Maths

11 plus Four Operations & BODMAS questions

Updated 15 September 2026·Skill project: Four Operations & BODMAS

Short word problems in shops, factories and classrooms, and bare calculations with brackets in them. One half tests whether your child can pick the right sum, the other whether they do the steps in the right order.

What a Four Operations & BODMAS question looks like

Four Operations & BODMAS is the arithmetic core of 11 plus maths: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, and knowing which of those to do first when a calculation contains more than one. In the live bank the questions come in two halves. Roughly half are short word problems, one step or two, set in shops, minibuses, factories and classrooms. The rest are bare calculations with brackets in them, along with a group that hands your child a fact such as 20 x 6 = 120 and asks them to use it to reach a related one, and a couple that give a completed sum and ask which line of the working is wrong. Its nearest neighbour, Multi-Step Word Problems, is always a story where the work is deciding which sums to do; this project also sets calculations where nothing is hidden and the whole difficulty is the order you work in.

BODMAS is the order you go in when a calculation has more than one operation: Brackets first, then Orders, which means squaring or cubing a number, then Dividing and Multiplying, then Adding and Subtracting. You may have met it as BIDMAS, with Indices in place of Orders. It is the same rule under a different name, and the bank uses it in both senses. Most bracket questions here stop at multiplying and dividing, but one asks for 4 x (3 + 7) squared, divided by 5, where the squaring comes before any multiplying.

Nothing here needs a calculator. The numbers stay inside what a Year 5 child can hold: whole numbers up to four digits and money in pounds and pence. Three questions read their figures off a small table or bar chart first.

Example one: a word problem in two steps

A shop sells books for £8 each. During a sale, the price is reduced by £3. Theo buys 6 books at the sale price. How much does he spend?

There are two things to work out, and they have to happen in that order. First, what does one book cost in the sale? £8 take away £3 is £5. Now, what do six of those cost? 6 x £5 = £30.

The answer is £30.

The tempting wrong answer is £48, which is 6 x £8: the right method applied to the wrong price, because the child multiplied before taking the sale off. £18 tempts from the other side, being 6 x £3, six lots of the reduction rather than six lots of the price.

Example two: brackets and the order of the steps

What is 36 + (48 divided by 6) x 3 - 5?

Brackets come first, so work out 48 divided by 6, which is 8. Write the calculation out again with that in place: 36 + 8 x 3 - 5. Multiplying comes before adding and subtracting, so do 8 x 3 = 24 next. That leaves 36 + 24 - 5, which is worked from left to right: 36 + 24 = 60, then 60 - 5 = 55.

The answer is 55.

Two wrong options here are worth looking at. 37 is what you get by working straight along the line, left to right, ignoring the rule altogether: 36 + 48 = 84, divided by 6 = 14, times 3 = 42, take 5 = 37. It feels like careful work, which is exactly why it catches children. 60 is the answer of someone who did everything right and then stopped one step early, before subtracting the 5.

Example three: using a fact instead of doing the sum

What is 27 x 99?

Written out in full this is a long multiplication, but it does not have to be. 99 is one less than 100, and 27 x 100 = 2700. That is a hundred lots of 27, which is one lot too many, so take one 27 away: 2700 - 27 = 2673.

The answer is 2673.

2700 is on the list because rounding is only half the method: the child rounded 99 up to 100 and then forgot to adjust back. 2727 is the same method with the adjustment going the wrong way, adding the 27 instead of subtracting it. Questions like 20 x 6 = 120, so what is 21 x 6, train the same habit: look at the numbers before starting to write.

How to answer it

Read to the end before writing anything. In a word problem the last sentence is the one that says what is actually being asked, and “how much more is still needed” wants a different number from “how much does it cost altogether”.
In a calculation, deal with brackets and squaring first, and write the calculation out again with the answer in place. Rewriting is what stops a step going missing.
Then do all the multiplying and dividing, then all the adding and subtracting. Within each of those pairs, work from left to right.
In a word problem, take one step at a time and write down what each came to. A number kept in the head is a number that gets lost.
Check by a different route. Multiply back after dividing, or estimate: six books at about £5 should come to about £30.

Common mistakes

Working left to right through a calculation. The answer it produces is nearly always sitting among the options.
Stopping one step early. Working out the total cost of a school trip and giving that, when the question asked how much was still needed after the money already collected.
Rounding without adjusting back. Giving 2700 for 27 x 99, or costing a trip at £20 a child when the price was £23.
Doing the right operation to the wrong number. Multiplying the discount instead of the price, or adding a per-item reduction once at the end rather than to each item.
Adjusting by the wrong amount when using a given fact. From 20 x 6 = 120, a child who wants 21 x 6 needs one more 6, not one more 20 and not one more 12.

How to practise 11 plus Four Operations & BODMAS questions

The two halves of this type need different work. Accuracy comes from times tables known cold and from short, regular arithmetic rather than long sessions, which is the pattern we set out in how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day. The order-of-operations half is not about speed at all: when your child gets one wrong, ask them to say the steps aloud in the order they did them, because they will usually hear the missed bracket themselves. 11+ Daily has a Four Operations & BODMAS project alongside the rest of eleven plus maths, on laptop, tablet or phone, and the full list is on our 11 plus maths practice page. Every question is original to 11+ Daily, nothing is a past paper and nothing is licensed from another publisher, and the bank is re-checked in rounds.

Questions parents ask

What is a Four Operations & BODMAS question in the 11 plus?

It is an arithmetic question that either sets a short word problem, such as working out the total cost of six books at a sale price, or gives a bare calculation containing brackets and more than one operation, such as 36 + (48 divided by 6) x 3 - 5. Both test the same thing: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing accurately, and knowing which operation to carry out first. The numbers are the kind a Year 5 child can handle on paper or in their head.

What does BODMAS stand for, and is BIDMAS different?

BODMAS is the order you work through a calculation that has more than one operation in it: Brackets, then Orders, then Dividing and Multiplying, then Adding and Subtracting. Orders means squaring or cubing a number. BIDMAS is the same rule under a different name, with Indices in place of Orders, so a child who has learnt one has learnt the other. Dividing and multiplying rank equally, as do adding and subtracting, and equal-ranking steps are done from left to right.

How do you answer a BODMAS question?

Do the brackets first and write down what each one comes to, then deal with any squaring, then all the multiplying and dividing, and only then the adding and subtracting, going left to right within each stage. Writing the calculation out again after each stage is what stops a child losing a step. The most common wrong answer on these questions is the one you get by working straight along the line from left to right, and it is usually sitting among the options.

What is the difference between Four Operations & BODMAS and Multi-Step Word Problems?

Multi-Step Word Problems are always a story, and the work is deciding which sums to do and in what order before any arithmetic starts. Four Operations & BODMAS includes short word problems too, but it also sets bare calculations where nothing is hidden and the whole difficulty is carrying out the steps accurately and in the right order. The two overlap deliberately, because a child who is shaky on the arithmetic will lose marks on a word problem even when they have worked out exactly what to do.

Do children need a calculator for these questions?

No. Every question of this type is built to be done in the head or with a little working on paper, using methods such as splitting a number up (9 x 36 becomes 9 x 30 plus 9 x 6) or rounding and adjusting (27 x 99 becomes 27 x 100 minus 27). Confirm the current arrangements for your area with the admissions authority, but 11 plus maths is generally worked without a calculator, so quick mental methods are worth more than a written method a child cannot finish in time.

Practise Four Operations & BODMAS in 11+ Daily

Four Operations & BODMAS is one of the 78 skill projects in 11+ Daily. The Today screen brings it round when it is the right thing to revise, and a wrong answer comes back in a later session until it is right. 14-day free trial, no card needed.

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