If your child is in Year 5 this school year, the 11+ isn't far off, but you have the one thing families in Year 6 no longer have: a full year. Children in Year 5 now move into Year 6 in September 2027, sit the 11+ in the autumn or winter of 2027, and start secondary school in September 2028.
That makes this autumn term the single most useful moment in the whole cycle to start. Not because anything is urgent, but because everything after this point is easier if the habit already exists.
There's a practical reason Year 5 is the point people talk about. The reasoning papers ask for skills that aren't taught in the normal primary curriculum, so a child meeting verbal and non-verbal reasoning for the first time in Year 6 is learning a new format at the same time as they're being tested on speed. Meeting them a year earlier turns "what even is this?" into "I've done hundreds of these".
The other reason is workload. Spread over a full year, 11+ preparation is fifteen or twenty minutes a day. Compressed into the summer before the test, it's the thing that ruins the summer. Same total practice, very different experience for the child.
None of that means Year 5 is a deadline. Children start later and do fine, particularly strong readers with solid arithmetic. It just means the work is easier to absorb when it's spread out.
Fifteen to twenty minutes on a school day is a realistic target for the autumn term of Year 5, done at a consistent time so it stops being a negotiation. Consistency matters more than volume at this stage - a child who does twenty minutes five days a week covers far more ground over the year than one who does two hours every other Sunday, and hates it.
Keep at least one day a week clear. Reading for pleasure counts for more than another worksheet, especially for the English and verbal reasoning papers, where vocabulary is doing most of the work.
Watch what's actually going wrong rather than the raw score. A child getting 60% because they're rushing needs something different from a child getting 60% because they haven't met the topic. Any decent practice tool should show you which of those it is.
Find out which schools you're actually applying to and what they test. That sounds obvious, and it's the step most families put off. It matters because the answer changes the work: Essex CSSE schools test English and maths only, with no reasoning papers at all, while a Kent or Buckinghamshire child needs verbal and non-verbal reasoning too. Hertfordshire's consortium schools test maths and verbal reasoning. Preparing for the wrong paper set is the most expensive mistake available in Year 5, and it costs nothing to avoid.
Exam boards, formats and test dates change between admissions rounds, and schools sometimes move between consortia. Confirm the arrangements for the 2027 round directly with the school or admissions authority before relying on any single source, including this page.
Pulled straight from PipPrep's own question bank, from the questions tagged for Year 5 - not written for this page.
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No. Year 5 is the year most tutors and schools point to, mainly because the verbal and non-verbal reasoning papers use formats that are not taught in the normal primary curriculum, and those take time to become familiar. Starting in Year 5 means spreading roughly the same amount of work over twelve months instead of three.
A child in Year 5 during the 2026/27 school year moves into Year 6 in September 2027 and sits the test in the autumn or winter of that year, for a secondary place starting in September 2028. Most state grammar tests fall in September of Year 6; independent schools more often test in November or January.
Fifteen to twenty minutes on a school day, at a consistent time, is a realistic target for the autumn term. Consistency matters more than volume, and keeping at least one day a week clear helps far more than adding another session.
Not necessarily, particularly in Year 5 when the work is mostly about building familiarity and filling gaps. Plenty of families do the Year 5 groundwork themselves with a practice app and books, and bring in a tutor later if a specific weakness is not shifting.