The first time my son sat a full mock test, he came out looking like he'd run a marathon. He hadn't done anything wrong. He just hadn't realised how tiring two and a half hours of timed reasoning, English and maths actually feels until he was in it. That's the real reason mock tests matter, and it's the reason parents search for them in the first place.
But not all mocks are equal. Some are useful. Some are expensive theatre. And the way you use the score afterwards matters far more than where you bought the paper.
What a proper 11 plus mock test actually looks like
A real mock should mirror your local exam as closely as possible. That means matching the format (GL Assessment for most areas, CEM for some, the Birmingham test for the West Midlands consortium), the timing, and ideally the test environment. A 50-minute maths paper sat at the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon will give you a reasonable score. The same paper sat in a hall full of strangers under exam conditions will give you a different score, and that gap is exactly what you're trying to measure.
Before you book or download anything, check your target schools' actual exam format. A child sitting the Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test needs CEM-style mocks. A child going for Reading School needs the FSCE format. Mocks built for the Birmingham consortium will not prepare a Kent child for the Kent Test. Get this wrong and you've wasted everyone's afternoon.
Free 11 plus mock tests online
The honest answer is that genuinely free, full-length, well-built mock papers are rare. Most of what you find online when you search "free 11 plus mock test" is either a five-question taster or a paywall waiting to happen. The rest is usually papers from 2008 that no longer match the modern format.
The two free sources actually worth your time are the published past papers from local councils and the free sample papers from CGP and Bond. Bucks County Council, Birmingham City Council and several Kent grammar schools publish official past papers on their websites. These are the closest you'll get to the real thing for nothing. CGP have a free downloadable practice paper, and Bond run free taster questions through their assessment platform. Use these as your baseline before you spend any money.
There's also the ReadyFor11 free benchmark, which I built myself. It's a 20-minute snapshot rather than a full mock, but it covers reasoning, English and maths and gives you a band score within minutes. If you want to know whether to bother with paid mocks at all, that's a sensible starting point.
Paid online mock tests
Once you've done the free papers, most parents move to paid mocks. The big names are Atom Learning, CGP (their full mock packs), Bond Online and Schofield & Sims. Smaller publishers like Practice Papers Plus and Pretest Plus also produce decent paper sets. Atom is excellent, and it's also expensive, with most of the mock content sitting behind a monthly subscription. CGP and Bond sell physical paper packs for around £8 to £15 each, which works out cheaper if you're only doing a handful of mocks.
For the multi-school independent test (ISEB Common Pre-Test), Pretest Plus and Atom both have specific prep. For grammar school exams, the GL Assessment Familiarisation Materials are the closest you'll get to an official exam-board paper. They're priced fairly too.
A reasonable budget for the whole 11+ year is £50 to £100 on mock papers and online prep. If you're being asked to spend more than that on mocks alone, you're probably overpaying.
In-person mock tests near you
This is where it gets interesting. A lot of tutors and small companies run in-person mock test days at local venues. These usually happen on weekends in the run-up to the September and October exams. Tutors Together, Chuckra and FSCE Mocks all run them, alongside regional providers like Berkshire 11+ Mocks, Bucks Mock Tests and Kent Mocks. Most charge between £30 and £70 per session, with a written report included.
Are they worth it? For one or two sessions, yes. The value isn't the paper. It's the experience of sitting in a room of children you don't know, being timed by a stranger, with no parent on hand to help. If the only practice your child has had is at home with you, the real exam will be a shock. A single in-person mock takes most of that shock out of the equation.
Don't book five of them. Three is plenty. Beyond that you're paying for something diminishing returns has already eaten.
How many mocks should your child actually sit?
Here's where parents go wrong. They book a mock every Saturday for two months, score the papers obsessively, and watch their child get more anxious as the test approaches. Mocks are a diagnostic tool, not the prep itself.
Two to four full mocks across the whole 11+ year is plenty for most children. One in late spring of Year 5 to set a baseline. One in the summer holidays. One or two in September just before the actual test. That's it. Between mocks, do shorter targeted practice on whatever the last mock revealed your child needs to work on. A mock you don't act on is a mock you've wasted.
What to do with the score
This is the part nobody tells you. The score from a mock test is almost useless on its own. The breakdown is what matters. Where did your child lose marks? Was it timing (they ran out, but the answers they got to were correct)? Was it accuracy (they finished, but missed easy ones)? Was it one specific question type, like cloze, number sequences or shape rotations?
A good mock provider gives you a question-by-question breakdown. If they don't, do it yourself. Sit down with the paper afterwards and mark which questions were skipped, which were rushed, and which were genuinely not understood. The pattern almost always points to one or two fixable problems, and that's where your next two weeks of practice should go.
Do not, please, sit your child down and walk them through every wrong answer the day after a mock. They've just been through a hard test. Give it a couple of days. Talk about it briefly, in five minutes, not an hour. Then quietly use the data yourself to plan the next bit of practice.
FAQ
How many 11 plus mock tests should my child sit?
Two to four full mocks across the year is plenty for most children. More than that risks burnout and tells you very little new information. One in spring or early summer of Year 5, one in the summer holidays, and one or two in early September will give you all the data you need.
When is the right time to start doing mock tests?
The end of Year 5 or the start of the Year 6 summer holidays is the sweet spot. Doing full timed mocks before that point usually demoralises children who haven't covered the content yet. Short topic-based practice is fine in Year 5. Save the full mocks for when the foundations are in place.
Are in-person mock tests worth the money?
For one or two, yes, mainly because of the exam-conditions experience. The score and report are useful, but the real value is your child sitting a timed paper in an unfamiliar room with strangers. Any more than two and you're paying for diminishing returns.
My child did badly on a mock test, should I be worried?
Not yet. A single bad mock score tells you almost nothing on its own. Look at the breakdown. Was it timing, accuracy, content gaps, or nerves? Most poor mock results in the spring fix themselves with three months of targeted work. The mocks that should worry you are the ones in late September that show no improvement on the spring scores.
If you'd like to see roughly where your child is before booking any paid mocks, readyfor11.co.uk gives a free 20-minute benchmark across reasoning, English and maths. No account, no signup, no follow-up emails. It's a gentle place to start, and it'll tell you whether mocks are even the right next step yet.