When my son brought home his first practice paper result, he'd got 42 out of 50. I felt pretty good about that. Then I tried to work out what it actually meant for the real exam, and within ten minutes I was completely lost. Raw marks, standardised scores, age adjustments, a scale that runs from 70 to 140 for reasons nobody seemed willing to explain. Sound familiar?
So here's the plain version. Maybe you've stared at an 11+ result and wondered why the number bears no resemblance to how many questions your child got right. If so, this is the post I wish I'd had.
What a standardised score actually is
A raw score is simple. It's the number of questions your child answered correctly. Forty-two out of fifty is a raw score.
A standardised score is something the exam board calculates afterwards. It takes that raw mark and converts it onto a fixed scale. On that scale 100 sits in the middle as the average, and almost everyone lands somewhere between 70 and 140. Your child isn't told the standardised score has nothing to do with percentages. A score of 100 doesn't mean they got 100 questions right, and it doesn't mean they got everything right either. It means they performed exactly at the average for children their age.
Why bother converting at all? Because raw marks can't be compared fairly across different papers. A maths paper might be harder than a verbal reasoning paper. One year's questions might be tougher than last year's. Standardising irons all of that out, so a 115 in maths means the same thing as a 115 in English. The schools can then add the scores together knowing they're comparing like with like.
The bit that trips most parents up is the spread. The scale is built so that about two thirds of children score between 85 and 115. Getting to 120 or above puts your child in roughly the top ten percent. So the gap between 115 and 125 is much bigger than it looks. Those ten points cover a lot of children.
How age weighting works
This is the part that genuinely surprised me. Two children can get the exact same raw score and walk away with different standardised scores. The younger one comes out higher.
Here's why. Children in the same school year can be nearly twelve months apart in age. A child born on the 1st of September is almost a full year older than one born on the 31st of August. They sit the same exam, on the same morning, against the same questions. That older child has had eleven extra months of growing up, reading, and learning. On average, that shows.
Age weighting corrects for it. The exam board groups children by their age in years and months at the date of the test. It then adjusts each child's raw score against the average for that precise age band. A summer-born child gets a small upward adjustment because they're being measured against younger expectations. An autumn-born child gets a small downward one.
The adjustment isn't huge, and it isn't a favour. It's an attempt to measure ability rather than maturity. Think about it this way. If you didn't adjust for age, you'd systematically push summer-born children out of grammar schools simply for being born at the wrong time of year. The research on summer-born disadvantage is well established, and the 11+ tries to account for it.
How much is the bump worth? It varies, but a few standardised points is typical for the youngest children in the year. That can be the difference between qualifying and not. So parents of August babies shouldn't write off the exam before their child has even tried.
Why GL Assessment and CEM do it slightly differently
Most areas use GL Assessment these days, since CEM stopped producing 11+ tests in 2024. But you'll still see references to both, and the principle is the same across either.
Both standardise and both age-weight. The difference historically was in how the marks were combined and reported. GL papers tend to give clearer subject breakdowns, so you might see separate standardised scores for verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, maths and English. CEM leaned towards combined scores that blended subjects together, which made it harder to see where a child was strong or weak.
If your area's test is run by GL, expect a result that shows the standardised score per paper plus an overall figure. If you want the longer comparison, I wrote a separate piece on the difference between GL Assessment and CEM that goes into the formats properly.
What the number means for your child
A standardised score tells you where your child sits against their age group, not whether they've passed. Passing depends on the qualifying mark in your area, and that varies enormously.
In Kent, the Kent Test works on a total across three papers with a minimum in each. In Buckinghamshire, the headline qualifying score is 121, though popular schools like Dr Challoner's effectively need more. In Birmingham, the King Edward consortium qualifies a pool at one score then ranks for offers at another. A 121 means very different things depending on whether you're in Reading, Chelmsford or Sutton.
So when you get a practice result back, the useful question isn't "did they pass". It's "where does this standardised score sit against the qualifying mark where we actually live". A child scoring 118 in Kent might be comfortable. The same child in a super-selective Sutton school might be ten points short. Same child, same ability, completely different outcome.
That's also why comparing your child's score to a friend's child in another county tells you almost nothing. The number only has meaning next to a local cut-off.
How to use this when you're prepping
Don't obsess over raw marks on practice papers. They go up and down depending on how hard the paper was and whether your child was tired that morning. What you want to watch is the trend in standardised terms. Is your child closing the gap to your area's qualifying score over time?
The trouble is that most free practice papers only give you a raw mark out of fifty. They can't tell you the standardised equivalent because they don't know your child's exact age or how the cohort performed. That's the gap a proper benchmark fills. You need something that adjusts for age and reports in the same format the schools use. Then the number you see at home is the number that actually matters.
Is your child ready, or are they three months of focused work away? You can't answer that from a raw mark alone.
Frequently asked questions
Does a younger child really get extra marks on the 11+?
Yes, in effect. The age weighting adjusts each child's raw score against the average for their exact age in years and months. A summer-born child is measured against younger expectations. So the same raw mark converts to a slightly higher standardised score than it would for an autumn-born child. It's a correction for fairness, not a bonus.
What's a good standardised score for the 11+?
Anything above 120 puts a child in roughly the top ten percent, which clears the qualifying mark in many areas. But "good" depends entirely on where you live. A score that qualifies comfortably in Kent might fall short at a super-selective school in Sutton or Birmingham. Always check the number against your local cut-off.
Why is my child's standardised score so different from their raw mark?
Because the two measure different things. The raw mark counts correct answers. The standardised score places that performance on a fixed scale against other children the same age, with 100 as the average. A raw mark of 42 out of 50 could become almost any standardised score. It depends on how hard the paper was and how everyone else did.
Can I work out the standardised score from a practice paper at home?
Not reliably. You'd need to know your child's exact age and how a large sample of children performed on the same paper. Free papers give you a raw mark only. To see a standardised figure that means something, you need a benchmark that age-adjusts and reports the way the schools do.
If you want to know where your child genuinely sits before exam day, readyfor11.co.uk runs a free 20-minute test across reasoning, English and maths. It age-adjusts and scores in the same standardised format the grammar schools use. The band you get back is directly comparable to the qualifying mark in your area. No card, no account, no sales pitch afterwards.