When Should My Child Start Preparing? A Year-by-Year Honest Answer
Start too late and you're cramming; start too early and you risk burnout. Here's what preparation should actually look like in Years 3, 4, 5 and the final summer.
The short answer
The ideal starting point for structured preparation is the beginning of Year 4 — two years before the exam. That allows skills to be built gradually, with no panic and no burnout. Starting in Year 5 is completely workable but requires more consistency. Starting in the summer before the September exam is genuinely hard, and honesty matters here: at that point you are triaging weaknesses, not building foundations.
Year 3 (age 7–8): foundations, not exam prep
No 11+ questions needed yet. The highest-value activities at this age are:
- •Daily reading — the single biggest predictor of 11+ success, especially for CEM areas. Fiction, non-fiction, anything they'll actually read
- •Times tables to automatic recall — every maths topic later depends on this
- •Puzzles and games that build reasoning: chess, logic puzzles, spot-the-difference, tangrams
- •A positive relationship with learning — a child who enjoys practice in Year 3 will still be practising in Year 6
Year 4 (age 8–9): gentle structure begins
This is the sweet spot to begin structured work: 2–3 short sessions a week (20–30 minutes each), covering core maths and English with a first gentle introduction to verbal and non-verbal reasoning question types. The goal this year is familiarity, not performance — a child who has met every question type by the end of Year 4 has an enormous advantage over one meeting them for the first time in Year 5.
Watch for gaps rather than chasing scores: if fractions or inference are weak, this is the year to fix them cheaply and calmly.
Year 5 (age 9–10): the main preparation year
Year 5 is when preparation becomes systematic. A realistic rhythm: 3–4 sessions a week plus regular timed practice in the second half of the year. Key milestones:
- •Autumn term: complete coverage of all curriculum topics and every reasoning question type
- •Spring term: targeted work on weaknesses; introduce timed sections
- •Summer term: full timed mock exams in realistic conditions — at least 4–6 before September
- •Summer holidays: little and often (the exam is days after term starts in some areas — Kent tests in early–mid September)
The final summer: what actually helps
By the last six weeks, the syllabus is what it is. The highest-value activities now are timed mocks (building stamina and pacing), reviewing errors properly (every wrong answer understood, not just marked), keeping vocabulary ticking over, and protecting sleep and morale. A calm, rested child who has sat six realistic mocks will beat an anxious child who crammed new material until the night before — every time.
Where is your child right now?
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