11 plus standardised scores explained: what the numbers mean

Why the 11 plus does not report raw marks

When your child sits the 11 plus, the number of questions they get right is their raw mark. That number is almost never the one you see. The test provider converts it into a standardised score, and it is the standardised score that the admissions authority uses to decide who qualifies.

The reason is fairness. Two things make raw marks hard to compare. The first is age: a child born in September is almost a full year older than a classmate born the following August, and at ten years old that year makes a real difference. The second is the paper itself: a maths paper set one year may be a little harder than the one set the year before, and a verbal reasoning paper cannot be compared mark for mark with a maths paper. Standardising deals with both.

For the basics of the exam, start with what the 11 plus is and who sits it.

The scale most areas use

On the commonly used scale, the average score is set at 100. Most children fall somewhere between roughly 70 and 130, with far more children near the middle than at either end. A score of 100 means the child performed about as well as the average child of their age who sat that paper.

The precise range varies between test providers, so treat those figures as a guide rather than a rule. A standardised score is relative: it tells you how your child did compared with the other children who sat the same test at the same age, not how many questions they answered correctly.

How age standardisation works

The test provider compares each child with children of the same age, usually to the month. The result is that two children with the same raw mark end up with slightly different standardised scores, and the younger of the two receives the higher one.

The adjustment is small, typically a few points, and it is built into the score rather than added on afterwards. It is not a bonus for summer-born children but a correction, so that the score reflects ability rather than birthday. Autumn-born children are not marked down; they are compared with children of their own age, as every child is.

How the paper scores are combined

Most areas test more than one subject, and each paper produces its own standardised score. What happens next depends on the area, so check this part with your admissions authority.

Some areas add the paper scores together to give a total. Some weight the papers, so that one subject counts for more than another: an area might count English and maths more heavily than reasoning, or the other way round. The weighting is published in the admissions arrangements, and worth reading, because it shows where a strong or weak subject matters most.

Once there is a combined score, the area uses it in one of two ways. In some areas there is a qualifying score, and every child at or above it has met the standard, with oversubscription rules deciding who is offered a place. In others the children are ranked in score order and places go down the list. Some areas use both: a qualifying score for most schools and rank order for the most oversubscribed ones. Confirm the current arrangements with the admissions authority, because they can differ between schools in the same county.

Why the pass mark moves

Parents ask what the pass mark is, and the honest answer is that in most areas there is not one in the sense they mean. The qualifying score is usually set for each year’s group of children, either as a proportion of those who sat the test or as the score that fills the available places. Because it depends on who sat the test, it can rise or fall from one year to the next.

That is why we do not state any area’s qualifying score here. The admissions authority publishes the current arrangements and, usually, the scores from previous years. Those should be read as a rough indication of the level, not a target. A child who would have qualified last year might not this year, and the reverse is equally true.

What you can and cannot read into a practice paper

Somewhere in Year 5 you will mark a practice paper and get a percentage, and it is natural to want to turn it into a standardised score. Be careful. You do not know how other children did on that paper, so there is nothing to compare against. Practice papers from different publishers vary in difficulty. There is no age adjustment. And home conditions are rarely the same as a hall with a stranger reading the instructions.

Some publishers print a table converting their own papers’ raw marks into an approximate standardised score. Use it as a rough guide only.

What a practice paper percentage is good for:

• Trend. Three or four papers from the same series, done a few weeks apart, show whether your child is moving in the right direction. One paper on its own tells you very little.
• Weak topics. The pattern of wrong answers is far more useful than the total. Six wrong answers spread across the paper mean something different from six wrong answers all on fractions.
• Timing. A run of blank answers at the end of a section means the problem is pace, not knowledge, and pace is fixable.
• Slips against gaps. A question your child can redo correctly the next day, untimed, was a slip. One they still cannot do is a gap.

What it is not good for is predicting a real score, and that temptation is worth resisting. The eleven plus is competitive, and the only comparison that counts is the one the test provider makes on the day.

Where 11+ Daily fits

11+ Daily does not produce standardised scores, because only a test sat by a large group of children can. What it does is the daily work underneath them: short sessions chosen by the Today screen, one subject and one skill at a time, so the gaps a practice paper reveals get practised in the weeks that follow. The parent view shows accuracy by subject and by skill, without the marking. The trial is 14 days, no card needed.

The short version

Raw marks become standardised scores so that children of different ages, and papers of different difficulty, can be compared fairly. On the commonly used scale 100 is average and most children score between roughly 70 and 130. Areas combine papers differently and set a qualifying score or a rank order that usually changes from year to year, so only the admissions authority’s own figures are worth reading.

Questions parents ask