When to Start 11 Plus Preparation: Work Back From Registration, Not the Exam

That advice isn't wrong. It's aimed at the wrong date.

The date that sets your timetable in the six English areas we checked is not the exam in September of Year 6. It's the registration deadline in the spring or early summer before, which fell somewhere between 31 March and 1 July. Miss it and you may lose this cycle before preparation even begins. So the first job isn't choosing a tutor or buying a workbook. It's finding the official registration page for your area and writing down its closing date.

On this page

1. The deadline that comes first is registration, not the exam
2. Six selective areas, six different deadlines
3. Access arrangements have their own deadline, and it moves too
4. Northern Ireland runs on a different calendar entirely
5. Your area has to publish its dates, and there is a date for that too
6. So when do you actually start?
7. Questions parents ask

The deadline that comes first is registration, not the exam

Registration is the paperwork that gets your child a seat, a test centre and a set of papers. It's run by the council, by a group of grammar schools acting together, or in a few areas by the schools themselves, and it opens and closes on dates you don't get a say in. Those six English areas follow the same shape: registration opens in the spring, closes in late spring or early summer, and the test follows in September.

Every page we could find that answers "when should I start?" is published by a business that sells preparation, and not one of them prints a single area's registration date.

Registering for the test and applying to the school are two different jobs

This catches families every year, and the admission authorities know it: several say so on their own pages before you reach the form. Medway Council puts it in six words: "A test registration is not a school application." The CSSE, which runs the test for Essex and Southend, warns that completing only the test registration form "does not constitute a valid application for a place at a CSSE School".

Two acts, two deadlines, two systems.

Registration goes to whoever runs the test where you live, in the spring or early summer of Year 5. The school application goes to your home local authority on the ordinary secondary transfer form by 31 October, the national closing date for secondary school applications in England. Kent County Council's parent leaflet spells out the join: you apply "by naming the school as a preference on your Local Authority's secondary application form". Offers land on 1 March. Do one and skip the other and you've effectively done neither.

What happens if the date goes past

Late registration is refused in several of these areas, and second sittings are tightly limited. Medway is the bluntest: "The arranged test dates are your child's only chance to sit the test. The test cannot be taken later." The King Edward VI Foundation, which handles grammar school test registration across the West Midlands, says it isn't possible to register once the deadline has gone. Bexley says late registrations will not be accepted, and Buckinghamshire says late registration isn't normally accepted.

Kent is the one softer case. Once its window shuts, the council asks anyone who missed it to email the admissions team, who will advise on the next steps. Nothing in that wording promises a test place.

Six selective areas, six different deadlines

Six English areas and Northern Ireland each publish their own dates for children starting secondary school in September 2027, and those dates land four months apart. Selection is settled area by area, so there is no national picture to give you.

Dates move, and yours are set by your own admission authority rather than by us. Open your council's published arrangements before you plan a single lesson around anything here.

The windows spread across four months

Bexley shut its door on 31 March 2026, five months before its own test. Kent kept registration open until midnight on 1 July. Buckinghamshire, Medway, the CSSE and Birmingham sit in between, all closing in June.

If you live near a boundary, that spread is the whole story. Kent, Medway and Bexley are three separate systems that happen to be neighbours, with separate registrations and tests. Kent's leaflet notes that schools in Medway, Bexley and Bromley sit outside the Kent local authority area, and Bexley states that achieving a selective standard "in the Kent Test or any other selection test will not be considered for the Bexley Selection Test". Two areas on your list means two registrations and two windows, and the earlier of them is your real 11 plus registration deadline.

In Buckinghamshire your child is in unless you take them out

Buckinghamshire runs the whole thing backwards, which is the clearest proof that a national answer to "what do I need to do?" cannot exist. The council's own words: "You do not need to register your child if they attend a state-funded primary school in Buckinghamshire." Those children are entered for the Secondary Transfer Test automatically.

Families at partner schools, and anyone whose child attends a school outside the county, do have to register, between 1 May and 3pm on 2 June 2026. Milton Keynes is not in Buckinghamshire, so the automatic entry doesn't reach Milton Keynes families.

For a child at a Buckinghamshire state-funded primary, the form a parent can miss is the opt-out, not the sign-up. If you would rather your child did not sit it, tell the primary school in good time.

Passing is not the same as getting a place

Bexley publishes its numbers, which is rarer than it ought to be. In 2025, 5,866 children sat the Bexley Selection Test and 2,070 reached the selective standard, so about a third of that cohort cleared the academic bar. For September 2027, 800 grammar school places are available.

Kent says the same without the figures: a Kent grammar school assessment "does not guarantee your child a place". The School Admissions Code supplies the other half, confirming that grammar schools "do not have to fill all of their places if applicants have not reached the required standard". Reaching the standard and getting the letter are two different outcomes, and preparation only touches one of them.

Access arrangements have their own deadline, and it moves too

If your child has a disability or a special educational need that affects how they access a test, extra time and other adjustments are requested separately from registration. In most of these areas the primary school submits the request, not you, so the person who has to act isn't the person reading this. Start that conversation early, and don't assume it counts as signing up: Bexley states plainly that "submitting a request for special arrangements does not register your child".

The deadlines don't track the registration ones either. In Birmingham the adjustments deadline falls at 4pm on 12 June, a fortnight before registration itself closes on 26 June, so a family working towards the later date can lose the earlier one without noticing. Medway adds a warning worth carrying across boundaries: special arrangements aren't portable between different local authorities and selection tests.

Northern Ireland runs on a different calendar entirely

The English systems above differ from Northern Ireland, which uses a different body, different months and different vocabulary: your child is in P7 rather than Year 6, they transfer into Year 8, and SEAG runs the assessment instead of a council. If you want support close to home while you work through it, we list tutors across Northern Ireland by city.

What the SEAG year looks like

Registration opened at 8am on 18 May 2026 and closes at 11:59pm on 18 September 2026. Pupil Cards follow on 9 October. Paper 1 is sat on 14 November 2026 and Paper 2 on 21 November, with 28 November held in reserve as a contingency date, and outcomes are issued on 23 January 2027.

Read that closing date again. A P7 parent can still be registering after the school year has started, and not one of the six English areas allows that. One exception matters before you plan anything: children with a Statement of special educational needs don't sit the assessment at all, because a separate Year 8 admissions process applies to them instead.

Twenty pounds, and who does not pay it

SEAG charges a £20 administration fee, and it isn't refundable. It's waived for children with Free School Meals Entitlement. Registering in any late window costs £50.

In England you pay nothing for the test, and that isn't generosity. The School Admissions Code bars admission authorities from requesting financial contributions "as any part of the admissions process, including for tests". Birmingham's grammar schools say it from the other side: all costs associated with the entrance test, the test itself included, are paid for by the schools.

The difference is structural. SEAG is a not-for-profit private limited company, open to the 63 post-primary schools in Northern Ireland that use academic selection, and it sits outside the control of both the Department of Education and the Education Authority. It isn't an English admission authority, so the Code doesn't reach it. The papers themselves are set and marked by GL Assessment.

Your area has to publish its dates, and there is a date for that too

Your area may not be one of the seven we've covered, and that doesn't leave you stuck, because somebody has a legal duty to have made your dates findable. Once you have them and want a hand inside your runway, we list teachers and tutors by city across England.

The 15 March rule

The School Admissions Code sets the calendar behind the calendar. Every admission authority must determine its admission arrangements each year by 28 February, then publish them on its own website by 15 March and keep them displayed for the whole offer year. Local authorities carry a second duty on the same date: publish where all the arrangements in the area can be viewed and explain how to object. They must publish the composite prospectus by 12 September. Objections go to the Schools Adjudicator by 15 May.

In plain terms, by the spring of your child's Year 5, your area's dates exist, they're published, and someone was legally obliged to put them where you can reach them.

Where to look, in order

One warning first. In some areas there's no council-run registration at all. Trafford Council tells parents "you must contact your preferred grammar school directly to register to sit the test", and five of the borough's seven grammar schools share one test while the other two use a different test on a different date. That is why step four exists.

1. Search your council's website for school admissions and open the composite prospectus for the year your child transfers.
2. Find the determined admission arrangements for each grammar school you are considering; every admission authority has to publish these by 15 March.
3. Write down three dates: when registration opens, when it closes, and when the test is sat.
4. Check whether your child's primary school registers them or whether that is your job.
5. Ask the school or consortium which provider sets its test, so you buy practice material in the right format.
6. If your child needs access arrangements, find that deadline separately and speak to their primary school before it.

So when do you actually start?

The answer is a subtraction. Take your registration close date: that's when the decision has to be made. Take your test date, usually two to three months later: that's when the work has to be finished. The standard twelve-month answer collapses the two into one, which is fine right up until the first of them arrives while you're still making up your mind.

If your window has already closed for this cycle, check the admission authority's own late-registration rules before assuming the door is shut. Kent tells missed registrants to contact its admissions team for next steps. The rest of your application form still deserves attention: the non-selective schools you name, the waiting lists, and the independent appeal panel, all of which Kent's own leaflet points parents towards.

Work back from registration, not from the exam

Find your registration close. Find your test date. Count backwards from the test for study time, and treat that closing date as the moment you and your child have to have decided.

In those six English areas, that lands the decision inside Year 5: in the spring term if you're in Bexley and in the summer term elsewhere. If you're reading this in Year 4, you have room and no reason to rush.

Be honest about what else is booked into that autumn term. Year 6 already carries the test, the secondary application by 31 October and, in plenty of houses, how music grades are scheduled into the same few weeks. If maths is the soft spot and you want support inside your runway, we list maths tutors near you.

There's a real cost to living in an early-deadline area, and it's worth naming. Bexley's 31 March close asks you to commit on a nine- or ten-year-old's behalf months before a Kent parent has to. That isn't a reason to decide before you're ready. It's a reason to know the date.

Buy practice for the test your area actually sets

Practice material only helps if it matches the paper your child will sit, and the papers differ more than the marketing suggests.

Birmingham's test is provided by GL Assessment: two papers of about sixty minutes, weighted 50 per cent English and verbal reasoning, 25 per cent non-verbal reasoning and 25 per cent maths, with scores standardised for age. Bexley's is provided by Quest Assessments, in two booklets of about fifty minutes each. The CSSE writes its own English and maths papers, weighted half and half, and removed the Applied Reasoning questions from the English paper from September 2024. Ask which provider sets your test before you spend anything, and don't assume a result travels, because Bexley won't consider a selective standard achieved anywhere else.

If money is tight, ask about the free routes first. The CSSE runs a partnership with Atom Learning that gives free online 11 plus familiarisation to pupils eligible for Pupil Premium.

Whoever you hire, you're trusting an adult to work with your child, so read whether a private tutor needs a DBS check before the first lesson rather than after it. On our own listings, what our checks actually cover is written down, and it's worth a look for what it does and doesn't say.

Four things worth walking away from

• A tutor who cannot tell you which provider sets your area's test.
• Practice papers bought for a different area's format.
• Anyone promising a pass, or quoting a pass mark as though it were fixed.
• A course that promises to fix a registration deadline you have already missed.

Questions parents ask

When is the 11 plus exam?

In September, at the start of Year 6, running from 2 September in Bexley to 20 September for out-of-area Medway candidates. Northern Ireland sits later and on its own clock, with SEAG papers on 14 and 21 November 2026. Your own date is in your area's published arrangements.

How long does it take to prepare for the 11 plus?

There's no fixed answer, and the admissions material doesn't set one. What you can pin down is a deadline. Across the six English areas we checked, registration closed roughly two to five months before the test. If you want a longer runway, start before the window closes.

How do I register my child for the 11 plus?

Through whoever runs the test where you live, inside the published window. That's usually an online form run by the council or a consortium of grammar schools, though the CSSE also accepts postal registration. Two exceptions: Buckinghamshire enters children at its own state-funded primaries automatically, and Trafford asks parents to contact the grammar school directly.

Is it too late to start in Year 6?

For a new test registration in these six English areas, the normal window has already closed by Year 6. If your child is already registered, whether Year 6 is too late to begin preparation is a separate question, and none of the admission authorities we read sets a study timetable. Northern Ireland runs later: SEAG registration closes on 18 September, after P7 has begun.

When do 11 plus results come out?

Across these English areas, results arrive in October, ahead of the 31 October application deadline so you can use them when you name your preferences. The CSSE issues results on 12 October 2026, Kent on 15 October, Birmingham on 16 October, and Buckinghamshire on 9 October. Northern Ireland is far later, with SEAG outcomes on 23 January 2027.

Do I still have to apply to the school separately?

Yes, and this is the one that costs families places. Registering for the test doesn't apply for a school place. You still name your preferences on your home local authority's secondary application form by 31 October, whatever the test result, and offers arrive on 1 March.