CSSE 11 Plus Maths Exam
The CSSE 11 Plus Maths paper is an hour long. Question topics are taken from the full KS2 curriculum, which means that some of the content will not be familiar to students at the point they take the exam as they have yet to complete Year 6. Effectively, their Maths subject knowledge needs to be a year ahead of what is expected at the beginning of Year 6.
If you have a tutor, this extended learning will be built into the preparation, but if you are preparing at home, you need to take this into consideration. A good 11 plus maths book for parents helping their children is include Carol Vorderman’s ‘Help Your Kids with Maths‘ which is updated with the new curriculum content.
Doing regular maths papers is also recommended, and for many children, the Bond Maths Assessment papers are all they need. They are categorised by age, but as a general rule of thumb, if your child is getting 70-80% correct at a certain age level, buying the next age up with increase the challenge and extend their learning. They start with the 5-6 years, 6-7 years, 7-8 years, 8-9 years, 9-10 years, 10-11 years and 11-12+ years.
Your child should be familiar and confident using fractions, percentages and decimals and be able to convert between them. They should also be able to use data presented in many different ways: bar chats, line graphs, frequency tables, pie charts and Venn diagrams. Word problems are a favourite on the CSSE 11 plus maths papers, so plenty of practice at solving them is to be recommended.
When to do timed papers
Leave doing timed CSSE 11 plus mock papers until your child is secure with the content of the curriculum, or at least, the majority of it. They need to know how to tackle the subject areas well before starting to practise doing things accurately at the right speed. Do book up mock exams so that you are working towards a goal, but don’t leave doing a mock until the last couple of weeks just in case your child gets an attack of nerves and doesn’t do well. You need to leave enough time to try another mock which will reduce exam nerves as they become more familiar with the whole process. Find out about CSSE 11 plus mock exams or book here.