How much 11+ practice should a child do each day? An honest answer for UK parents

A note on timing

For most UK GL-style grammar regions (including Bucks, Kent, Birmingham and Sutton), the 11 Plus exam is sat in the first two weeks of Year 6, typically around mid-September. That means the substantive preparation window effectively closes at the end of Year 5 and through the summer holiday before Year 6 starts. There is no real Year 6 preparation window. Independent school exams sit later (often January of Year 6) and Gloucestershire grammar schools are moving to a summer-of-Year-5 sitting from 2027. The figures below assume the most common GL-style timeline.

The short answer

The right amount of daily 11 Plus practice is the largest amount your child will sustain consistently, without dreading it, capped at the upper bound for their stage. Consistency over intensity, every time. As a guide:

These are not hard rules. A focused, willing child can do less and still go in well prepared. A reluctant child probably should not exceed these numbers. The single most important variable is not minutes per day but whether the practice happens consistently, week after week.

Two kinds of 11 Plus practice (and why parents conflate them)

Most discussion of "how much 11+ practice" treats it as one thing. It is actually two:

1. Daily skill practice. Vocabulary, spelling, grammar, mental maths, verbal reasoning question types. Short, frequent, automatic. This is where consistency matters most. Five to thirty minutes a day, depending on stage.
2. Full practice papers. Mock exam experience. An hour at a table, marked afterwards, training pace and stamina. Far less frequent: monthly through the second half of Year 5, weekly in the final month before the exam.

Mixing these up is the most common mistake. A family doing two-hour weekend sessions of "full papers" from the start of Year 5 is doing the right thing on paper count and the wrong thing on consistency. A family doing fifteen minutes of mixed skill practice every weekday and one mock paper a month from spring of Year 5 is, in our experience, much better placed by exam day.

Year 4: exposure, not mastery

Year 4 is too early for serious 11 Plus preparation but a sensible time to start light, regular exposure. The goal is familiarity with the question types and the multiple-choice format, not mastery. Ten to fifteen minutes a day, four or five days a week, is plenty. Vocabulary cards, a few maths reasoning questions, occasional verbal reasoning puzzles, all in short sessions.

The trap to avoid is starting with the heaviest material: full mock papers, formal weekly sessions, structured tutoring. Children who burn out in Year 4 are almost impossible to re-engage by Year 6. Year 4 is for keeping the door open and the relationship with practice positive, not for cramming.

Year 5, first half (September to February): building the habit

The start of Year 5 is when daily practice should become a real habit. The work at this stage is still building the underlying skills, not yet exam technique. Vocabulary breadth, spelling fluency, KS2 maths confidence, the 21 GL-style verbal reasoning question types. Fifteen to twenty-five minutes a day, five or six days a week, is the right zone for most children.

Short daily sessions are far more useful than longer weekend sessions, because the goal is to lay down skills that compound over the months that follow. This is also when most families need to make the practical decision about tools. A daily app, a small selection of workbooks, or a tutor are the three main options, and most families end up using some combination of all three.

Year 5, second half (March to summer): extending and consolidating

From around March of Year 5, practice should step up. Twenty-five to thirty-five minutes a day, five or six days a week, is the right level for most children. This is the stage where per-question accuracy data becomes genuinely useful, because the difference between "shaky on fractions" and "missing these specific six question types" is the difference between vague worry and a fixable plan.

Practice paper experience matters from this point too, but does not need to be every week. One full paper per month is plenty through the spring and summer term. The goal at this stage is still skill-building, with mocks as periodic checkpoints rather than the main event.

Final month before the exam: timing and exam fitness

For most UK families this is the August summer holiday before Year 6 starts. It is the only window where heavier practice is genuinely useful. Thirty to forty-five minutes of daily skill practice continues, but a full mock paper most weekends becomes important. The goal shifts from learning new material to exam fitness: pacing, stamina, handling the multiple-choice answer sheet under time pressure, and recovering from a question you cannot answer without losing the next five.

This is also the window where over-practising becomes a real risk. Children who arrive at exam day already exhausted perform worse than children who arrive fresh. If your child shows signs of burnout in the final weeks, less is more, even if it feels counterintuitive.

Why consistency beats intensity

Skills laid down in short, regular sessions are remembered. Skills crammed into long, infrequent sessions are mostly forgotten by the next session. This is true for adults learning languages, musicians practising instruments, and children preparing for the 11 Plus. There is nothing special about 11 Plus practice that makes it the exception.

The other reason consistency wins is that the limiting factor in most homes is rarely "not enough content". It is "we did not sit down to do it tonight". A daily ten-minute session that actually happens is worth more than a planned hour-long session that does not.

How to build a daily habit that survives weeknights

A few things genuinely help:

• Same time, same trigger. After dinner, before screen time, on the way home from school. Children settle into routines fastest when the cue is consistent.
• Tool friction matters more than people admit. If practice requires picking the right book, finding the right page, getting a pencil and a notebook, most weeknights it will not happen. Either pre-prepare the materials or use a tool that removes the decision.
• Five minutes is genuinely enough on a tired day. Do not let perfect be the enemy of done. A five-minute session preserves the routine and keeps the habit alive. Skipping a day "because we did not have time for a proper session" is the failure mode.
• Keep weekends lighter, not heavier. A common mistake is to plan small weekday sessions and big weekend sessions. In practice, the weekday sessions get skipped and the weekend session gets postponed. Weekday consistency with a slightly longer Saturday session is more durable.
• Make wrong answers useful. Practice without feedback is much weaker than practice with feedback. Whatever tool you use, build in a way to revisit questions your child got wrong, ideally a few days later, not immediately.

Warning signs you are doing too much

• Your child resists practice they were happy to do a month ago.
• Your child rushes through questions to "get it over with" rather than thinking about them.
• Your child cries before or during sessions.
• Your child performs worse on practice papers as you increase the workload.
• You are doing it because of pressure from other parents rather than evidence your child needs it.

In all of these cases, the right move is to scale back, not to push harder. Burnout in the months before the exam is the single biggest avoidable cause of underperformance, and it is also the most preventable.

Where 11+ Daily fits

11+ Daily is built specifically for the daily-habit half of this picture. The Today screen picks the next session every time the child opens the app, so the friction of "what should we do tonight?" disappears. Sessions are designed to fit five to thirty minutes, depending on how long your child wants to spend. Per-question accuracy means the app naturally returns to the items a child keeps missing through the Weak Points drill. A parents area on the same account shows weekly activity and accuracy, so you do not have to compile stats yourself.

For full mock papers from spring of Year 5 onwards, we recommend pairing 11+ Daily with a Bond Test Papers workbook for monthly mocks through the second half of Year 5 and weekly mocks in the final month before the exam. The two together cover both halves of the picture: the daily habit and the occasional full paper. Our Bond comparison post goes into more detail on the pairing.

The 11+ Daily trial is 14 days, every feature unlocked, no credit card required.

The honest summary

Most UK families overthink the "how much" question and underthink the "how often" question. The right answer for Year 4 is ten minutes most weekdays. For the first half of Year 5, fifteen to twenty-five minutes most weekdays. For the second half of Year 5, twenty-five to thirty-five minutes most weekdays plus a monthly mock paper. For the final month before the exam, thirty to forty-five minutes most days plus a full mock paper most weekends.

The single most important variable is not minutes per day. It is the share of school weeks in which the practice actually happens. A child who does fifteen minutes four nights a week, every week, from September of Year 5 through to the exam, will be better prepared than a child who does two-hour weekend sessions sporadically. Pick a routine your child will sustain, keep it consistent, and you will arrive at exam day in a strong place.