What Is a Good Score on an 11+ Practice Paper?

MindBlaze · Updated 10 September 2026 · 4 min read

There is no single "good" score on an 11+ practice paper. It depends on how hard that particular paper is, whether your child sat it under timed conditions, and how far into preparation they are. But the number on its own matters far less than what sits behind it: two children can both score 70% and need completely different things next. A good score is really one you can learn something from.

Why there is no fixed "pass" percentage

The score your child eventually receives from the real exam is not a raw percentage at all. Most grammar schools report a Standardised Age Score — a number that adjusts for your child's exact age and how the whole cohort performed, benchmarked so that an average performance for the age group sits at 100. Crucially, there is no single national pass mark. Qualifying scores and admission arrangements vary between schools and areas, and they change year to year with the applicant pool — so the only figures worth relying on are the ones published by the specific schools you are considering.

A practice paper at your kitchen table gives you something different — a raw percentage that hasn't been standardised or age-adjusted. It depends entirely on how difficult the paper is and whether it was timed. A tough, timed paper and a gentle, untimed one can produce very different numbers from the same child on the same day. So a "good" practice-paper score is always relative to the paper and the stage — not a threshold you can borrow from another family.

What to look for at each stage

Rather than chasing a target percentage, it helps to watch how your child is progressing:

• Early preparation: focus on understanding the question types and spotting unfamiliar topics, rather than chasing a target percentage.
• Mid-preparation: look for an upward trend — fewer repeated mistakes and greater consistency from one paper to the next.
• Closer to the exam: introduce realistic timed papers and watch accuracy, pacing and any recurring weak areas.

What one low score does — and doesn't — mean

A single disappointing paper is not a verdict. Papers vary in difficulty, tiredness and timing play their part, and one paper is a snapshot rather than a trend. What matters is the pattern across several papers — and, more than anything, whether you can see where the marks are going.

The part a percentage can't tell you

Here's the thing a score alone hides: where the marks were actually lost. Take the two children above. Both score 70%. One is strong across every topic but keeps running out of time. The other is comfortable everywhere except one skill — percentages — where they're dropping nearly every mark. The score is identical. The right thing to do next could not be more different.

That's the gap between marking a paper and understanding it. A mark tells you how your child did. A breakdown by skill tells you what to do about it.

What to do after you've marked the paper

1. Look past the headline percentage. Go through the paper and group the mistakes by topic. Are they scattered, or clustered in one or two skills?
2. Track the trend, not the single score. Note results across a few papers so you can see the direction of travel.
3. Fix the biggest gap first. Target the one or two weakest skills before general revision — it's far more effective.
4. Then re-test. Sit another paper and check whether that specific gap has closed.

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