The 11+ Exam Timeline: What Usually Happens and When

For most areas, registering your child to sit the 11+ happens in the spring or summer term before Year 6, so typically when your child is still in Year 5, aged 9 or 10. Registration is usually a separate step from applying for secondary school places generally, and in many areas it's handled by the local authority (the council) rather than by individual schools, though some areas, and most independent schools, run their own separate registration process.

This matters because missing a registration window can mean your child isn't able to sit the test at all that year, regardless of how well prepared they are. Registration periods are typically open for a matter of weeks, not months, so it's worth finding your specific local authority's or school's registration dates well in advance rather than assuming there will be a long window. Some areas require you to register even if your child attends a school within that authority; others handle it automatically for children at certain schools but still require action for children coming from outside the area or from independent schools.

The 11+ exam is typically sat in the early autumn term of Year 6, most commonly somewhere between September and November, when children are aged 10 turning 11. This is earlier in the school year than many parents expect, since it happens well before most other school assessments that year, precisely because results need to be processed in time to inform the national secondary school offer process the following spring.

Different areas and different exam boards structure this slightly differently. Some areas hold a single test date; others split the assessment across two separate sittings, for example one paper in September and a second a few weeks later. Independent schools often set their own separate entrance exam dates, which may or may not align with the state grammar school timeline, and many now use the ISEB Common Pre-Test, an online adaptive test that can be sat any time within a set window, often in the autumn of Year 6, with results shared across multiple schools a family has applied to.

Because of this variation, it's genuinely not possible to state one single 'the 11+ exam date' for the whole country. Families should treat any specific date they see quoted online (including general guidance like this) as indicative only, and check their own local authority's or target school's published dates directly, since these are set and published locally each year.

After the exam, results are typically communicated to families over the following weeks to months, timelines here vary by area, but many local authorities aim to let parents know their child's 11+ outcome well before the main secondary school application deadline (commonly around 31 October in the autumn of Year 6 for the general secondary school application process), so that families can factor the result into how they rank their school preferences.

The formal, universal moment in the calendar is National Offer Day, which falls in March each year (specifically 1 March, or the next working day if that falls on a weekend), when all families across England find out which secondary school their child has been offered a place at, regardless of whether that's a grammar school, comprehensive, academy or other type of school. This is set nationally and is consistent every year, even though the 11+ testing and results process that feeds into it varies locally.

It's worth understanding that an 11+ 'pass' and an actual grammar school offer are not always the same thing. In many areas, passing the 11+ (meeting the qualifying standard) makes a child eligible to be considered for a grammar school place, but doesn't guarantee one, since places are then allocated based on factors like distance from the school, siblings already attending, or ranked score if there are more qualifying children than places. So a family might have a child who passes the 11+ but still doesn't receive an offer from their first-choice grammar school, particularly at oversubscribed schools.

Given how much this varies locally, the most useful thing any family can do is build a personal timeline early, rather than relying on generic dates. Start by identifying your local authority's 11+ information page, or the admissions pages of the specific grammar or independent schools you're considering, since these will publish that year's actual registration window, test date or dates, and expected results timing. Local authority websites and school admissions offices are the authoritative source, not general articles, forums or even this page.

A sensible approach is to check these dates at the start of Year 5, note the registration window in your calendar with a reminder a few weeks ahead, and then re-check closer to the time in case anything has shifted, since dates can occasionally change year to year for administrative reasons. If you're considering schools across more than one local authority, or a mix of state grammar and independent schools, be aware that each may have its own separate registration process, exam date, and results timeline, so you may be juggling more than one calendar.

Building your preparation plan around your actual, confirmed local dates, rather than a generic 'the exam is in autumn' assumption, is one of the simplest ways to avoid a stressful last-minute scramble. This is also why Skylark's planning tools ask for your target exam window specifically, so the adaptive practice schedule and any emergency 8-week plan are paced against your real dates rather than a generic assumption.