Year 5 and the 11+: A Month-by-Month Plan From November

In short

• A child in Year 5 in November 2026 sits the 11+ in September 2027, roughly ten months away, which is enough time to prepare well without rushing.
• November and December are for confirming the test format and finding the two or three topics that cost your child the most marks, not for timed papers.
• January to March builds accuracy topic by topic; timed practice starts around Easter, once accuracy is there to be timed.
• Registration for the test usually opens in late spring and closes in early summer of Year 5, so put the dates in your calendar now.
• Twenty to thirty minutes on most days beats long weekend sessions, and one completely free day a week keeps the whole year sustainable.

The short answer

If your child is in Year 5 this November, they will most likely sit the 11+ in early-to-mid September 2027, at the start of Year 6. That is about ten months away, which is a comfortable runway rather than a race. The families who do best use the time in a particular order: first find out exactly which test your child will sit and where the gaps are, then build accuracy topic by topic through the winter, then add timing in the spring, and only then move to full mock papers in the summer. Doing those things in the wrong order, especially starting with timed papers, is the most common reason a well-meaning Year 5 plan stalls by February. The rest of this article sets out the plan month by month, with a realistic sense of how much time each stage takes.

What should a Year 5 child do before Christmas?

Two things, and neither of them is timed papers. First, confirm the test. Find the schools you are realistically considering and check which test each one uses: GL Assessment across most selective areas, the CSSE in Essex, the Kent Test in Kent, and school-set papers at some super-selectives. Our free exam board finder settles most cases in a minute, and the board comparison guide explains what each format actually tests. This matters more than anything else you do this term: an Essex CSSE child, for example, sits English and maths papers with no verbal or non-verbal reasoning, so a box of generic reasoning books is largely wasted effort. Second, find the gaps. Spend the first few weeks on short, untimed practice across every topic the test covers, and keep a simple note of what goes wrong. Most children turn out to have two or three topics that cost them the majority of their marks: often fractions and ratio in maths, inference questions in comprehension, or one particular reasoning question type. Knowing those by Christmas is worth more than any number of practice papers, because it tells you where the next three months should go.

How should the Christmas holidays be used?

Lightly. The Christmas break is the first long stretch of free time in Year 5, and it is tempting to fill it, but a tired child in January is a poor trade for a few extra hours in December. A good holiday rhythm is twenty to thirty minutes on most mornings, aimed squarely at the gaps you found in November, with several full days off around Christmas itself. Reading counts and should continue every day: a novel a little above your child's comfort level, read together where you can, builds the vocabulary and inference skills that sit underneath the English paper and much of verbal reasoning. Board games, puzzle books and mental arithmetic in the car do real work too, especially for children who are tired of anything that looks like school. The aim by early January is a child who has made a visible dent in one or two weak topics and still feels positive about the whole thing.

What happens between January and Easter?

This is the long middle of the year, and it is where most of the improvement happens. Work through the weak topics one at a time, a week or two each, untimed, with methods explained whenever something goes wrong. Keep a short weekly mixed review so that topics covered in January are not forgotten by March. In practical terms that means around four or five short sessions a week plus daily reading, which is roughly three to five hours in total and in line with our Year 5 and 6 revision timetable. Accuracy is the only measure that matters at this stage. A child who gets fractions questions right slowly in February will get them right quickly in June; a child who is pushed to be quick before they are accurate learns to guess. Protect one full day a week with no 11+ work at all, and expect a dip or two: progress through the winter is rarely a straight line, and a bad week is not a sign that anything is wrong.

When should timed practice and mock exams start?

Timed practice usually starts around Easter of Year 5, once accuracy is solid across most topics. Begin with timed sections rather than whole papers: ten or fifteen minutes on a single question type, so your child learns what a realistic pace feels like without the fatigue of a full paper. Full timed papers and mock exams fit best from late spring into the summer, typically one every two or three weeks at first, rising towards the end. Each one is only as useful as the review afterwards: go through every wrong answer and sort it into a gap in knowledge, a misread question or a timing problem, because each needs a different fix. Our mock exam schedule guide sets out how many to do and when. Remember that a mock score in May is a snapshot, not a prediction; children commonly improve a great deal between May and September.

When do you need to register for the test?

Registration is separate from the secondary school application, and missing it closes the door for that year however well prepared your child is. In most areas the registration window opens in late spring of Year 5 and closes in early-to-mid summer, well before the September test, but the exact dates vary by region and test, and some schools run their own process. Look up your area's dates now and put both the opening and closing date in your calendar, along with the date the secondary school application form is due in Year 6 (31 October in England). Our registration and deadlines guide explains how the two processes fit together. If your child needs access arrangements such as extra time, raise it at registration, since evidence is usually requested then.

What about the summer before the test?

The summer between Year 5 and Year 6 is the final stretch, and it is where the earlier months pay off. A sensible summer combines regular timed practice in the exact test format, a mock every week or two with careful review, and continued work on whatever still goes wrong, while still leaving room for a proper holiday. Our summer preparation guide covers the details, and the final eight weeks plan takes you week by week up to test day. Families who followed the order in this article usually find the summer calmer than they expected: the gaps were found in November, fixed over the winter and timed in the spring, so August is about polish and confidence rather than panic.

Where GrammarPrep fits

GrammarPrep is built around the order this article describes. It configures itself to your child's test, so an Essex family practises CSSE-style English and maths rather than generic reasoning, and each session starts at the level your child reached last time. It tracks which topics are costing marks, so the November job of finding the gaps happens as a by-product of short daily practice, and it remembers what your child has already answered so questions do not repeat. There is a free plan with one session a day, no card and no end date. If you would like a quick sense of how your child copes with real 11+ questions before deciding anything, our free five-question sample takes about five minutes and needs no account.