Starting 11 Plus Preparation in Year 4: What Actually Matters

If your child is in Year 4 and you have just started reading about the 11+, the internet hands you two things very quickly: a low-level feeling that you are already behind, and a list of workbooks to buy. Almost every page tells you to "start gently" and "read every day", then points at a product carousel. Very few tell you how to know whether your child is actually on track, and fewer still cite anything official.

This guide does the opposite. It starts from the real admissions calendar, which is far more generous than the panic suggests, and then anchors every Year 4 target to something you can verify yourself: the national curriculum, national assessment data, and what councils actually tell parents to do. Where we give a number, you can check it. Where we cannot give a number honestly, we say so.

It also does one thing no other page on this topic seems willing to do. It gives you a maximum weekly workload rather than a minimum. Every guide offers a floor ("at least 30 minutes a day") and no ceiling, which is precisely how a nine year old ends up exhausted eighteen months before the test that counts. Formats vary by area, so treat the regional examples here as illustrations of a principle rather than as your local rules.

How far away is the 11+ when your child is in Year 4?

Further than you think. This is the single most useful fact a Year 4 parent can hold on to, and it defuses most of the anxiety in one go.

The test itself is not sat in Year 4, or Year 5. Medway Council states it plainly: the Medway Test is sat by children in Year 6, before they move to secondary school, with 2026 test dates of Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 September 2026. Registration for that test opened on Monday 18 May 2026 and closed on Friday 12 June 2026, which is the tail end of Year 5. Buckinghamshire ran a similar cycle: registration opened on 1 May 2026 and closed at 3pm on Tuesday 2 June, with children at state-funded Buckinghamshire primary schools registered automatically.

So a child sitting in a Year 4 classroom today is roughly 12 to 14 months away from the moment you first have to tell anyone that you intend to enter them, and roughly 18 months away from opening the paper. You have not missed a deadline, because no deadline exists yet.

That gap changes what Year 4 is for. With 18 months in hand, you are not racing to cover a syllabus. You are building the underlying capacity, reading, number fluency, vocabulary and the ability to concentrate alone, that makes the actual preparation year in Year 5 calm instead of frantic. If you want the full sequence, our year by year guide to when to start 11+ preparation maps the same calendar across all three years.

What should "starting in Year 4" actually mean?

There is a meaningful difference between starting preparation and starting the conditions for preparation, and the SERP flattens the two into one purchase decision.

Notice what councils themselves say. Buckinghamshire's advice to parents is behavioural rather than academic: make sure your child has experience of working quietly on their own, with no distractions or interruptions. It points families to a free familiarisation booklet and to free materials from the test provider, and notes that even its own practice test is recommended but not compulsory. That is a council describing familiarisation. The commercial internet is selling preparation. Naming that gap is the whole trick.

In Year 4, familiarisation and capacity are the right targets:

• Do: build a daily reading habit that survives busy weeks, secure times tables to automatic recall, widen vocabulary through books rather than lists, and let your child sit quietly with one task for a stretch.
• Do: give brief, cheerful exposure to reasoning question types late in the year, so they are not novel in Year 5.
• Do not: run timed full-length papers, work through past papers for a test 18 months away, or introduce a tutor for a child who has no diagnosed gap.
• Do not: measure progress in percentages of papers. In Year 4 that number tells you almost nothing and costs a lot of goodwill.

What does the national curriculum already expect of a Year 4 child?

This is the yardstick nobody quotes, which is strange, because it is free and it is statutory.

In maths, the Year 4 programme of study requires pupils to recall multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables up to 12 x 12. It also expects counting in multiples of 6, 7, 9, 25 and 1,000, recognising the place value of each digit in a four-digit number, rounding any number to the nearest 10, 100 or 1,000, and reading Roman numerals to 100 (I to C). Year 5 then steps up sharply: reading, writing, ordering and comparing numbers to at least 1,000,000, rounding to the nearest 100,000, and Roman numerals to 1,000 (M).

Read those two lists side by side and the Year 4 strategy writes itself. The jump into Year 5 is steep, and it is the point at which shaky number facts start costing marks everywhere. A child who leaves Year 4 with genuinely automatic tables absorbs Year 5 comfortably. A child who is still counting up in sevens spends Year 5 paying interest on that debt, which is the real reason Year 4 matters.

In English, the lower key stage 2 programme of study asks for listening to and discussing a wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books, reading books structured in different ways and for a range of purposes, and using dictionaries to check the meaning of words. That is a reading brief, not a worksheet brief.

Autumn term: how do you know when times tables are secure enough?

Because of the Multiplication Tables Check, this is the one area where you can compare your child against the whole country rather than against a tutor's impression.

The check is taken by Year 4 pupils in a set window each June. It is 3 practice questions followed by 25 questions, with 6 seconds to answer each and a 3 second pause between them. Six seconds is the important detail: it does not test whether a child can work out 7 x 8, it tests whether they already know it.

National results give you a real benchmark. In the 2023/24 Multiplication Tables Check, the average attainment score rose to 20.6 out of 25, and 34% of eligible pupils scored full marks, up from 29% the year before.

So here is a target you can actually hold: a child preparing for a selective test should be aiming at the top band, meaning 24 or 25 out of 25 under six-second conditions, by the end of Year 4. Not because the check is part of the 11+ (it is not), but because it measures exactly the fluency that selective maths papers assume and never teach.

The autumn work is therefore small and boring in the best way: five to ten minutes of tables recall on most days, focused only on the facts that are slow, plus reading. Do not practise the tables your child already knows. Find the eight or ten facts that hesitate and hammer only those.

Spring term: what does vocabulary work actually look like?

Vocabulary is the highest-leverage thing you can build in Year 4, and it is almost impossible to cram later.

Start with something concrete. The national curriculum spelling appendix sets out a statutory word list for years 3 and 4 containing 100 words, and it says explicitly that the 100 words in each list can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2. Read that carefully: those 100 words are budgeted across four years. A Year 4 child who has secured all of them is genuinely ahead of the timetable, and it takes about ten minutes on a Saturday to find out.

Beyond the list, breadth comes from books, not from vocabulary apps. Practical moves that work in spring term:

• Keep two books running: one your child reads alone, one you read aloud together that is above their independent level. The read-aloud book is where hard vocabulary arrives painlessly.
• Keep a dictionary within reach and use it, in line with the curriculum's own instruction to check the meaning of words they have read.
• Collect words rather than test them. A jotter with a word, the sentence it appeared in and a rough meaning beats any list of synonyms.
• Talk about shades of meaning. Why did the author choose reluctant rather than unwilling? That habit later becomes closest-meaning questions in verbal reasoning.

Summer term: when should reasoning appear, and what should you buy?

Late Year 4 is the right moment for first exposure to verbal and non-verbal reasoning, for a specific reason that comes from the test provider itself.

GL Assessment says familiarisation is particularly useful for verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning tests because children may not have encountered these types of questions before, and it recommends children familiarise themselves with the multiple-choice layout, the content and examples of question types. It gives away 10 hours of free familiarisation material as downloadable PDFs across six areas.

That is the honest answer to "which workbook should I buy in Year 4?": before you buy anything, use the free material from the organisation that writes the tests, and use your council's own free booklet if you are in a selective area. Ten hours is more than enough exposure for a summer term. If you want to understand the question families before you sit down with your child, our non-verbal reasoning guide and verbal reasoning guide walk through the patterns and a solving method for each.

The goal in summer term is recognition, not scores. Twenty minutes a week, untimed, with you sitting alongside talking through why an answer works. If your child finds a whole question type baffling, that is useful information for Year 5, not a crisis in Year 4.

Are we on track? An end-of-Year-4 audit you can print

Run this once, in the last few weeks of Year 4, at a kitchen table, in under half an hour. Score one point per item.

1. Tables under pressure. 25 mixed questions up to 12 x 12, six seconds each. Point scored at 24 or above.
2. Division facts. 20 division facts drawn from the same tables, six seconds each. Point scored at 18 or above.
3. Four-digit place value. Say aloud the value of each digit in five random four-digit numbers. Point scored for five correct.
4. Rounding. Ten numbers rounded to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000. Point scored at nine or above.
5. Statutory spellings. Twenty words picked at random from the years 3 and 4 word list. Point scored at 18 or above.
6. Reading stamina. Reads independently for 20 minutes without prompting or drifting. Point scored if yes.
7. Comprehension in their own words. Retells what they just read, including one thing a character wanted and why. Point scored if the retelling is coherent.
8. Vocabulary in context. From a page of their reading book, explain five underlined words. Point scored at four or above.
9. Working alone. Completes any 15 minute task in a quiet room without an adult present. Point scored if yes.
10. Reasoning exposure. Recognises what a non-verbal reasoning question is asking, even if they get it wrong. Point scored if yes.

8 to 10: comfortably on track. Change nothing except keep reading. 5 to 7: on track with one or two soft spots. Pick the two lowest items and work only on those in the first half of Year 5. Below 5: the fundamentals need the attention, not papers. Tables, reading and quiet working time come before anything labelled 11+. A progress tracker is useful here mainly because it shows you which two things to fix, rather than producing a score to worry about.

How much is too much? A maximum weekly workload

Here is the ceiling, offered as a firm recommendation rather than a rule handed down from anyone official:

• Maximum 2 hours 30 minutes per week of anything deliberate, across the whole of Year 4.
• Of that, roughly 30 to 40 minutes of tables and number facts (split into short bursts), 20 minutes of vocabulary or spelling, and up to 20 minutes of reasoning familiarisation in the summer term only.
• Reading is not counted in that budget, because reading is not work.
• Zero timed full papers. Save them for the second half of Year 5.
• At least two completely clear days a week. Non-negotiable.

Why a ceiling at all? Because the thing that most often ends an 11+ attempt is not a lack of preparation, it is a child who has decided by Year 5 that this whole business is miserable. Buckinghamshire's own guidance to parents is about working quietly and without distraction, not about hours logged, and its practice test is optional. When the awarding body and the council both describe familiarisation, and the shopping results describe an intensive campaign, believe the first two.

Watch for the warning signs: reluctance to start something they used to enjoy, tears over easy questions, sudden reluctance to read for pleasure, physical complaints on practice days, or asking whether they will still be liked if they do not pass. Any one of those means the schedule comes down immediately, not next term.

How are selective tests actually scored, and what does that change?

Most Year 4 parents assume the maths matters most, because maths feels the most measurable. In several areas the weighting says otherwise.

In Buckinghamshire, the Secondary Transfer Test is produced by GL Assessment, measures verbal, non-verbal and mathematical skills, and comprises two test papers of about 60 minutes each with a break between. The score itself is made up of 50% verbal, 25% mathematical and 25% non-verbal standardised scores, with standardised scores running from 60 to 170.

Two consequences for a Year 4 parent. First, if half the score is verbal, then reading and vocabulary deserve more of your Year 4 attention than extra maths papers do, which is the opposite of what the product listings imply. Second, standardisation takes into account each child's age in years and months on the date they take the test, so a summer-born child is not being quietly penalised for being ten months younger than a classmate.

On thresholds: Buckinghamshire's qualifying score is 121 or above, and the council expects about 37% of children to reach it. Scoring above 121 does not give higher priority for a place. Weightings, thresholds and paper structures differ substantially between areas, so check your own authority (our guide to grammar schools by area is a starting point) rather than assuming Buckinghamshire's model applies where you live.

Frequently asked questions

How should I prepare for the 11+ in Year 4?

Build capacity, not exam technique. Daily reading, tables to automatic recall (aim for 24 or 25 out of 25 at six seconds a question), steady vocabulary growth from books, and the ability to work quietly alone for 15 to 20 minutes. Add light, untimed reasoning familiarisation in the summer term using free material from the test provider or your council. Keep the total deliberate work under about two and a half hours a week.

Is 70% enough to pass the 11+?

Raw percentages usually are not how selective tests are decided. Marks are typically converted into age-standardised scores and compared against a qualifying threshold or a ranked list. Buckinghamshire, for example, uses a qualifying score of 121 and expects roughly 37% of children to reach it. So a 70% raw score could sit either side of a threshold depending on the paper's difficulty, the cohort and your child's age. Ask your local authority what its threshold is and how it is calculated.

Is Year 4 an important year?

Yes, but not for the reason the workbook adverts suggest. Year 4 is the year the national curriculum expects full recall of tables up to 12 x 12, and the year before the sharp step up to numbers beyond a million in Year 5. Fluency built now pays off across every subject. What Year 4 is not is a year for past papers.

Is the 11+ harder than SATs?

They are different instruments. Key stage 2 SATs test the national curriculum and are designed for the whole cohort. Selective tests are designed to spread out the top of the ability range, are usually multiple choice, run to tighter time limits, and in many areas include verbal and non-verbal reasoning, which are not taught in school at all. That last point, not raw difficulty, is what makes them feel harder. It is also why familiarisation matters more than content coverage.

What should the Year 4 to Year 5 handover look like?

Over the summer between Year 4 and Year 5, do three things. Confirm which test your area uses and when registration opens (in 2026 that was May in both Buckinghamshire and Medway, closing in early to mid June). Re-run the ten point audit above and pick the two weakest items. Then move from habits to structure, following the sequence in our year by year plan for preparing for the 11+: short, regular topic practice from September, a first untimed practice paper around the spring of Year 5, and timed conditions only in the final months. If you have kept Year 4 light, Year 5 has ample room, and your child will still be willing to sit down with you.

The test is in Year 6. Registration is in Year 5. Year 4 is the year you build a reader, a child who knows their tables cold, and a child who still likes learning. Everything else can wait, and waiting is not falling behind.