GL Assessment 11+ explained: Subjects, format and how to prepare

GL Assessment is the test provider behind the 11+ in most state grammar school areas of England. If your child is sitting the 11+ in autumn 2026 at a Kent grammar, a Buckinghamshire grammar, one of the Birmingham consortium schools, Lincolnshire or a host of other areas, they're almost certainly sitting a GL paper. (Sutton is one of the exceptions: the five Sutton consortium grammars now use their own bespoke Selective Eligibility Test, not GL.)

This guide walks through what the GL Assessment 11+ looks like in 2026: Which subjects each paper covers, how long the test is, how it's scored, and what a sensible preparation plan looks like.

GL Assessment is a UK education assessment company that produces standardised tests used widely across schools and local authorities. Their 11+ papers are the most common entrance test for state grammar schools in England. They also produce the CAT4, the New Group Reading Test and the PASS attitudes survey, which is why you may see the GL name attached to assessments well beyond the 11+.

For parents, the practical point is this: When a grammar school says its entrance exam is the "GL test", they mean the multiple-choice 11+ papers GL produces. The school (or the local authority running the test for several schools) sets the cut-off and arranges the test centres. GL provides the papers, runs the standardisation and returns the scores.

GL papers are used in over 80% of state grammar school areas in England (per GL Assessment's own figure). Coverage isn't fixed (areas occasionally change provider) but the long-standing GL areas include Kent and Medway, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, most of the Birmingham consortium (King Edward VI schools), the West Midlands Grammar Schools partnership (Shropshire, Walsall, Wolverhampton), Trafford, Wiltshire, Dorset, and Lancashire and Cumbria. Wirral's non-Catholic grammars and Bexley have reportedly moved to Quest Assessments for recent test cycles; parents should always confirm the current provider directly with each local authority. Sutton's five-grammar consortium (Sutton Grammar, Wallington County, Wilson's, Nonsuch, Wallington High) is another notable exception: it runs its own bespoke Selective Eligibility Test rather than a GL paper.

What happened to CEM? GL's main historic competitor, CEM (the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring at Durham University), discontinued its paper-based 11+ tests in late 2022. Several former CEM areas have since moved over to GL or to bespoke local papers. Older parent forum advice about CEM-style preparation is mostly out of date.

The GL Assessment 11+ has four possible papers: English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. Different areas combine these differently. Kent, for example, tests English, maths and reasoning. Buckinghamshire uses a combined reasoning paper called the Secondary Transfer Test, and the Birmingham consortium tests across English, maths and reasoning. Your child won't necessarily sit all four.

The content in each paper is built around the upper-KS2 national curriculum (for English and maths) and around the cognitive skills GL has designed the reasoning tests to measure (for VR and NVR). None of the papers require knowledge that's outside what a strong KS2 pupil should encounter at school.

The English paper tests reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPAG). A typical paper includes a comprehension passage with multiple-choice questions, a cloze (gap-fill) section, and short SPAG tasks. Total length is usually around 50 minutes for roughly 49 to 56 questions.

There's no extended writing in a standard GL paper, though some grammar schools add a separate writing task. Vocabulary tends to be among the most important factors at the top of the score range. Children who read widely outside school across Year 4 and Year 5 tend to handle the comprehension and vocabulary questions more comfortably than children who've only worked through 11+ workbooks.

The maths paper covers arithmetic, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio, measures, simple geometry, basic algebra, and data handling. This is the content of the KS2 national curriculum. Typically around 50 multiple-choice questions in 50 minutes, with answers marked on a separate sheet.

The two things that catch children out are pace and reading. A child who can do every question given an hour each may run out of time when each question gets less than 60 seconds. And word problems require careful reading: GL papers often phrase a fairly easy calculation inside a slightly tricky scenario.

Verbal reasoning tests how a child reasons with words and language patterns. It's not a vocabulary test, but a wide vocabulary helps a lot. Typical question types include analogies, finding the odd one out, decoding short word puzzles, working out letter sequences, and identifying hidden words inside sentences.

GL verbal reasoning is built around six broad categories with around 16 subtypes in all, and a typical paper samples a subset. Practising the formats in advance is useful here, because many children don't meet these styles in their normal school work. Recognising the format quickly saves valuable time in the exam.

Non-verbal reasoning tests the same kind of pattern-spotting and logical thinking, but with shapes and visual sequences instead of words. Typical questions ask which shape completes a series, which figure is the odd one out, what shape would result from rotating or reflecting another, or how a shape would look folded into a cube net.

NVR tends to feel either intuitive or frustrating depending on the child. The biggest single gain in NVR usually comes from learning the standard question types and the systematic approach to each. After about 10 to 15 hours of targeted practice across a few weeks, many children plateau, and further practice produces only marginal gains.

GL Assessment 11+ papers are paper-based, not online. They're multiple-choice, with answers shaded onto a separate answer sheet that's then scanned and marked by optical mark recognition (OMR) software.

The exam typically happens on a single morning in September or early October of Year 6, at one of the local grammar schools. Two or three papers are sat with short breaks in between. Each paper is around 45 to 60 minutes long, with English and maths typically at the shorter end and verbal/non-verbal reasoning often closer to an hour. Total time on the day is usually around three hours including breaks, briefing and registration.

Because the answer sheet is separate from the question booklet, two things matter: Your child needs to be careful to transfer answers to the right number, and they get nothing for showing working. There are no method marks. A clear answer in the right box is everything.

Raw marks are converted into a standardised age score, or SAS. The standardisation puts each paper onto a common scale and adjusts for the child's exact age in years and months on the day. A child born in August isn't penalised for being almost a full year younger than a classmate born the previous September.

Most GL standardised scores fall between 70 and 140, where 100 is the national average. Grammar school cut-off scores vary by area. A standard pass mark commonly sits between 111 and 121 SAS, though super-selective London grammars effectively require scores well into the 130s. There's no fixed national pass mark.

There's no negative marking. Skipping a question costs the same as getting it wrong, so children should always guess on questions they can't answer rather than leave them blank.

A sensible preparation plan does three things in sequence: It builds the underlying curriculum content first, then layers in familiarity with the question types, then finishes with timed practice papers under exam conditions. Skipping the first two and jumping straight to practice papers is the most common mistake parents make.

A reasonable timeline for a child sitting the exam in autumn 2026 looks like this:

September 2025 to January 2026 (early Year 5 through start of spring term). Build the basics. Daily reading aloud or quietly. Mental arithmetic practice (times tables, quick number bonds, fractions of amounts). Wide vocabulary work covering synonyms, antonyms and word origins. No 11+-specific work needed yet.

February to June 2026 (rest of Year 5). Introduce the four question types. One short verbal or non-verbal reasoning workbook each week is plenty. Cover the standard NVR formats and the main verbal reasoning question types. Keep maths work focused on speed and accuracy with arithmetic, fractions and word problems.

July to September 2026 (summer break and start of Year 6). Start timed practice papers, building from one a fortnight to one or two a week. Mark them honestly. Spend more time on the questions your child got wrong than re-doing what they already know. Practise transferring answers to a separate answer sheet.

The biggest predictor across all four GL papers is underlying fluency in English and maths. A child who reads widely has a head start on comprehension and verbal reasoning. A child who's fluent with KS2 arithmetic and fractions will get through the maths paper quickly enough to leave time for the harder word problems.

This isn't 11+ work as such. It's steady primary school strength building, done across Year 4 and Year 5 rather than crammed into the summer before Year 6. If you only do one thing in Year 5, make it daily reading.

Exam technique matters more for the GL 11+ than for most primary school tests, because of the speed required and the separate answer sheet. Practise the following in the final few months: Working at pace, transferring answers cleanly, skipping a question and coming back to it, never leaving a blank, and managing time across the paper.

Full mocks under timed conditions are the best way to build this. Do a few in the same conditions your child will face on the day: Sitting at a desk, timed strictly, no help, no breaks within a paper. The first one or two will probably be a shock. That's the point. It's better to find that out three months out than on the morning of the test.

The 11+ is a stressful exam for a 10 or 11 year old, particularly when grammar school places are competitive. Children pick up far more anxiety from their parents than parents realise. Two things help: Keep practice in regular, predictable slots rather than a chaotic last-minute scramble, and talk openly about non-selective school options long before results day. A child who knows they have a good local secondary lined up will sit the exam with much less weight on it.