11 plus exams explained by area and provider

London boroughs. In north London, Barnet has three selective state schools whose maths arrives at three different moments, and Enfield is about one school whose test is changing shape for today's Year 5. East of the City, Redbridge carries a warning from its own council that free practice material might not match the real test. In the south-east, Bexley registers children in March of Year 5, earlier than almost anywhere, and Bromley has two grammar schools that give opposite answers on maths. South-west of the centre, Sutton asks the same maths twice, once with options and once without, while Kingston teaches answers written into digit columns rather than chosen from a list.

South East and the Home Counties. Kent has its own page, built from the council's leaflet because the council's website would not answer our requests. Its neighbour Medway runs a separate test and gives maths an unbroken 50-minute paper. Buckinghamshire enters state primary pupils automatically and paces the room with an audio file. Hertfordshire has a consortium of schools in the south-west of the county and, separately, Dame Alice Owen's School, each running its own test. Slough turns the clock on the exam room wall into its maths topic, and Reading runs two tests on two calendars, one of them in July of Year 5. In Essex, the Essex page covers the CSSE schools around Colchester and Chelmsford, and the Southend page the Southend schools on the same test, where maths gets a full hour.

South West. Gloucestershire is moving its test from September of Year 6 to Saturday 3 July 2027 and adding a paper answered in short written form. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole shortens its maths paper and caps it at Year 5 when Quest takes over. Wiltshire focuses on the Salisbury boys' grammar school, whose 2028 leaflet is already published. Further west, Plymouth sets maths on a Saturday of its own, and Torbay tests English and maths only, with one set of results shared by every selective school in the bay.

Midlands. Three pages share one regional test from the West Midlands Grammar Schools group, each from a different angle. The Birmingham page builds the angle facts that need no measuring instrument; the Warwickshire page takes the council at its word that the difficulty may go beyond end-of-key-stage expectations; and Wolverhampton and Walsall explains why one school calls the same section numerical reasoning and sets its pass mark only after results. To the east, Lincolnshire is the honest exception: two reasoning tests, no maths paper, and a page that says so first.

North of England. Trafford names four maths areas in its consortium test, and statistics is the one families tend to skip. Across the Mersey, the Wirral puts maths in Paper two with non-verbal reasoning, in a Quest assessment sat on a Tuesday. Lancashire had three schools testing on one Saturday with two styles of paper. Calderdale, for the Halifax schools, marks English and maths first and reads creative writing only for children who clear that bar. North Yorkshire added a maths section to the Ripon test for the first time in 2026, while Skipton's schools set something different.