Most free 11+ resources online are either low-quality PDFs, outdated papers, or tools that charge after a free trial. What parents actually need is a real practice test — scored, adaptive, and benchmarked against the actual scale grammar schools use. This post explains what to look for in a free 11+ practice test, why adaptive testing produces better results than paper practice, and how to use a practice score to guide preparation.
Eduentry's 11+ practice test is free, adaptive, and produces a Standardised Age Score on the same scale as GL Assessment — the exam board used by most grammar schools in England.
What a Good Free 11+ Practice Test Should Cover
The 11+ examination in England assesses four distinct subject areas. A practice test that covers only one or two of these is not an adequate preparation tool — it gives an incomplete picture of a child's readiness and misses the subjects that many grammar schools weight heavily in their selection process. A good practice test should include all four:
- English — comprehension, grammar, vocabulary (15 questions). This section assesses reading accuracy and breadth of language knowledge. It closely mirrors the English component of GL Assessment papers used by most selective schools.
- Mathematics — arithmetic, fractions, word problems, geometry (15 questions). Speed and accuracy across the full KS2 curriculum, with questions pitched at the difficulty level of actual 11+ papers rather than standard school tests.
- Verbal Reasoning — analogies, letter sequences, word relationships (15 questions). Tests the ability to think logically with language — a subject most children have never studied at school and which requires specific preparation to perform well on.
- Non-Verbal Reasoning — matrices, series, figure analogies (15 questions). Tests logical thinking with shapes and patterns rather than language. Often described as the purest measure of underlying cognitive ability because it is least affected by prior teaching.
Some grammar schools weight these subjects differently — certain schools in Buckinghamshire and Kent, for example, place particular emphasis on verbal reasoning. However, most GL Assessment papers cover all four areas, and a child who is strong in only one or two subjects will find their combined score pulled down significantly. A practice test that covers all four gives the only honest baseline.
Beyond subject coverage, a good practice test should report results in the same metric that grammar schools use: the Standardised Age Score (SAS). A percentage correct score or a raw mark is meaningless without reference to national norms — it tells you nothing about how the child compares to other 10 and 11-year-olds taking the same exam.
Why Adaptive Is Better Than Paper Practice
Fixed-difficulty practice papers — whether photocopied from a book or downloaded as a PDF — have two structural problems that limit their usefulness as assessment tools.
The first is a ceiling problem. A child who answers 90% or more of the questions correctly has demonstrated that the paper is too easy for them — but the paper cannot tell you how much stronger they actually are. Two children can both score 90% on a fixed paper while having very different true ability levels. The paper simply cannot distinguish between them because it ran out of difficult enough questions.
The second is a floor problem. A child who is struggling at difficulty level 3 in a subject does not benefit from being confronted with difficulty level 7 questions — it is demoralising, produces no useful measurement information, and tells you nothing you can act on. A fixed paper treats every child the same regardless of where they are.
An adaptive test solves both problems by adjusting question difficulty in real time. When a child answers correctly, the next question is slightly harder. When they answer incorrectly, the next question is slightly easier. The algorithm converges on the child's true ability level — wherever that level is — and takes the majority of measurements there. The result is a more accurate score at every ability level, and an experience that is appropriately challenging rather than frustrating or unchallenging.
A child who scores 85% on a fixed practice paper might actually be performing anywhere from SAS 105 to 125 — the paper can't distinguish. An adaptive test narrows that uncertainty to within 3–5 SAS points.
The practical implication for preparation is significant. A fixed paper score tells you the child got X% right. An adaptive score tells you exactly which difficulty band their knowledge has reached in each subject — and therefore exactly which difficulty band to target in practice. That is a qualitatively more useful piece of information.
How the Standardised Age Score Works
The Standardised Age Score (SAS) is the reporting scale used by GL Assessment, the exam board that produces 11+ papers for the majority of grammar schools in England. It is designed with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, meaning that the average 10 or 11-year-old should score 100, and approximately 68% of all children will score between 85 and 115.
Grammar school entry benchmarks vary by area and school, but the following serves as a general guide to how SAS scores translate into selectivity:
- SAS 100 — 50th percentile; exactly average for age
- SAS 111 — approximately the 77th percentile; competitive threshold for most grammar schools
- SAS 115 — approximately the 84th percentile; comfortably above threshold for most grammar schools
- SAS 118 — approximately the 88th percentile; required for many selective grammar schools
- SAS 121 — approximately the 92nd percentile; required for highly selective schools such as those in Buckinghamshire and Kent
- SAS 125 — approximately the 95th percentile; competitive for the most selective grammar schools in the country
Crucially, the SAS is age-adjusted. A 10-year-old and an 11-year-old answering exactly the same number of questions correctly will receive different SAS scores — the younger child scores higher because the same performance is more impressive relative to their peer group. This means the SAS is always a fair comparison, even when comparing children tested at different points in the school year.
Because Eduentry's practice test reports on the same SAS scale, you can compare your child's score directly to the published entry benchmarks for your target school — without any conversion or translation.
When to Start and How Often to Test
The most common timing mistake families make is starting preparation too late — typically six to eight weeks before the exam, which is not enough time to close meaningful gaps. Starting at least 12 months before the exam (in Year 4 or early Year 5) gives preparation enough room to work.
Within that preparation period, the recommended cadence for full practice tests is:
- Start with a baseline test as early as possible — before doing any preparation — to find the gap between where your child is and where they need to be
- Take a full practice test once every 4–6 weeks during the preparation period to track progress against the baseline
- Do weekly subject-level practice between full tests — focusing on the weakest subject areas identified by each test
- Review topic-level performance within each subject to identify the specific areas needing the most work
- Avoid testing more frequently than monthly — scores need time to reflect genuine learning, and over-testing creates test fatigue without producing useful new information
Daily subject practice of 20–30 minutes is more effective than occasional long sessions. The goal during preparation is not to sit the full test repeatedly — it is to build skills in weak areas through targeted practice, then verify progress through periodic full assessments.
How to Use the Results
The overall SAS score tells you where your child stands relative to grammar school benchmarks. But the subject breakdown is often more useful than the headline number — especially early in preparation, when there is still time to close significant gaps.
A child with an overall SAS of 115 but a Verbal Reasoning score of 105 has a clear and actionable target. The 10-point gap in VR is exactly where preparation effort should be concentrated — not on English or Maths where the child is already performing well. Without the subject breakdown, a parent might spread effort evenly across all four subjects, which is far less efficient.
Eduentry's report shows topic-level performance within each subject — so if your child scores 80% on arithmetic but 40% on word problems, you know exactly where to focus.
Going deeper than the subject level to topic-level performance within each subject is the most powerful use of practice test data. Arithmetic and word problems are both "Maths" — but they require completely different preparation. A child who is weak on word problems but strong on arithmetic needs targeted word problem practice, not more arithmetic drills.
Use each practice test result to update the preparation plan: check whether the weakest topics have improved since last time, decide whether to continue focusing on the same area or shift to a new one, and set a specific target for the next test. Preparation without this feedback loop is much less efficient than preparation guided by real data.
Conclusion
The best 11+ preparation starts with an honest baseline. Weeks spent working on the wrong subjects — because you guessed at the gaps rather than measuring them — are weeks that could have been spent closing the gaps that actually matter. A free adaptive practice test gives you that baseline in 90 minutes, with a score on the same scale grammar schools use and a subject breakdown that tells you exactly where to focus.
There is no reason to delay. The earlier you know where your child stands, the more time you have to act on it. Start today.