Best 11+ Resources and Practice Materials for 2027
· 9 min read
An honest comparison of books, online platforms, tutors, and free resources for 11+ preparation — with recommendations for every budget.
Choose resources to match your situation, not the other way round
There is no universally 'best' 11+ resource — the right set for your family depends on the test your child will sit, the budget you can sustain, and the amount of parental time available. A Kent family preparing for a GL Assessment paper buys differently from an Essex family preparing for CSSE, and a family with limited adult capacity for marking and planning needs different tools from one where a parent is happy to spend an hour a week selecting questions. Before buying anything, settle three questions: which exam board your target schools actually use (see our exam boards strategy guide and confirm on each school's admissions page), how much money the family can sustainably commit across 12-18 months, and how much hands-on involvement the parent can realistically offer. The answers narrow the resource list dramatically and prevent the most common money-leak: buying everything and using almost none of it.
Books and workbooks
CGP 11+ workbooks (£4-8 each) remain the most popular and affordable option for structured practice. They cover every subject and exam board with clear explanations and graded exercises, and the publisher's tendency to overlap content across books makes it cheap to mix and match. Bond 11+ books (Oxford University Press) are the traditional gold standard — particularly strong for verbal and non-verbal reasoning, with a step-up difficulty curve through the age-banded levels. For vocabulary building, the 'Vocabulary Ninja' series is excellent. For Maths depth, the NRICH problems (free online from Cambridge University) develop the mathematical thinking that distinguishes 11+ questions from standard curriculum work. A comprehensive set of workbooks covering all four subjects sits at £30-60 — modest relative to other preparation costs. Workbooks earn their keep when they are revisited and marked carefully; left to gather dust on the shelf they are no resource at all.
Online platforms compared
The UK 11+ subscription market splits into three bands by what you get for the money. Premium AI-adaptive platforms (£40-70/month) offer large question banks and real-time difficulty adjustment, but are out of reach for many families. Tiered platforms (£7.50-42/month, depending on the feature tier) bundle adaptive practice with progress tracking — the cheapest tier typically opens up a question bank without the AI-adaptive layer, the top end adds live difficulty adjustment. Budget workbook-aligned subscriptions (from £6/month) offer chapter drills mapped to printed workbooks but no adaptive pathing. GrammarPrep (from £19.99/month) sits between the budget and premium tiers on price but ships features no UK 11+ platform currently matches: a dated child-specific weekly study plan that auto-regenerates each Monday, rubric-aligned AI feedback on Y5 creative writing in under 30 seconds, and timed mock exams that report the actual Standardised Age Score grammar schools use to set their pass mark — not just a percentage. For budget-conscious families, Khan Academy (free) covers Maths and English foundations, though it does not include VR, NVR, or 11+-specific content.
Free resources worth using
GL Assessment offers free familiarisation materials on their website — essential for understanding the exact format your child will face. The Eleven Plus Exams Forum has a vast library of free practice papers shared by parents. BBC Bitesize covers KS2 curriculum content that forms the foundation of 11+ Maths and English. Oxford Owl provides free reading resources and comprehension activities. For non-verbal reasoning, the 'IQ Puzzler Pro' physical puzzle game builds spatial reasoning skills through play. Local libraries often carry recent CGP and Bond workbooks for free loan, which lets you test whether your child engages with a series before buying it. Our free 11+ resources guide goes deeper on each free option and how to combine them sensibly. And GrammarPrep offers a free diagnostic assessment at grammarprep.uk/onboarding that identifies your child's strengths and weaknesses across the four subjects — a useful starting point regardless of which paid resources you ultimately choose.
Private tutoring: when is it worth it?
Private 11+ tutoring costs £25-60 per hour, typically weekly, totalling £1,200-3,000 per year — see our 11+ tutoring cost guide for the full breakdown. Tutoring is most valuable for children who need the accountability and structure of a weekly appointment; families where parents lack confidence in the 11+ subjects (especially VR and NVR); children with specific learning needs who benefit from individualised attention; and the final three months before the exam for targeted exam-technique coaching. It is less necessary for self-motivated children who practise consistently with parental support, families in non-super-selective areas where the pass threshold is lower, and subjects where a good adaptive online platform provides difficulty-matched practice more cost-effectively than a generalist tutor. Many families end up using tutoring in short, targeted blocks — say six weeks for a specific weakness — rather than as a year-long weekly commitment, which keeps costs manageable while preserving the benefit.
Which combination should I actually buy?
The most effective and affordable 11+ preparation combines three elements: a set of quality workbooks for structured learning and reference (£30-60), an adaptive online platform for daily practice and progress tracking (£20-50/month), and optionally, targeted tutoring for specific weak areas or exam technique (£25-60/hour as needed, not necessarily weekly). This balanced approach costs £300-600 for a full year — a fraction of intensive tutoring while covering all the bases. Start with free resources and a diagnostic assessment to understand where your child stands, then invest in the areas that will make the most difference. A typical sensible spend looks like: £40 on workbooks (CGP + Bond, age-appropriate), £20/month on an adaptive platform configured to the right exam board, and one short tutoring block (perhaps £200-400) at the end of Year 5 for the question types that have stayed weak.
Common money traps to avoid
Five patterns waste family budget without moving scores. First, buying too many books: more than five or six workbooks per child sits unread; pick one main series and one supplementary one. Second, paying for the wrong exam-board format: GL Assessment materials for an Essex CSSE child, or vice versa — confirm the board before buying (every region's board is set out on the 11+ by area index). Third, year-long weekly tutoring when six targeted weeks would do; the marginal hours often deliver less than the first six. Fourth, mock-exam franchise day-trips that cost £30-50 each but provide no errors log or follow-up — mocks are valuable only when properly reviewed afterwards (our practice-papers guide sets out the review method). Fifth, paying premium for 'guaranteed pass' platforms: no platform can guarantee anything, and the platforms that claim to are typically the ones with the weakest underlying content. Spend on quality and consistency; avoid spending on promises.