The 11 Plus is not one exam; it’s a mythical hydra with four heads: Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, Maths, and English. Verbal Reasoning is essentially “Can your child solve a word puzzle while their brain is on fire from anxiety?”. Non-Verbal Reasoning is even weirder—it’s shapes that look like alien hieroglyphics, and your kid has to figure out which one doesn’t belong. Here’s a joke for you: Non-Verbal Reasoning is what happens when a geometry teacher and a Minecraft player have a fever dream.
The ninja trick of time management
Time pressure is the real villain. Most kids freeze because they think they must answer every single question correctly. They don’t. The surprising fact: in many 11 Plus exams, you can get 60% of the answers right and still pass with flying colours. Tell your child to treat it like a video game: skip the boss-level hard questions and come back if there’s time. If they spend ten minutes crying over a shape puzzle, they’ve lost the war.
