Most parents I talk to have got their head around comprehension. Read the passage, answer the questions, fine. Then they open an English paper and hit a row of sentences with letters under each word and no question they recognise. That's SPaG. Spelling, punctuation and grammar. It catches a lot of families off guard because it's nothing like the writing work children do in school.
So what is it actually testing, and how do you help a ten-year-old get good at it without turning your kitchen table into a grammar lesson? Let's go through it.
What SPaG questions look like on an 11 plus paper
SPaG is the part of the English paper that checks whether your child can spot when something is wrong with a sentence. Not write a perfect one. Spot a broken one. That distinction matters, and we'll come back to it.
On a GL Assessment English paper you'll usually find SPaG split into three chunks of roughly ten questions each, so about thirty marks in total. There's a spelling section, a punctuation section and a grammar or word-choice section. Some super-selective schools, like Queen Elizabeth's in Barnet, run their own version of the same idea.
The format is almost always multiple choice. A sentence is printed with each word, or each gap, labelled A, B, C and D. One of them contains the mistake. Your child picks the letter where the error sits. Plenty of papers add an option E that means "no mistake." That's where things get sneaky. Now doing nothing is a real answer, and children second-guess themselves into a wrong one.
Here's a spelling example. "The committee made a unanimus decision after a long debate." The misspelled word is "unanimus," so the answer is whichever letter sits under it. Notice there's no spelling to do. Your child just has to know the word looks wrong.
Punctuation works the same way. A sentence appears with a comma misplaced, a semicolon used where a colon belongs, or speech marks in the wrong spot. The job is to find the offending mark. Word-choice questions hand your child a gap and four options, and only one fits the grammar of the sentence. "Neither of the boys ___ ready" wants "was," not "were," and a surprising number of adults get that one wrong too.
Why bright children still drop marks here
You'd think the strong readers would clean up on SPaG. Often they don't, and it's worth understanding why before you plan any practice.
The first reason is that recognising an error is a different skill from avoiding one. A child can write beautifully and still walk past a misplaced apostrophe, because their brain reads for meaning and quietly corrects the mistake without flagging it. The eye sees what it expects to see. Teaching a child to slow down and check each word against the rule, rather than skimming for sense, takes deliberate work.
The second reason is the "no mistake" option. Once a child knows option E exists, every clean sentence becomes a trap in their mind. They've found three errors in a row, so surely this one's got something too? They invent a problem that isn't there and change a right answer to a wrong one. Confidence with the actual rules is the only cure for that.
Third, the spelling words are chosen to be awkward. Think "necessary," "separate," "definitely," "rhythm," "embarrass." These are the words adults still pause over. A child who's a fluent reader has seen them but never had to scrutinise the exact letters, and that's exactly what the question demands.
The spelling, punctuation and grammar rules that come up most
You don't need a teaching degree to cover the ground that matters. The same handful of areas turn up year after year on GL and CEM-style papers.
For spelling, the high-value work is the common tricky words and the patterns behind them. Double letters, silent letters, the "i before e" rule and its exceptions, and the words children routinely muddle like "their," "there" and "they're." A running list of every word your child gets wrong is more useful than any spelling book, because it's tailored to the gaps they actually have.
For punctuation, the regulars are the apostrophe for possession versus contraction and commas in lists and around clauses. Then there are full stops where children run sentences together, and capital letters for proper nouns. Speech punctuation comes up a lot too, since it has several moving parts and children find it fiddly.
For grammar, expect subject-verb agreement ("the team is" or "the team are," depending on the paper's house style). Add correct tenses, pronouns, and the word-choice questions that ask for the most appropriate word in context. That last type shades into vocabulary, which is why wide reading helps here as much as anywhere else on the paper.
How to practise SPaG at home without it becoming a grind
Here's the bit parents really want. Thirty marks of error-spotting sounds like the most tedious thing on earth to revise, and if you turn it into nightly drills it will be. There are better ways.
Make your child the marker. Write a few sentences yourself with deliberate mistakes in them and ask your child to catch them, red pen in hand. Children love finding adults' errors, and the act of hunting for mistakes is the exact skill the exam tests. You can do this on a whiteboard in five minutes after dinner.
Use real reading as the spelling teacher. When your child reads aloud and stumbles on a word, that's a free spelling to add to the running list. Reading widely does more for the word-choice questions than any worksheet, because it builds a feel for which word sounds right in a sentence. The child who reads a lot just knows "fewer" goes with countable things and "less" doesn't, without being able to tell you the rule.
When you do use practice papers, mark the SPaG section the same day and look at the pattern rather than the score. Is your child missing apostrophes specifically? Falling for the "no mistake" option? Rushing the spelling? Two or three short, focused sessions on a real weakness beat an hour of mixed questions that mostly tell you what they already know.
And teach the read-it-twice habit. First read for meaning. Second read checking each word and mark against the rule. That second pass is where SPaG marks live, and it's a habit, not a talent.
A quick word on platforms. The honest truth is that SPaG is one of the cheaper parts of the 11+ to prepare for. The rules are finite, and a library card plus a notebook covers most of it. You don't have to spend a fortune. Want to see where your child actually stands across SPaG and the rest of the paper before you commit to anything? That's the reason I built ReadyFor11 in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
Is SPaG on every 11 plus paper?
Not quite every one, but most. GL Assessment English papers reliably include a SPaG element alongside comprehension, and many super-selective schools test it in their own format. A few areas use reasoning-only papers with no separate English section, so check what your target schools actually sit before you plan around it. Your region's admissions pages or the school's own website will tell you.
How many marks is SPaG worth?
On a typical GL English paper it's often around thirty marks, split roughly evenly between spelling, punctuation and grammar or word-choice questions. That's a meaningful chunk of the English score. Because the rules are learnable, it's one of the more reliable places to pick up marks, more so than the less predictable comprehension questions.
What's the hardest part of SPaG for most children?
Usually the "no mistake" option and the trickier spellings. Children who've spotted several errors in a row start inventing problems in clean sentences, and the spelling words are deliberately the ones people second-guess. Both improve with the same fix: knowing the rules well enough to trust your own judgement instead of panicking.
Can my child get good at SPaG without a tutor?
Yes, more easily than most parts of the 11+. The rules are finite, the question format is consistent, and a notebook of every word and rule your child gets wrong does most of the heavy lifting. Plenty of free and cheap practice material exists, so this is one area where a tutor isn't doing anything you can't do at the kitchen table.
If you'd like an honest, free read on where your child sits across spelling, punctuation, grammar and the rest of the 11+, that's exactly what ReadyFor11 is for. Try it at readyfor11.co.uk and see the gaps before you spend money filling them.