11 plus Money questions

What a Money question looks like

A Money question in the 11 plus sets out a small shopping or saving situation and asks for one figure, with five options underneath. Nearly every answer is an amount in pounds and pence, or a count that comes straight out of one: how many weeks of saving, how many 20p coins, how many visits. That is what separates this type from the multi-step word problems it sits beside, which count eggs, metres and minutes as readily as cash. Here the arithmetic is always money, and so are the traps.

The range is practical and quite narrow. There are no exchange rates, no interest and no tax. What there is: change from a note, the cost of several things at one price, the cost of one thing when only a group price is given, saving a fixed amount each week until a target is reached, a fraction or a percentage of an amount, working backwards from what is left, and comparing two ways of paying for the same thing. About one question in five puts the prices in a price list, a bar chart, a pictogram or a line graph, so the figures have to be read off before any sum can start.

Example one: the cost of one, then the cost of eight

5 notebooks cost £4.75. How much do 8 notebooks cost? The options are £7.40, £7.60, £7.80, £6.60 and £8.00.

You cannot get from 5 to 8 in one jump, so find the cost of one notebook first. £4.75 shared between 5 is 95p, because 5 lots of 95p make £4.75. Now 8 notebooks cost 8 lots of 95p. Working in pence keeps it tidy: 95 x 8 = 760, and 760p is £7.60.

The answer is £7.60.

£8.00 is the option that catches children. Round 95p up to £1 and eight of them make exactly £8.00, which looks neat enough to tick. Rounding is for checking an answer is roughly right, never for producing it.

Example two: working backwards from what is left

Zara spends one-third of her pocket money on a magazine and has £4.80 left. How much pocket money did she start with? The options are £7.00, £7.20, £6.40, £8.00 and £9.60.

The number in the question is what is left, not what was spent. If she spent one third, then two thirds are still in her pocket, so £4.80 is two thirds. One third is half of that, £2.40. Three thirds make the whole, so she started with 3 lots of £2.40, which is £7.20.

The answer is £7.20. Check it: one third of £7.20 is £2.40, and £7.20 take away £2.40 leaves £4.80.

£6.40 is the trap. It comes from dividing £4.80 by 3 to get £1.60 and adding it on, which treats £4.80 as the whole amount rather than a part of it. The fraction belongs to the starting amount, and that is the thing you have not been told.

Example three: a price list and two ways of paying

Some questions put the prices in a table and ask which way of paying works out cheaper.

The Patel family, 2 adults and 2 children, visits 4 times a year. Is it cheaper to buy a family membership or to pay standard entry each visit, and how much is saved?

Price up one visit first. Two adults at £6.00 is £12.00. Two children at £3.50 is £7.00. One visit costs £12.00 + £7.00 = £19.00. Four visits cost 4 x £19.00 = £76.00. The membership costs £68.00 for the year however often they go. £76.00 - £68.00 = £8.00, so the membership is cheaper by £8.00.

The tempting wrong answer compares one visit at £19.00 against the £68.00 membership and concludes the family should pay each time. The words “4 times a year” are doing real work: a comparison is only fair when both sides cover the same four visits.

How to answer it

1. Read to the end and say what the answer will be: an amount, a number of weeks, or which option is cheaper. Money questions ask for the last step, and the earlier steps are all wrong answers waiting.
2. Pick pounds or pence, whichever keeps the numbers whole, and stay in it until the end. 85p times 4 is 340, and 340p is £3.40.
3. If you are given the price of a group and asked about a different number, find the cost of one first. Six pens for £4.20 is 70p each, and nine of them cost £6.30.
4. Work in stages and write the running total down each time, with the decimal points lined up underneath each other.
5. Look back at the question and check you have answered it, then check the size of the answer is sensible. Change from a £5 note cannot be more than £5.

Common mistakes

• Answering a middle step. Giving the total spent instead of the change, or the discount instead of the sale price. Each of those is a correct number, and it is sitting there among the options.
• Dropping the pence. £7.50 for three tickets becomes £21.00 rather than £22.50 because only the £7 was multiplied. Split the price into pounds and pence and multiply both parts.
• Taking the fraction of the wrong amount. When money is spent twice over, the second fraction belongs to what was left, not to the original amount. Two fifths of what remains from £50 is not two fifths of £50.
• Being one out on a break-even. If a pass costs the same as 30 visits, it does not save anything at 30 visits. It starts to save from the 31st. Work out where the two costs are level, then take one more.
• Using one price from a price list for everybody. Adults and children have different prices, and a family ticket may or may not beat buying separately. Price each group on its own line before adding.

How to practise 11 plus Money questions

Money is one of the eleven plus topics where a child can be genuinely fluent and still drop marks, so it repays a particular kind of practice: instead of asking whether the answer was right, ask them to say out loud what each number they wrote down means. The one that turns out to be the total spent, when the question wanted the change, is the mistake this whole topic is built on. Little and often works better than a long session, which is the pattern we set out in how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day. 11+ Daily has a Money project alongside the rest of the maths topics, 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