Free 11+ practice resources — the ones that are actually useful
· 6 min read
An honest guide to the free 11+ resources that are genuinely worth your time — past papers, vocabulary tools, diagnostic assessments, and more.
The short answer
Yes, you can prepare for the 11+ using mostly free resources. The genuinely useful free materials are: GL Assessment's familiarisation papers, past papers from each target school's admissions page, the Eleven Plus Exams Forum archive, BBC Bitesize for KS2 curriculum content, NRICH for Maths problem-solving, Oxford Owl for reading materials, and GrammarPrep's free diagnostic assessment. The rest — 'free' trial PDFs, blog-spam question sets, dubious app downloads — are mostly noise. This article sorts the signal from the noise.
GL Assessment familiarisation materials
GL publishes free familiarisation booklets for verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, English, and Mathematics on their website. These show the exact answer-sheet format children will encounter on test day, with a handful of sample questions per type. They are not a preparation course — but they are the single most important free resource because they remove test-day format surprises. Print them, sit with your child, and practise filling in the answer sheet correctly.
Past papers from school admissions pages
Many grammar schools and consortiums publish past or sample papers on their own admissions pages. CSSE sells past papers (modest fee) directly from csseonline.org.uk — these are essential if your child is sitting Essex selectives. Bucks consortium (The Buckinghamshire Grammar Schools) publishes familiarisation booklets. Trafford and Wirral consortiums publish sample materials. Check each target school or consortium site before paying for third-party practice papers. See our Essex, Bucks, and Trafford guides for specifics.
Eleven Plus Exams Forum
elevenplusexams.co.uk hosts an enormous free archive of region-specific discussion, shared practice papers, and year-by-year cut-off-score histories. The quality varies — it's a community forum, not a curated resource — but the depth of regional knowledge is unmatched. Particularly useful threads: cut-off score history for your target schools, recent parent reports on test format changes, and shared PDF practice papers. Sort by 'most viewed' within your region's subforum to find the best threads.
BBC Bitesize
BBC Bitesize's KS2 Maths and English pages are free, well-produced, and aligned to the National Curriculum that 11+ tests are built on. They won't teach 11+-specific question types, but they will fill gaps in place value, fractions, grammar rules, and comprehension technique — all of which underpin 11+ performance. Use them as reference material when your child hits a topic they don't understand in a practice paper, not as a primary preparation track.
NRICH (Cambridge University)
nrich.maths.org is a free Cambridge Maths resource with a vast problem-solving library. The Primary Stage 2 and Stage 3 problems are ideal for 11+ preparation — they build the multi-step problem-solving skill that distinguishes competitive 11+ Maths from standard curriculum work. Start with the 'Live Problems' or 'Curriculum Mapping' sections. Use NRICH one or two evenings a week as your Maths extension — most children need problem-solving practice more than they need more arithmetic drill.
Oxford Owl free reading resources
oxfordowl.co.uk offers a free e-book library aligned to the KS2 reading age range, along with comprehension activities. This is useful for building vocabulary and comprehension speed in children who don't naturally pick up books. It won't transform a reluctant reader overnight, but it does lower the barrier to daily reading — which, as covered in our when-to-start guide, is the single highest-leverage long-term habit for 11+ success.
Free diagnostic assessments
Before buying anything, find out where your child actually stands. GrammarPrep offers a free 15-minute diagnostic that benchmarks across Maths, English, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning, then produces a readiness report you can actually act on. Most other 11+ subscription platforms bundle their diagnostic content into paid packages, so they're less useful for a no-cost starting benchmark, though several offer short free trials (typically 5-7 days) that give you a similar baseline. Use one or two of these within the first fortnight of preparation, not multiple in a row — children get bored of repeated benchmarking.
Resources to skip (or be careful with)
Avoid: PDF 'free papers' from sites you've never heard of — quality and answer-key accuracy are unreliable. Avoid: apps that promise '11+ in 30 days' — they are marketing hooks, not pedagogy. Be careful with: YouTube tutor videos, which vary hugely in quality (some excellent, many superficial). Be careful with: free timed-practice tools that don't age-standardise scores — raw percentage scores can mislead because younger children in the cohort need to score higher than older peers on standardised papers.
A realistic free-only preparation plan
Phase 1 (diagnostic): take GrammarPrep's free diagnostic. Note the two weakest areas. Phase 2 (familiarisation): download GL's familiarisation papers and work through them untimed. Phase 3 (daily practice): use BBC Bitesize for any curriculum gaps, NRICH for Maths extension, Oxford Owl for daily reading. Phase 4 (past papers): work through published past papers from your target school/region, timed, from the summer of Year 5. This costs almost nothing and covers most preparation needs for confident self-guiding parents. Families who want adaptive difficulty adjustment, topic-mastery tracking, and structured daily sessions add a paid platform — GrammarPrep ships a dated weekly study plan and Y5 writing feedback alongside the adaptive practice, while premium AI-adaptive subscriptions at £40-70/month focus on the size of the question bank.
What about regional free resources?
Many local authorities and school consortiums publish region-specific free materials. Kent County Council publishes Kent Test familiarisation guidance and a sample paper each year. The Buckinghamshire consortium publishes Bucks 11+ familiarisation materials. Trafford and Wirral consortiums publish sample papers and admissions FAQs. These are more valuable than generic national practice sets because they show the exact format your child will sit — always check the regional resources first before spending money on broader material.
The honest bottom line
Free resources are genuinely enough for many families, particularly those with motivated children and parents who can sit with them through the tougher topics. What paid platforms add is structure and signal — they tell you which topic to practise next and whether your child is actually improving, without requiring you to design the plan yourself. Decide whether you want to be the teacher (free tools) or the coach (paid platform + light touch). Neither is wrong. Combining both — light paid platform for structure, free resources for depth — is what most successful families end up doing.