A third of the West Midlands 11+ is not taught in any primary school.

I cannot answer that from here, and neither can anyone who has not watched your child work.

What I can tell you is how it is decided. There are two hurdles. First a qualifying score, the same at every Birmingham grammar school. Below it a child is not considered at all. Above it your child is in the running, but a place is still not a given, because these schools get many times more applications than they have places. Each school then makes offers down from the top score
until it is full.

Neither hurdle has anything to do with a school report. The useful question in Year 4 or Year 5 is not whether your child will pass. It is where they stand today, and which five things to fix while there is still time.

The test is sat at the very start of Year 6. Scores come out in October, and the form where you name your schools has been due on 31 October. So Year 6 is not a preparation year. It is over by half term.

That puts the real work in Year 4 and Year 5.

Year 4 is a good place to start, and not because your child needs two years of drilling. It is because the untaught parts take the longest. Non-verbal and spatial reasoning start from nothing. Vocabulary grows by reading, over months. Neither one responds to cramming.

Starting in Year 4 is what lets the work stay short and calm. Twenty minutes, most days, and no evenings lost. Starting later is still fine. The same work has to fit into less time.

The test is set by GL Assessment. Your child sits two papers with a short break in between. Each one takes about 50 to 60 minutes, including the instructions.

Both papers cover the same four things: English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics, and non-verbal and spatial reasoning. Half the marks come from English and verbal reasoning. A quarter from mathematics. A quarter from non-verbal and spatial reasoning.

Every question is multiple choice. There is no writing task. Answers go on a separate sheet, which a machine scans. Nothing written in the question booklet is marked, and papers are not marked again afterwards.

Each paper is split into short sections, each timed on its own. Once a section ends, your child cannot go back to it. No watches, no ruler, no calculator, no scrap paper.

The results letter has three numbers on it, not one.

Two of them are for parts of the test. One is English and verbal reasoning. The other is non-verbal reasoning and mathematics. Both sit around 100 in the middle, so 115 is above the middle. The third is the total, built from the other two, and it sits around 200. That is why parents talk about 205 and 224, and never about 105.

None of them is a percentage. They can carry a half, so 107.5 is a real score. Every score is adjusted for your child’s month of birth, so a summer born child is not judged as if they were a year older.

For the September 2025 intake, every Birmingham grammar school set a qualifying score of 205. Below that a child was not considered and could not go on a waiting list. Several also set a priority score of 224 inside their own admissions rules.

Above that there is no fixed number to aim at. The cut-off is the score of the last child offered a place, and it moves. For the 2024 intake it ran from 217 at one school to 260 at another. Read the admissions criteria for each school you are considering.

One last thing. A mark like 34 out of 50 on a shop bought paper cannot be turned into any of these numbers. The schools do not release raw scores. Watch the direction, not the number.

Yes. It is one of the most common things parents tell me, and it is not a sign that your child cannot do this.

Usually it is one of three things. The session is too long. The work is too hard, so every session feels like failing. Or the person asking is a parent, and being corrected by a parent lands differently from being corrected by a teacher.

What helps. Keep sessions short enough that your child is surprised when they end. Stop while it is still going well. Start with something they can already do. Mark it later, so the two of you are not arguing about a wrong answer thirty seconds after it was written.

Treat the refusal as information. A child who digs in on the same section every time is usually telling you they do not know how to do it, not that they will not.

Possibly. Read the admissions criteria for each school before you decide.

The qualifying score does not change with where you live. What changes is what happens above it. Several of these schools put children living in catchment in a higher priority group. In some recent years that has meant no places at all went to out of catchment applicants when offers were made on 1 March. The ones who got in came later, from the waiting list.

So from outside catchment the score usually needs to be higher, and the wait can run on past March.

One thing worth knowing, because it worries people for no reason. All local authorities use an equal preference system. Putting a grammar school first on your form does not damage your chances at the other schools you list.

I am not going to give you a number to measure yourself against. It depends on the child and on how long you have left.

What I will say is that twenty minutes on most days does more than two hours on a Sunday. Work has to be met again and again to stick. One long session is one exposure, not several.

Be careful with the answers in parent groups. They run from almost nothing to several hours a day, and nobody in those threads is comparing like with like.

The better question is whether the hours are pointed at the right thing. One hour a week on the area furthest behind moves the total more than five hours spread evenly over everything. If your child is tired, tearful, or going off reading, that matters more than the number of hours.

Start with your child’s school, and start early.

I do not run the entrance test and I have no say in what is granted. Anything of this kind has to be agreed in advance. It cannot be sorted out on the day. Your child’s school normally provides the evidence, so they need to know what you are asking for well before you register. Ask the school and the test organisers what they need and by when.

For my own assessment, tell me beforehand what helps your child and what makes things harder. Extra time, breaks, reading things aloud, a slower start. None of that is a problem, and none of it changes what I write about the gaps.

Two different things get called mocks, and it helps to keep them apart.

A full mock is the whole test in one sitting, under time. That is for stamina and nerves. Two or three across the final year is enough. More than that eats whole mornings and hands you one number each time.

Practice papers are the other thing, and these should be frequent. One section at a time. Timed, so your child builds pace, but short enough to fit into a normal evening. Non-verbal reasoning on Monday, comprehension on Wednesday, and so on.

The rule for both is the same. The paper is not the point. What you do next is the point. Mark it, find what went wrong, work on that, then come back to it. A pile of finished papers with no follow up teaches a child very little.

First, the useful fact. There is no writing task in this test. No story, no essay, no letter. Every question is multiple choice.

So if you are preparing for the West Midlands grammar schools, time spent on creative writing is time not spent on the parts that are marked.

Two exceptions. Independent schools often do set a writing paper of their own. And some grammar schools elsewhere in the country include writing, which is why the parent groups are full of it. Check what your schools ask for before you spend a year on it.

Writing still matters for your child’s education, and I teach it. If it is a worry, say so when we speak and I will tell you honestly whether it belongs in an 11+ plan or somewhere else.