How to Revise for the 11+ in 3 Months

Can You Prepare for the 11+ in Three Months? An Honest Guide for Parents

Preparing for the 11+ in three months is tough. It is definitely possible, but it is a significant amount of work, and how manageable it feels depends enormously on which three months you are working with.

If your first exam is in November and you are starting in August or September, you have very little time to identify and properly address gaps, especially with the added pressure of school starting at the same time. On top of that, you will need to make sure your preparation is pitched at exactly the right level for the schools your child is applying to.

However, if your three months include the summer holidays, things feel considerably more manageable. You have more time in the day, preparation does not feel quite as rushed, and the absence of school means your child has more capacity to focus.

If you do find yourself with just three months to go, here is the approach I would take.

The First Six Weeks

1. Know Exactly What Your Child Is Sitting

Start by finding out precisely which exams your child will be taking. 11+ exams vary depending on the school, and some children will sit online tests covering English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, while others may have written papers only, or written papers in addition to online tests.

This step is crucial. You need to know what you are preparing for before you begin, because the resources and approach that work for a computer-based multiple choice test are quite different from those needed for a written paper at a selective independent school.

2. Get the Right Resources

Once you know the format, make sure you are using the right materials. If your child is sitting mostly written papers, online platforms like Atom Learning can be helpful for targeted practice but they should not be your main focus, as they only cover multiple choice questions and do not assess written comprehension or creative writing at all.

Written papers need written resources and past papers. Computer-based tests need platforms like Atom Learning. Using the wrong type of resource for the wrong type of exam is one of the most common and most costly preparation mistakes.

3. Use Practice Papers to Find Gaps

At this early stage, the goal is not perfection. It is identification. Use practice papers to find out where the gaps are, review those areas together and then apply the learning back to exam-style questions.

CGP books work well for this. I would avoid using online platforms to find gaps at this stage. Those platforms are best used for practice once you have already identified the gaps and addressed the underlying knowledge.

If you find marking English or written work difficult or time-consuming, Study Planet's marking tool can do this for you and provide clear, specific next steps. It is completely free to try, with no payment details required.

4. Identify Patterns in Mistakes

Your child will need to complete multiple papers to build a clear picture of where the issues lie. In the first couple of weeks, do not worry too much about timing. Focus instead on accuracy and understanding.

After each paper, look for patterns. In maths, it might be fractions or percentages. In English, it could be vocabulary or inference questions. Once you have a clear list of recurring weaknesses, you can begin to focus your teaching on those specific areas rather than trying to cover everything at once.

5. Teach, Not Just Practise

This is one of the most important points in this whole guide. If your child is struggling with a topic, they need to be taught it properly, not simply given more questions that they continue to get wrong. Repeated failure at the same type of question without intervention does not build understanding. It builds frustration.

Take time to explain the method clearly, work through examples together, and then apply it back to exam-style questions. This cycle of teaching, understanding and applying is where real progress happens.

6. Build a Simple Routine

If you are working through the summer holidays, aim for around two hours a day, or three if that feels manageable, Monday to Friday. The key is consistency rather than intensity. Working through papers, identifying gaps, teaching the content and then applying it again is the cycle that produces the most reliable improvement over a short period of time.

The Second Six Weeks

In the second half of your three months, the focus begins to shift from identifying and addressing gaps to building exam confidence and technique.

1. Introduce Timed Practice

Begin introducing timed papers each week. This helps your child become more comfortable working under pressure and builds exam confidence gradually rather than leaving it to the final days before the exam.

2. Do Not Neglect Creative Writing

Creative writing is often the most overlooked part of 11+ preparation, but it is incredibly important. For many children, it is the only opportunity in the exam to show personality, creativity and genuine control of language. Make sure you are practising this regularly, once a week at minimum.

Getting meaningful feedback on creative writing is one of the hardest parts of home preparation. Study Planet's Writing Accelerator assesses your child's creative writing against real 11+ examiner standards and gives you a clear breakdown of what is working, what needs to improve and exactly what to focus on next. Try it free at study-planet.co.uk.

3. Keep Working on Weak Areas

By now you should have a good understanding of your child's strengths and weaknesses. Keep returning to the areas they find most difficult. Progress in these areas can feel slower, but consistency is the key. It is completely normal to revisit the same topics multiple times. Your child probably will not master a strategy in one session and retain it perfectly, so keep revisiting and reinforcing.

4. Keep Going

This is often the hardest stage of a three month preparation period. Everyone is a little tired, and progress can feel slower than it did in the first six weeks. But by this point you will have covered a significant amount of ground, even if it does not always feel that way day to day. Stick with it. The consistency you maintain in these final weeks is what consolidates everything that came before.

Final Thoughts

Preparing for the 11+ in three months is challenging, but it can absolutely be done with a clear plan and consistent effort. The approach outlined above gives you the best possible chance of making real progress in the time available.

That said, if you do have the option of starting earlier, doing so makes the whole process significantly less pressured and gives your child the time to develop skills gradually rather than intensively.

It is also important not to compare yourself or your child to what others are doing. You know your child and your own capacity for work. Focus on what works for your family rather than on stories about four hours of tutoring a day. In reality, structured and consistent preparation of a manageable length, with expert feedback built in, is what produces results.

Study Planet's Writing Accelerator is the tool I built specifically to support parents through exactly this kind of preparation. It gives your child instant, tutor-level feedback on their comprehension and creative writing, so you always know where they stand and what to do next, without needing to be a specialist yourself. Try it completely free at study-planet.co.uk, with no payment details required.