The most important topics are the ones your child is losing marks on — but across the 11+, a core set of skills comes up again and again, so those are worth making rock-solid first.
Formats vary by school and area, but a paper commonly draws on Maths, English, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Within those, some skills carry weight simply because they appear so often:
- Maths — arithmetic fluency, fractions, percentages and multi-step problem solving.
- English — comprehension and vocabulary above all.
- Verbal Reasoning — vocabulary again, plus codes, sequences and logic.
- Non-Verbal Reasoning — patterns, sequences and spatial skills like rotation.
But "most important" is personal. A child fluent in arithmetic but shaky on percentages should spend their time on percentages, not on what they've already mastered. The papers tell you which is which.
What to do: make the core skills secure, then let your child's own weak areas set the priority — don't spend time on what's already solid.
Smart Papers break a paper down by exactly these skills, so "which topic matters most" stops being a guess — and each weak skill links to a free lesson.