Birmingham and the West Midlands · Years 4, 5 and 6
Adrian Thompson. Qualified teacher, over twenty years in
primary.
A quarter of the West Midlands 11+ is not taught in any primary
school.
It is non-verbal and spatial reasoning. No school report tells you
how your child handles it. One free hour with me does.
No charge. No obligation to book anything afterwards.
How it works
- You book a time. Two days notice. After school or Saturday
morning. - Your child sits the paper with me on video. One hour.
- I mark it by hand and write the report. It reaches you within
three days. - Fifteen minutes on the phone going through it. I will not ask you
to sign up to anything on that call.
All you do is find a quiet room and a laptop.
I am on the call throughout. I read the instructions out, keep the
timings, and answer questions about how the test works. Your child
answers into a form on screen. A camera is the only thing the laptop
needs.
The report
This is what arrives. Every parent gets one.
Five areas, scored and banded. The five things to work on first, in
order. My written comments on how your child worked, not just what
they scored. One page.
You can act on it on your own. Most of it is work you can do at
home, and the report says which part to start with.
The gap most parents miss
I have taught primary for over twenty years. The gap I see most is
not maths and it is not English.
It is non-verbal reasoning and spatial reasoning. Shape patterns,
and folding a flat net into a cube in your head.
Neither is on the primary curriculum. A child can be top of the
class in every subject and never have been taught either one. So a
strong school report can look reassuring and still say nothing about
a quarter of the marks.
That is not the school failing. It is not their job.
One question, worked through
Here is the kind of question school never sets. Thirty seconds is
the real time allowed.
The answer is C. Here is the method. Look at the first letters on
their own. Both F shapes are circles. G is the triangle. H is the
square. So the first letter is the outer shape.
Now the second letters. X sits on the white shape. Y sits on the
grey one. Z sits on both black ones. So the second letter is the
shading.
The test shape is a grey square. H, then Y. One letter at a time
turns an eight way stare into two easy questions, and that habit
works on every code question your child will ever meet. Try the next
one with them and see.
Who is marking it
I am Adrian Thompson. I hold Qualified Teacher Status and I teach in
a classroom now, not twenty years ago.
- Qualified Teacher Status
- Enhanced DBS certificate
- Trained Designated Safeguarding Lead
- Postgraduate Diploma in Psychoanalytical Observation Studies
- National Professional Qualification in Leading Behaviour and
Culture - Currently completing a doctorate in education
No software marks your child’s paper. I do.
Price
The assessment, the written report and the follow-up call are
free.
Small group tuition is £30 an hour. Four children maximum, one
hour a week. One-to-one tuition is £50 an hour, and most children
I work with do one or two hours a week.
No tie-in either way. Pay monthly, cancel any time.
After the assessment I will tell you what I think your child
needs. Sometimes that is me. Sometimes it is a few months of work
you can do at home, and I will tell you what to do.
Who this is not for
This is built for the West Midlands grammar school test. If your
child is sitting an independent school paper instead, it will not
tell you what you need.
I mark every report myself alongside a teaching job. If you want
your child to start next week, I will not be able to help you.
Safeguarding and your child’s details
You are handing an hour of your child’s time to someone you have not
met. Here is what I would want to know.
For a one-to-one assessment or lesson it is your child and me on the
call. No assistant. In a small group there are three other children,
first names only. You are welcome to sit in, or to be in the next
room, whichever your child prefers. If you want to stop at any
point, say so and we stop.
If your child becomes upset or has had enough, we stop. No child has
to finish. The session is not recorded. There is no video or audio
kept.
I hold Qualified Teacher Status and an enhanced DBS certificate,
both available on request, and I am a trained Designated
Safeguarding Lead. I follow the same safeguarding standards I work
to in schools. If I had a concern about a child’s welfare during a
session, I would act on it, the same as I would in a classroom.
I ask for your child’s first name only, never a surname. I keep the
answers your child gives, the report I write, and your contact
details. I use them to run the session, write the report, and speak
to you afterwards. I do not share them with anyone. If you want them
deleted, ask me and I will delete them.
Questions parents ask
Does my child realistically have a chance?
I cannot answer that from here, and neither can anyone who has not
watched your child work.
What I can tell you is how it is decided. There are two hurdles.
First a qualifying score, the same at every Birmingham grammar
school. Below it a child is not considered at all. Above it your
child is in the running, but a place is still not a given, because
these schools get many times more applications than they have
places. Each school then makes offers down from the top score
until it is full.
Neither hurdle has anything to do with a school report. The useful
question in Year 4 or Year 5 is not whether your child will pass.
It is where they stand today, and which five things to fix while
there is still time.
When should we start preparing?
The test is sat at the very start of Year 6. Scores come out in
October, and the form where you name your schools has been due on
31 October. So Year 6 is not a preparation year. It is over by
half term.
That puts the real work in Year 4 and Year 5.
Year 4 is a good place to start, and not because your child needs
two years of drilling. It is because the untaught parts take the
longest. Non-verbal and spatial reasoning start from nothing.
Vocabulary grows by reading, over months. Neither one responds to
cramming.
Starting in Year 4 is what lets the work stay short and calm.
Twenty minutes, most days, and no evenings lost. Starting later is
still fine. The same work has to fit into less time.
What is in the West Midlands 11+ exam?
The test is set by GL Assessment. Your child sits two papers with
a short break in between. Each one takes about 50 to 60 minutes,
including the instructions.
Both papers cover the same four things: English comprehension,
verbal reasoning, mathematics, and non-verbal and spatial
reasoning. Half the marks come from English and verbal reasoning.
A quarter from mathematics. A quarter from non-verbal and spatial
reasoning.
Every question is multiple choice. There is no writing task.
Answers go on a separate sheet, which a machine scans. Nothing
written in the question booklet is marked, and papers are not
marked again afterwards.
Each paper is split into short sections, each timed on its own.
Once a section ends, your child cannot go back to it. No watches,
no ruler, no calculator, no scrap paper.
What does a standardised score mean, and what should we be aiming
for?
The results letter has three numbers on it, not one.
Two of them are for parts of the test. One is English and verbal
reasoning. The other is non-verbal reasoning and mathematics. Both
sit around 100 in the middle, so 115 is above the middle. The
third is the total, built from the other two, and it sits around
200. That is why parents talk about 205 and 224, and never about
105.
None of them is a percentage. They can carry a half, so 107.5 is a
real score. Every score is adjusted for your child’s month of
birth, so a summer born child is not judged as if they were a year
older.
For the September 2025 intake, every Birmingham grammar school set
a qualifying score of 205. Below that a child was not considered
and could not go on a waiting list. Several also set a priority
score of 224 inside their own admissions rules.
Above that there is no fixed number to aim at. The cut-off is the
score of the last child offered a place, and it moves. For the
2024 intake it ran from 217 at one school to 260 at another. Read
the admissions criteria for each school you are considering.
One last thing. A mark like 34 out of 50 on a shop bought paper
cannot be turned into any of these numbers. The schools do not
release raw scores. Watch the direction, not the number.
My child resists every session. Is that normal?
Yes. It is one of the most common things parents tell me, and it
is not a sign that your child cannot do this.
Usually it is one of three things. The session is too long. The
work is too hard, so every session feels like failing. Or the
person asking is a parent, and being corrected by a parent lands
differently from being corrected by a teacher.
What helps. Keep sessions short enough that your child is
surprised when they end. Stop while it is still going well. Start
with something they can already do. Mark it later, so the two of
you are not arguing about a wrong answer thirty seconds after it
was written.
Treat the refusal as information. A child who digs in on the same
section every time is usually telling you they do not know how to
do it, not that they will not.
We are out of catchment. Is it still worth trying?
Possibly. Read the admissions criteria for each school before you
decide.
The qualifying score does not change with where you live. What
changes is what happens above it. Several of these schools put
children living in catchment in a higher priority group. In some
recent years that has meant no places at all went to out of
catchment applicants when offers were made on 1 March. The ones
who got in came later, from the waiting list.
So from outside catchment the score usually needs to be higher,
and the wait can run on past March.
One thing worth knowing, because it worries people for no reason.
All local authorities use an equal preference system. Putting a
grammar school first on your form does not damage your chances at
the other schools you list.
How many hours a week should my child actually be doing?
I am not going to give you a number to measure yourself against.
It depends on the child and on how long you have left.
What I will say is that twenty minutes on most days does more than
two hours on a Sunday. Work has to be met again and again to
stick. One long session is one exposure, not several.
Be careful with the answers in parent groups. They run from almost
nothing to several hours a day, and nobody in those threads is
comparing like with like.
The better question is whether the hours are pointed at the right
thing. One hour a week on the area furthest behind moves the total
more than five hours spread evenly over everything. If your child
is tired, tearful, or going off reading, that matters more than
the number of hours.
What if my child has additional needs or needs exam access
arrangements?
Start with your child’s school, and start early.
I do not run the entrance test and I have no say in what is
granted. Anything of this kind has to be agreed in advance. It
cannot be sorted out on the day. Your child’s school normally
provides the evidence, so they need to know what you are asking
for well before you register. Ask the school and the test
organisers what they need and by when.
For my own assessment, tell me beforehand what helps your child
and what makes things harder. Extra time, breaks, reading things
aloud, a slower start. None of that is a problem, and none of it
changes what I write about the gaps.
When should we do mock exams, and how many?
Two different things get called mocks, and it helps to keep them
apart.
A full mock is the whole test in one sitting, under time. That is
for stamina and nerves. Two or three across the final year is
enough. More than that eats whole mornings and hands you one
number each time.
Practice papers are the other thing, and these should be frequent.
One section at a time. Timed, so your child builds pace, but short
enough to fit into a normal evening. Non-verbal reasoning on
Monday, comprehension on Wednesday, and so on.
The rule for both is the same. The paper is not the point. What
you do next is the point. Mark it, find what went wrong, work on
that, then come back to it. A pile of finished papers with no
follow up teaches a child very little.
Can you help with creative writing?
First, the useful fact. There is no writing task in this test. No
story, no essay, no letter. Every question is multiple choice.
So if you are preparing for the West Midlands grammar schools,
time spent on creative writing is time not spent on the parts that
are marked.
Two exceptions. Independent schools often do set a writing paper
of their own. And some grammar schools elsewhere in the country
include writing, which is why the parent groups are full of it.
Check what your schools ask for before you spend a year on it.
Writing still matters for your child’s education, and I teach it.
If it is a worry, say so when we speak and I will tell you
honestly whether it belongs in an 11+ plan or somewhere else.
Book the free assessment
Prefer to ask something first?
WhatsApp me on 07724 808069.