11+ Revision Timetable for Years 5 and 6
· 9 min read
A realistic weekly 11+ revision timetable for Years 5 and 6 — how much, how often, and how to balance practice with family life, sleep and school work.
How many hours of 11+ practice per week?
There is no single right number, and any figure should match your child's age, energy and existing school workload. As a working baseline, most families in Year 5 settle on around 3-5 hours of dedicated 11+ practice per week — broken into 20-30 minute daily sessions plus one longer weekend session — rising to 5-7 hours per week by the spring of Year 5, and then 6-8 hours in the final few months before the test. These are sustainable averages, not minimums. A child who can only fit four 20-minute weekday sessions plus one weekend hour (a total of about 2.5 hours) and does that consistently for 18 months will outperform a child doing eight hours one week and nothing the next. Consistency matters more than total volume, and the routine matters more than the timetable on paper. The hours below assume practice sessions are focused — quiet space, no phones, one subject or one paper at a time — rather than half-engaged with the TV on. Short and engaged beats long and distracted, every time.
A weekly template for Year 5 autumn term
A useful Year 5 autumn template looks like this. Monday: 20 minutes of verbal reasoning practice (rotate question types week by week). Tuesday: 20 minutes of Maths topic practice, focusing on one or two specific areas. Wednesday: 25 minutes of reading and a short comprehension exercise. Thursday: 20 minutes of non-verbal reasoning. Friday: rest day, or a short 15-minute review of weak spots from the week. Saturday: a longer 45-60 minute mixed-topic session, or one timed section from a practice paper. Sunday: 30 minutes of catch-up on whichever subject felt weakest that week, plus 15 minutes of free reading. Total: roughly 3.5 hours of structured practice and 15-20 minutes of reading on top. Adjust subjects to match your target school — if your child is sitting Tiffin or a similar Kingston upon Thames test that covers only English and Maths, drop verbal and non-verbal reasoning in favour of more written and open-answer Maths. If they are sitting a four-subject GL paper, keep all four. The template is a starting point; what matters is that something happens on most days.
Adjusting the template for Year 6 (the final stretch)
Year 6 should feel different in shape, not just intensity. From September of Year 6, two things change: practice gets more time-pressured, and full papers replace topic-by-topic drills. A workable Year 6 autumn rhythm: weekdays carry shorter targeted sessions (15-20 minutes each, focused on weak areas identified from recent papers), and the weekend carries one or sometimes two full timed papers under realistic conditions, each followed by a careful mark-and-review session — see our practice-papers guide for the method. Keep one full rest day per week and protect sleep aggressively as the test approaches. In the final two weeks before the exam, the volume should taper, not surge: shorter, lighter sessions, no new content, focus on confidence and exam-day logistics. A child who arrives at test day rested and confident outperforms a child who arrived exhausted from a final week of long papers, almost every time. The week before the test is for warming the engine, not redlining it.
Balancing 11+ with school work, sleep and family time
The 11+ is a year of family life, not a year you put family life on hold. Protect three things in particular. First, sleep: a Year 5 child needs 9-11 hours and a Year 6 child 9-10 hours; reliable sleep is more predictive of practice quality than any specific revision technique. Second, school work: do not let 11+ practice push school homework into the late evening, because tired evenings teach a child to associate study with exhaustion. Do 11+ practice before school dinner where possible, and finish before bedtime wind-down. Third, friendships and activities: completely dropping clubs, hobbies or weekend friend time for a year often produces resentment that hurts motivation more than the extra practice helps. Keep at least one non-academic activity going. If practice and school are colliding consistently, the practice needs to shrink, not the sleep or the school. Schedule explicit 'no 11+' time — Friday evenings, Sunday afternoons, or whatever fits — so the rest of family life is not measured against the exam.
How do I know if we are doing too much?
Three signals tell you to dial back. The first is sleep disruption — a child who used to sleep through the night starting to wake up worrying, or who cannot fall asleep on practice nights. The second is plateau or regression on practice papers: scores stop improving, or start drifting down, despite more hours going in. This is almost always a sign of cognitive fatigue rather than ability decline, and the fix is rest, not more practice. The third is loss of motivation — a child who used to engage with practice now needing increasing nagging, dragging their feet, or producing notably scrappier work than they did a month earlier. None of these signs mean you are 'failing' the preparation; they mean the dial has gone too high and a step back is needed. Reduce by 30-50% for a week, focus on confidence-building topics where your child is strong, and reassess. The reset usually returns performance to its previous trajectory within a week or two. For pacing your start point in the first place, see our guide on when to start 11+ preparation.
Where do timed practice papers fit in the week?
Timed papers are the most demanding sessions of the week, so plan them deliberately rather than slotting them in wherever there is a gap. In Year 5, a single timed section (not a full paper) on a Saturday morning is plenty — quiet room, kitchen timer, no interruptions. Mark it on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, then use the errors log to set Monday's targeted practice. In Year 6, build up to one or two full timed papers per week, ideally with one sat on a Saturday morning to mirror the actual exam window. Avoid Sunday-evening papers entirely; the post-paper tiredness collides with the school week. For mock exams under realistic conditions — sitting alongside other children, in an unfamiliar room — book them periodically rather than weekly, with at least two days of light practice between any two papers. Our guide to mock exam scheduling sets out a realistic frequency, and our free diagnostic at grammarprep.uk/onboarding gives a starting benchmark across the four subjects before you commit to a particular practice rhythm.