Tutor.

Preparing for the wrong paper wastes months, and a good tutor's first question is which test your child is sitting. CEM no longer runs 11+ exams; GL Assessment now sets the papers for most grammar-school areas, while Essex, several London super-selectives and the independent sector do their own thing.Our region-by-region guide to grammar school entry sets out who runs what, and what each area expects.

The first lesson is a diagnosis, not a sales pitch. The tutor sets a short past paper or section test, screen-shares it, and watches how your child works — where they slow down, which question types they avoid, whether the problem is the maths or the clock. Reasoning is often the surprise: bright children who are fine at school maths can be thrown by non-verbal patterns they have simply never seen.

Afterwards you get a plain summary: what your child can already do, the two or three things holding the score down, and roughly how long they will take to fix. The lesson is recorded, so you can watch the bits that matter and your child can revisit a method rather than trying to remember it.

Tell us the test, the target schools and the year group, and we come back within 24 hours with tutors who have taken children through that exact paper. Matching is on evidence, not postcode: a tutor in Manchester who has prepared thirty Kent Test candidates is more use to a Kent family than someone local who has not.

Then you meet them. Free meet-the-tutor sessions, as many as you like, until your child says yes to one — because an 11+ tutor who does not click with a ten-year-old will not get results however good their record. Ask about their last cohort, how they mark creative writing, and what they do when a child is strong at maths and weak at non-verbal reasoning.

Most families start in Year 5, which gives eighteen months of one lesson a week — enough to build reasoning skills properly without the child living under exam pressure. Starting in Year 4 suits children who need to grow into the work; earlier than that is rarely useful and often counterproductive.

Starting in Year 6 is late but not hopeless. From September the honest plan is triage: identify the two biggest score-killers, drill those, and get through enough timed papers that the format holds no surprises. Two lessons a week for a term does more than one lesson a week for two terms when the exam is in October. Our guide to 11+ practice questions shows what good practice looks like at each stage.

For September 2027 entry, children sit the tests in autumn 2026 and results arrive through October. Published dates for this cycle: Buckinghamshire 9 October, Essex CSSE 12 October, Medway 14 October, Kent 15 October, Birmingham and Warwickshire around 16 October — check your region's admissions page, as councils set these themselves.

Then the deadline that catches families out: the secondary Common Application Form closes on 31 October 2026, weeks after results and with no extensions. National Offer Day is 1 March 2027, and appeals follow in the spring. If the score is a near miss, there are routes — selection reviews, headteacher assessments, waiting lists — and they all have their own deadlines. Tutoring often shifts at this point from exam prep to Year 7 readiness, and we can move a child onto that without starting again.

The honest answer, because it saves families money and children a bad year. If your child is a long way below the standard with months to go, if the target school is a poor fit for how they learn, or if the process is already making them miserable, more tutoring is not the answer.

Grammar school suits children who thrive on pace and competition. Plenty of children do better elsewhere, and the strongest predictor of GCSE results is not which school they attend but whether they are taught well and stay confident. Where that is the conversation, a tutor is better spent on Key Stage 3 foundations — the maths and writing that carry into Year 7 and beyond. We will tell you if we think that is the better use of your money.

Lessons run from £18 an hour, pay as you go, with no contracts, no registration fee and no minimum block. You are paying for a specialist hour, planned around your child's specific gaps, plus the recording and the tutor's notes.

Group 11+ classes advertise a lower hourly rate, and for a child who is broadly on track they can work. What they cannot do is spend six weeks on non-verbal reasoning because that is the one thing costing your child marks. One-to-one is the more expensive hour and usually the cheaper term. Cancel free up to 24 hours before, and stop whenever you like.