Best 11+ Maths Practice Resources (Free and Paid) for Parents

Most families I meet have spent more on 11+ resources than they needed to, and used less of what they bought than they expected to. A shelf of workbooks, a subscription nobody opens, a £300 bundle bought in a panic halfway through Year 5, and the child still cannot divide by a two digit number.

I am Aadam, and I have been teaching maths and preparing children for the 11+ at SHLC since 2020. This is what I would actually buy, in what order, and what I would leave on the shelf. The books worth owning come to about £40. Everything else on this page is either free or optional.

Start with free 11+ maths papers, before you buy anything

There are more good free 11+ papers available than any child could work through in two years, and buying practice papers before you have used the free ones is the most common way families waste money on the 11+.

Our free 11+ paper library holds 1,089 papers and resources, and it costs nothing to use.

• 1,089 papers and resources from GL, CEM, CSSE and 142 schools and boards
• 527 maths papers, alongside English, verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning
• 109 papers with the school's own mark scheme, and a "with answers only" filter to find them
• Filters for board, subject, paper type and the school that set it, then sort by year
• The official GL and CEM familiarisation booklets, plus the free sample papers the big workbook publishers put out, so you are not making accounts on four different websites

A library this size is only useful if you narrow it hard before you download anything. Three steps.

1. Start with your own school. Set the subject to maths and the school to the one your child is actually sitting, and take those papers first. Every paper a school publishes tells you something about how that school writes questions, and no amount of generic practice substitutes for it.
2. Then widen to similar schools. Once your target school's papers are used up, move to schools of a similar type and difficulty rather than downloading everything at once.
3. Use the "with answers only" filter. It finds the papers your child can mark themselves, which is the difference between a paper you can set on a Saturday morning and one that needs you sat beside them.

One thing to know about answers. Only 109 of the 1,089 papers come with a mark scheme, because most independent schools publish the paper and keep the answers. That is not a hole in the library, it is how schools release them. If your child sits a real Dulwich or City of London paper and you have no way of marking it, our Mark a Mock service starts at £39.99 a paper and gives you a topic by topic breakdown of where the marks went rather than a score.

Two ways to prepare, and how to tell which one you need

Almost every family I speak to is on one of two routes, and the resources you buy should follow the route rather than the other way round.

Route one, papers first, for a child already close to the standard. Sit a paper, mark it properly, and let the lost marks tell you which topics to fix. Then buy or teach only those topics and sit the next paper. This is the faster route and it suits a child in Year 5 or Year 6 who is broadly at the right level and needs sharpening rather than teaching.

Route two, build from the ground up, for a child with real gaps or plenty of time. Work through the topics in order, teaching each one properly before testing it, and only bring papers in once the foundation is there. This suits a child in Year 3 or Year 4, or an older child who scores badly on papers because they were never taught the method rather than because they are out of practice.

The mistake to avoid is running route one on a child who needs route two. A child sitting full papers on material they have not been taught scores badly, learns nothing from it, and starts to dread the next one. If the first paper comes back under about 40 per cent, stop sitting papers and go and teach.

What is actually worth paying for

1. SHLC Maths Mastery Lessons, from £5.99

These are interactive digital lessons, one topic each, built to teach a topic properly before testing it. They are what I use with my own tutees.

• Explore, I Do, You Do. Your child explores the idea, watches it worked through step by step, then tries questions themselves
• Answers stay hidden until your child chooses to check, so they cannot peek their way through a page
• Some lessons regenerate the numbers, so a topic can be repeated with fresh questions instead of a remembered answer
• Interactive tools like shading grids, bar models and function machines, not static diagrams
• Instant download, works on a laptop or computer, and a one off purchase rather than a monthly rental

The full 11+ maths course is £200 for every lesson, against £479.20 bought one at a time. If you would rather buy piece by piece, start with the topic your child is stuck on rather than working through everything in order. These four cover the topics that cost 11+ children the most marks.

• Fractions Mastery Bundle, £19.99, 5 lessons and 390 questions
• Ratio and Proportion Mastery Bundle, £11.99, 3 lessons and 286 questions
• Reverse Percentages Mastery, £5.99, the single question type that trips up more able children than any other
• Place Value to a Billion and Rounding Bundle, £23.99, 6 lessons and 516 questions, for children who lose marks on long numbers because they misread them before they start

Browse all the lessons to see which topics are covered.

2. Schofield & Sims Mental Arithmetic, about £5 a book

11+ maths is a speed test as much as a maths test. A child who can do the arithmetic but takes fifteen seconds over each step runs out of time before the questions that carry the marks. Schofield & Sims Mental Arithmetic is the standard book here, and at around £5 it is the cheapest thing on this list that makes a visible difference.

The series runs from Book 1 to Book 6 and is graded by ability rather than age, so pick the level by testing rather than by year group. Each book holds 36 one page tests split into three parts, ending with word problems, which is exactly the shape an 11+ arithmetic section takes. Book 4 suits most children in Year 5.

• Choosing the level. Test your child on one page from each. Buy the level where they score between 50 and 70 per cent. At 90 per cent the book is filling time, and below about 30 per cent it knocks their confidence for no gain
• Using it. One page a day, timed, marked straight away. Ten minutes, not an hour
• Answers. Schofield & Sims publish the answers free on their own site, so you do not have to buy the separate answer book

Daily drilling keeps a method sharp, but it will not build one that was never secure. If your child is slow because they are unsure how to do it rather than out of practice, teach the method first with Mental Addition and Subtraction or Divisibility and Multiplication Rules, then go back to the daily page.

3. CGP 11+ Maths Complete Revision and Practice, £15.50

If you buy one book for teaching topics, make it this one. CGP explains each topic in language a ten year old actually follows, then gives questions on that topic straight after, which is the order that works. The GL edition for ages 10 to 11 covers number knowledge, working with numbers, number problems, and the shape, space and data topics, and it includes an online edition at no extra cost.

• Buy the Complete Revision and Practice rather than a separate study book and practice book. It is one volume at £15.50 instead of two at similar prices each, and the answers are in the back
• Use it in Year 4 and early Year 5, one topic a week, before your child goes anywhere near a full paper
• Check the edition matches the format your target schools set, since CGP publish a GL specific version alongside their all providers version

A topic book teaches. A past paper only tests. That is the whole reason this one is worth £15.50 when free papers exist.

4. Bond 11+ Maths Assessment Practice, about £8 a book

Bond has been publishing 11+ practice since 1964 and their papers sit close enough to the real thing to be useful. The Assessment Practice series for ages 10 to 11 runs as Book 1 and Book 2, each holding a set of timed papers with a pull out answer section in the centre that explains the working rather than just listing answers.

• Two books is usually enough, at roughly £8 each. Four is plenty for any child
• Buy the format your target schools use. GL format for the grammar school regions, and check independent schools individually since they set their own
• If your child is not yet at the level, Bond's Up to Speed papers are pitched lower and are a gentler place to start than the standard series
• Start them once the topics are covered, not before

That is the whole shelf. Mental arithmetic at about £5, CGP at £15.50, two Bond books at about £16, so roughly £40 covers every book genuinely needed for 11+ maths.

5. Marking and teaching, when you need them

Books and papers give you content. What they cannot give you is a diagnosis. If your child scores 62 per cent on a paper, the score tells you almost nothing useful. The useful thing is which six topics accounted for the lost marks.

• Mock exam marking starts at £39.99 a paper and gives you that breakdown. It suits families who are coping fine on their own and just need to know what is going wrong
• One to one tutoring starts from £40 per session, and earns its money when the gaps are too wide to fill from a workbook, or when a strong child is going for a very competitive school and needs technique rather than content

How many 11+ practice papers does your child actually need?

Ten to fifteen properly worked papers across Year 6 is plenty. Working a paper properly means marking it, finding the topics behind the lost marks, and teaching those topics before the next one. Two papers a week with nothing in between mostly teaches a child to keep making the same mistake faster.

How to mark an 11+ paper so it is worth doing

A paper your child sits and you tick is half a resource. The mark tells you how they did. What you want is why.

1. Label every lost mark with its topic. Fractions, ratio, area, misread the question, ran out of time. Write it in the margin as you mark.
2. Do that on three papers. The same three or four topics will keep appearing, and those are the only things worth revising this month.
3. Separate the slips from the gaps. A child who knows how to find a percentage but wrote it in the wrong box needs slowing down. A child who cannot start the question needs teaching. Treating those as the same problem is how families end up drilling a child who was never taught the method.

What to skip

• Complete 11+ packages at £200 to £500. These almost always contain papers you can download free, material pitched at the wrong level, and papers for formats your child is not sitting. The volume is the selling point and the volume is the problem
• Study apps at £20 to £40 a month. As I covered in my Medly AI review, most promise more than they deliver, and AI marking is unreliable on 11+ question types in particular. A year of one subscription is £240 to £480, which buys 6 to 12 sessions with a qualified teacher instead. Apps built for one narrow job, times tables or vocabulary, are a fair supplement
• Papers for the wrong exam board. Check the format each target school uses before you buy anything

What 11+ maths resources cost, in order

Ten books your child finishes beat fifty they never open, and the families who get the best results are rarely the ones who spent the most.

When to start, and what to do each year

Buying the right things is the easy half. The families who see real improvement are the ones who use resources in a set order rather than dipping into whatever is nearest.

Where your child is starting from

The right plan depends far more on where your child is now than on which school you are aiming at.

For a child starting from behind, the gaps are usually further back than parents expect. Reading and writing numbers, place value, and the written methods all come before anything 11+ specific, which is what the Place Value and Rounding Bundle, Column Addition and Subtraction and Short Division are for.

GL, CEM or CSSE? Check the format before you buy papers

This decides which papers you buy, so settle it before you spend anything. Check each school on its own admissions page, because schools in the same county do not always use the same test.

• GL Assessment regions. Buckinghamshire, Kent, Birmingham, Lincolnshire and most grammar school areas. Buy GL format papers and start with the official GL familiarisation booklets in the free library, since they come from the people who write the real test
• Independent schools. London, the Home Counties and independents nationwide mostly set their own papers, which vary far more than the grammar school tests. Get your target school's own past papers wherever they publish them
• Mixed areas. Essex, Hertfordshire and Yorkshire have schools running different tests within a few miles of each other. Essex has its own CSSE paper, which is not like either of the others

The short version

1. Download free papers. 1,089 of them cost you nothing.
2. Spend about £40 on books. Mental Arithmetic at £5, CGP Complete Revision and Practice at £15.50, and two Bond papers books at about £8 each.
3. Pick your route. Papers first if your child is close to the standard, ground up through the lessons if they are not.
4. Add lessons for the topics that will not stick. £5.99 a topic, or £200 for the full 11+ maths course, which is all 80 lessons in teaching order.
5. Get a paper marked properly. Do it when you want to know what is actually going wrong rather than guessing.

Resources are tools. Used in order, they change how a child performs. Bought in a panic and stacked in a corner, they do nothing at all, and no amount of extra spending fixes that.

For the full preparation plan, including when to start and how much practice is enough, read my complete 11+ maths preparation guide.