Six weeks to go. Maybe four. Maybe two. You've either been prepping for a year, or you started late, or you started serious and then summer holiday happened and the wheels came off a bit. Either way, you're now staring down the calendar wondering what on earth you should actually be doing in the time that's left.
Last-minute 11 plus preparation is its own thing. It's not the same as the long Year 5 grind, and it shouldn't look like it. The mistake most parents make in the final stretch is doing more of what they were already doing, only louder. That rarely works, and sometimes it actively harms how a child performs on the day.
So what does help when the exam is weeks away rather than months? Here's how I'd think about it.
Stop trying to fix everything
If your child still has weak spots in late August with a September exam, you've already lost the chance to rebuild from the ground up. A child who can't do fractions properly in late August isn't going to suddenly master them in three weeks. Trying to force it usually ends in tears, theirs and yours.
Triage instead. Pick the two or three areas where a small amount of focused work could move the needle, and accept that the rest is what it is. For most kids, that's usually one maths topic, one English skill (often inference questions or vocabulary), and a reasoning quirk like cloze or shuffled sentences if they're sitting GL Assessment. If your child is in Kent or Birmingham doing the GL paper, those reasoning sub-types are exactly the ones that reward late, targeted practice because the technique is teachable.
What you should not be doing is dragging out a textbook on a brand-new topic. New material this close to the exam mostly creates new gaps. The marginal value of revisiting things they nearly know is much higher than introducing things they don't.
Focus on exam technique, not new knowledge
The biggest gains in the final month rarely come from learning new content. They come from how a child handles the paper. Pacing, guessing strategy, knowing when to skip a question, reading the instruction line properly, marking the answer sheet without losing their place. These are the things that turn a borderline child into a pass.
Get hold of two or three full-length papers under proper exam conditions. Sit them at a table, with a timer running, no snacks, no checking phones, no breaks halfway through. Most children who've done worksheets all year have never actually completed a 50-minute paper in one go. The tiredness in the last ten minutes is a real factor, and the only way to train for it is to feel it.
After the paper, don't focus on the wrong answers first. Look at the timing. Did they finish? If not, where did they get stuck? Did they spend eight minutes on one question and then panic? Did they leave whole sections blank? The pattern of how they ran out of time tells you more than which specific questions were wrong.
For multiple choice papers, the rule for almost every region is to never leave a blank. There's no negative marking. A guess has roughly a one-in-five chance of being right. Some children, for reasons I genuinely don't understand, would rather leave a question blank than risk a wrong answer. That habit costs marks. Beat it out of them now, gently.
Reading still matters in the last six weeks
This one surprises parents. With four weeks to go, the single biggest thing you can do for the English and verbal reasoning paper is keep your child reading. Real books, not workbooks. Twenty to thirty minutes a day, ideally something slightly above their comfort level so they're meeting unfamiliar words.
Vocabulary questions on the GL paper, and inference questions on every paper, are essentially testing how much exposure a child has had to varied written English. You can't cram that. But you can keep topping it up right until the day before. A child who reads a chapter of something good every night for the last six weeks will do better on the comprehension paper than one who does an extra hundred worksheets.
If your child won't read, audiobooks count for the vocabulary side, just not for the comprehension speed. A combination of both is fine.
Mock tests, but not too many
Mock tests in the final stretch are useful for two things. They show you where the gaps still are, and they get your child used to the feeling of sitting a real paper. They are not useful as a daily ritual, and they are definitely not useful as a stick to beat your child with.
I'd do one full mock per week in the last four weeks, no more. After each one, spend an hour going through the mistakes properly. Not "look at this, you got it wrong, do it again". Actually unpack what went wrong. Was it a misread? Did they not know the rule? Did they panic at the timer? Each of those needs a different fix.
If your child's mock scores are bouncing around, don't read too much into a single bad result. Year 6 mock scores are noisy. One bad paper in week three is not a sign of disaster. A consistent downward trend across three papers is, and that usually means they're tired or anxious rather than under-prepared.
The week before the exam
The last seven days are where most parents go wrong. They cram. The instinct is to do more, harder, longer. It almost always backfires.
In the final week, less is more. Light revision of vocabulary lists. A bit of mental maths to keep things sharp. Maybe one short timed section, not a full paper. Plenty of sleep. Normal meals. Normal weekend. Treat your child like an athlete in tapering week, because that's basically what they are.
Two days out, stop entirely. Do something fun. Go for a walk. Watch a film. The exam isn't going to be won by what they do on the Friday before a Monday paper. It will absolutely be lost if they walk in exhausted and rattled.
The night before, lay out the kit. Pencils, eraser, water bottle, any ID you need to bring, the school address. Talk through the morning so there are no surprises. Aim for an early night. Don't quiz them. Don't have a serious conversation about how important it is. They already know.
Exam morning: do less than you think
Breakfast. Something they'll actually eat, not something nutritionally optimal. Toast and jam beats a special protein-packed bowl they refuse on the day. Get there early but not so early they're sitting outside getting cold. Hug them, tell them you're proud of them either way, and walk away. Standing in the car park making worried faces does nothing useful.
That's it. The work is done. What happens next is mostly out of your hands.
If you want a free, honest read on where your child currently stands before you build out the final weeks, ReadyFor11 is a 30-minute benchmark that scores your child across the four 11+ skill areas. No paywall, no email gate, no pretending you're not getting an honest score. Take it at readyfor11.co.uk.
FAQs
How many practice papers should my child do in the last month?
Roughly one full paper per week, plus shorter timed sections in between. More than that and you stop learning from each one. Less than that and the stamina won't be there on the day. The point of papers in the last month isn't to learn new material, it's to practise managing a real timed paper end to end.
My child's mock scores are getting worse, not better. What's going on?
Usually it's tiredness or anxiety, not a knowledge gap. When a child has been prepping for months, the final weeks can produce a slump as fatigue catches up. Back off the workload, get them sleeping properly, and let them sit one paper rested. If the score recovers, you've found your answer. If it doesn't, look for a specific area that's regressed and target only that.
Should we hire an emergency tutor in the final month?
Probably not. A new tutor in the last four weeks rarely has time to build a relationship with the child or properly understand their gaps before the exam. The exception is a single targeted session on a known weak spot, like a tutor who specialises in non-verbal reasoning if that's the one subtype your child can't crack. Beyond that, more pressure rarely converts to more marks.
Is it too late to start 11 plus prep with only six weeks to go?
Honestly, yes, if you mean starting from zero. Six weeks isn't enough time to build the underlying skills the exam tests. But it's enough time to teach exam technique, do a handful of mocks, and give a child who's broadly on track the best shot at performing on the day. If you're starting from zero in late summer of Year 6, talk to your child about the realistic odds and consider whether the local state secondary might be the better fit. There's no shame in that, and forcing a child through an exam they're not ready for usually does more harm than the place at the school would do good.