Year 3 and the West Midlands 11+: what actually helpsYear 3 and the West Midlands 11+: what actually helps

Nineteen schools in Birmingham, Warwickshire, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Shropshire (18 grammar schools and Ashlawn School in Rugby, which has a selective class) use one shared 11+ entrance test. Together they make up the West Midlands Grammar Schools partnership. In Birmingham, that's the eight grammar schools: the six King Edward VI grammar schools, Bishop Vesey's Grammar School and Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls. The test is provided by GL Assessment.

• Two papers, each around 50 to 60 minutes including instructions and example questions.
• All multiple choice, with answers marked on a separate answer sheet. There is no writing paper.
• Four areas: English comprehension, verbal reasoning, maths, and non-verbal and spatial reasoning.
• Weighting: the partnership and the King Edward VI Foundation give 50% to English and verbal reasoning, 25% to non-verbal reasoning and 25% to maths. Some Warwickshire schools' policies don't give percentages, and King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon says its weightings are set by the school.
• Age-standardised: scores take account of a child's age, so the youngest in the year are not at a disadvantage.

Children register in Year 5 and sit the test in Year 6. Registration works differently in Warwickshire. Registering for the test is not the same as applying for a school place: you apply to your council separately, by 31 October of Year 6.

The full details, with the dates published for this year's applicants, are in our West Midlands 11+ guide and our Birmingham 11+ guide.

The schools haven't published dates beyond September 2027 entry yet. The dates below follow the pattern used for September 2027 entry, so treat the months as a guide, and check the West Midlands Grammar Schools website and Warwickshire County Council's 11+ pages when the new dates come out.

How we worked this out: children who sat the test in September 2026 were born between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2016, and they were in Year 6. A child born three years later, between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019, is in Year 3 now and reaches Year 6 in September 2029. If your child starts Year 3 in September 2027 instead, add one year to every date.

For a child in Year 3 from September 2026 to July 2027:

The schools are clear, and it's worth reading what they say in their own words on the partnership's preparing for the test page and the King Edward VI Foundation's test page:

• They say they are not connected to, and don't endorse or recommend, any tuition provider, and that intensive coaching or tuition is not in the long-term best interests of your child.
• They note that many children are anxious about sitting tests, and suggest you help most by not putting pressure on your child.
• They point families to a free familiarisation guide and sample questions. These are written for children about to sit the test, so they're more useful in Year 5 than in Year 3.

Birmingham City Council's policy is that no teaching or coaching for the test should happen in Birmingham's primary schools.

So in Year 3, the aim isn't to prepare for a test. It's to build the everyday skills the test draws on, which are the same skills that help at school anyway.

Half of the test's weighting is English and verbal reasoning, and both rest on reading well and knowing a lot of words. Verbal reasoning questions are mostly about words: their meanings, their spellings and how they link.

The Education Endowment Foundation, which reviews evidence for schools, says shared book reading should be at the centre of how parents support young children's learning, and that it works better when it leads to longer and more frequent conversations about the book.

Things to try:

• Read together, even when your child can read alone. Take turns with pages.
• Stop at an interesting word and ask what it might mean. Look it up together in a dictionary, which is something Year 3 and 4 children learn to do at school.
• Mix stories with non-fiction, poems and comics. Let your child choose some of the books.
• Ask "Why do you think she did that?" rather than "What happened?"

Times tables come up all through the maths section, and they make fractions, division and word problems much quicker later on.

The national curriculum asks children to know the 3, 4 and 8 times tables in Year 3, and every table up to 12 × 12 by the end of Year 4. In June of Year 4, schools run the government's multiplication tables check: 25 questions on screen, 6 seconds each. There is no pass mark, and your child's teacher shares the score with you.

Things to try:

• Count in 3s, 4s and 8s on the walk to school or up the stairs.
• Ask division too: "24 sweets shared between 3 people?" Times tables and division are the same facts.
• A couple of minutes a day does more than a long session once a week.

A quarter of the test's weighting is non-verbal and spatial reasoning: spotting patterns in shapes, finding the odd one out and picturing how a shape looks when it's turned. These are puzzles, and most children enjoy them when they don't feel like a test.

Things to try:

• Jigsaws, tangrams, building bricks and drawing what a model looks like from above.
• "What comes next?" with patterns of shapes, colours or numbers.
• Spot-the-difference and odd-one-out games.
• Board and card games that need counting and planning.

There's no magic number of minutes, and no research says 10 minutes is the right amount for every child. We suggest it because it's easy to keep going:

• It fits around school, clubs and tired evenings, so it's still happening in a month's time.
• It ends before attention runs out, so your child finishes while it still feels manageable.
• It leaves time for reading for fun, playing and doing nothing much.

The Education Endowment Foundation suggests that helping children build a regular routine, and helping them plan and manage their own time and effort, is often more valuable than sitting beside them doing the work for them.

If your child starts to dread it, stop for a while. Enjoying reading and feeling good about numbers matter far more in Year 3 than any amount of practice.

• Timed papers and full mock exams. These help with pacing in Year 5 and Year 6. In Year 3, timing adds pressure without much benefit.
• Test technique, like answer sheets and moving on from a hard question.
• Long vocabulary lists. Words learned from books stick better than words learned from a list.
• Maths beyond what school is teaching. Being secure in this year's maths is worth more than racing ahead.

You can do everything on this page without NextJen. If you'd like some structure, and someone else to do the marking and explaining, NextJen has a Year 3 start inside the 11+ Year 4 course.

• 10-minute sessions of 8 questions that end calmly. No timers.
• Bigger text and short questions, with a read-aloud button that uses your device's own voice and works on most tablets and computers. Read-aloud is turned off for questions that test reading.
• Reading, maths, words and shapes at the gentlest level, with a short lesson for every skill and a worked answer to every question. Maths explanations have pictures.
• A sticker book your child fills by finishing sessions. Nothing is lost for missing a day.
• A parent view without scores. Each skill shows as Secure or Building, with the next skill to work on and one 10-minute activity to do together away from the screen.
• No mock exams. Mocks are for Year 5 and Year 6.

Each September, your child moves on to Year 4 questions, and in Year 5 they move to the 11+ Year 5 course. Every skill score carries over.

Price: £20 a month or £200 a year per child. Waitlist families get a founding price of £16 a month (£160 a year), fixed while your plan continues without a break. On 1 September your child moves on to 11+ Year 4 and its price, £30 a month, or £24 for founding families: monthly plans from the first payment on or after 1 September, and yearly plans when the year you've paid for ends. The yearly plan for the Year 3 start is sold from 1 September to 31 May. Read the founding price terms. Your family's first plan starts with a 7-day free trial. We take card details up front, and the plan becomes paid unless you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your parent area, and you can ask for a full refund within 14 days of your first payment.

Children practise in child mode inside your account. There's no child login, and we never ask for your child's email address or surname. There is no tracking in the child area.

NextJen is independent. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to GL Assessment, West Midlands Grammar Schools (the schools' partnership), the King Edward VI Foundation, any council or any school. We don't have the real test papers. GL Assessment is a trade mark of its owner and is named only to describe the test.