GL 11 plus test day: the answer sheet, the clock, and what to expect

What this page covers, and where it may not apply to you

In most grammar school areas the 11 plus is a multiple-choice test: the questions are printed in a booklet and the answers are marked on a separate sheet that is read by machine. Everything below about that sheet describes those papers.

It may not describe yours. Essex CSSE writes its own paper, Bexley and the Wirral have moved to Quest, and several more areas move to Quest or FSCE for 2028 entry. A few areas use GL’s standard-format papers, where the child writes the answer rather than marking a box. The subjects are much the same whoever sets the test, but what happens on the desk is not, so confirm the format with your admissions authority before rehearsing anything. Our guide to the GL Assessment 11 plus and its four papers has the list of who is changing and when.

The separate answer sheet

Where the papers are multiple choice, the child reads the question in the booklet, works it out there, then finds the numbered row on the answer sheet and marks the box for their chosen option in pencil.

Nothing about this is difficult. It is worth attention anyway, because the marks it costs are marks the child had already earned. Four things go wrong, and they go wrong in a hurry rather than through carelessness.

• Skipping a question in the booklet but not on the sheet. A child leaves question 12 to come back to, answers 13, and marks it in row 12. Every answer after that sits one row out. A run of correct work can be scored wrong from that point on, and the child has no sense of anything being amiss.
• Losing your place on the way back. The same problem in reverse: the child returns to the skipped question, marks it in the row they happen to be looking at, and displaces the rest.
• Rubbing out untidily. A half-erased mark can leave the machine reading two answers in one row, and a row with two marks is not a row with one right answer in it. If a mark is being changed, it has to be rubbed out completely.
• Pressing too lightly. A faint mark may not be picked up at all. A firm, definite pencil line, in the way the sheet’s own instructions describe, is what is wanted.

Two habits deal with nearly all of it. Check that the row number matches the question number, every time, and check it deliberately after any skipped question. And transfer each answer as it is worked out rather than marking a page of them in a block at the end: a block that the clock interrupts is a set of answers that score nothing.

There is no penalty for a wrong answer

This is the single most useful thing on this page. On GL multiple-choice papers a wrong answer costs nothing that a blank does not, so a blank box is never the better option.

It is worth saying to a child directly, because plenty of them assume otherwise. Guessing is not cheating and it is not punished. If two options can be eliminated, a guess between the remaining three is a real chance at a mark. If nothing can be eliminated, it is still a chance, and a blank is not.

That has a practical consequence at the end of the paper. If time is running short, the last thing to do is go back and put a mark in every empty row, rather than spending the final minute on one more question properly. Marking schemes are set locally, so confirm the current arrangements with your admissions authority.

The clock, and the question that will not yield

Each paper is one continuous piece of work against one clock, so the skill being tested alongside the subject is simply not getting stuck.

A workable rule: if a question has not yielded in a reasonable time, mark the best remaining option, note the number, and move on. Coming back to it later is cheap. Running out of paper is not, because the cost of a stuck question is not one mark, it is every question further on that was never reached.

What counts as a reasonable time depends on the paper, which is why it is worth working out at home rather than on the day. Once your area’s timings are known, the arithmetic is straightforward, and a child who has practised with that number in mind makes the decision automatically instead of making it under pressure. Deciding to move on is much harder when it feels like giving up on a question, and much easier when it is just the rule.

The routine worth rehearsing

This is a small job, done a handful of times, not a term’s work. The sequence is: read the question in the booklet, work it out there, find the row, check the number against the question, mark it cleanly, move on.

Practise it with a printed sheet in the format your area uses. GL publishes free familiarisation material for each subject, including a sample answer sheet, and most admissions authorities link to it. Our guide to 11 plus exam papers and what is worth using covers what else is available, and mock exams, when and how many is where the sheet gets practised under something like real conditions.

Two or three run-throughs are enough to make the routine familiar. After that, more practice of the mechanics adds very little, and the time is better spent on the subjects.

The night before and the morning of

Keep both ordinary. That is most of the advice.

The evening before: pack what the admissions authority has asked for, check the address and the arrival time, and go to bed at the usual hour. Last-minute practice is the one thing genuinely worth avoiding. It tends to turn up a gap that cannot be closed in an evening, which helps nobody, and it costs sleep, which matters more than anything it might have taught.

The morning: a normal breakfast, and leaving early enough that the journey is not part of the story. Arriving with time to spare is worth more than anything said in the car.

One practical point that is easier to sort out beforehand than afterwards. If a child is unwell on the day, or something goes wrong at the test centre, many admissions authorities have a process for recording it, and it usually has a deadline close to the test. Find out what yours does before the day rather than after.

What you cannot know in advance, and should not chase

Timings, the number of questions, the order of the papers, whether there is a break: all of it is set locally and can change from one year to the next. We deliberately do not print any of those figures, because a number that is right for Kent may be wrong for the West Midlands, and a number copied from a forum post written three years ago may be wrong everywhere now.

The admissions authority publishes the current arrangements each year, usually alongside the registration details. That is the only source worth relying on, and reading it properly once removes most of what parents worry about in the final fortnight. What the paper contains is a separate question, and why the GL 11 plus is learnable covers what is and is not predictable about it.

It is also worth knowing how the result is arrived at, because the raw mark is not the number that decides anything. How standardised scores work explains the age adjustment and why a local pass mark is local.

How to practise for the 11 plus in the weeks before the test

Everything on this page is mechanics, and mechanics are the smaller half. Nothing here decides whether your child can do the maths, or knows the word, or sees the pattern. It decides whether what they do know reaches the answer sheet intact, which is worth a few evenings and not much more. The rest of the preparation is the subjects themselves, and that work is done over months, across the whole eleven plus year that led up to the day.

11+ Daily is built for that longer stretch rather than for the last fortnight. The Today screen picks one subject and one specific skill for a session of roughly seven to ten minutes, so the choice of what to revise is made for you, and a parents area shows which skills have been covered and how accurately. Questions are organised by skill rather than tagged to an area, and we are not connected to GL Assessment. The 14-day free trial needs no card.

Questions parents ask