Finding an Online 11+ Tutor: What Cambridge Parents Should Know

Most guidance written about the 11+ assumes a grammar school. It talks about registering in May, sitting in September, getting a standardised score in October and naming schools on a council preference form. If you are in Cambridge, almost none of that applies to you, and following it will put you a term behind.

There is no grammar school 11+ in Cambridgeshire

England has 163 state grammar schools. None of them is in Cambridgeshire. The county's state secondary schools are comprehensive and are allocated through Cambridgeshire County Council's normal admissions round, on the same national timetable as everywhere else: apply by 31 October, hear on 1 March. There is no selective test attached to that process at all.

So when Cambridge parents search for an 11+ tutor, they are almost always preparing for one of the independent schools — The Perse, The Leys, Stephen Perse, St Faith's, or slightly further out, Kimbolton and King's Ely. Those are fee-paying, they each run their own admissions, and the assessment your child sits depends on which of them you register with. If you are still deciding whether selective preparation is the right call at all, when to start 11+ preparation is the more useful place to begin.

If you want a state selective place, you are applying out of county

Some families read “no grammar schools in Cambridgeshire” and stop there, on the assumption that selective state education is simply not available to them. It is available. It is just not local, and almost nothing about it resembles the independent route above.

The nearest areas that still run state grammar schools are Lincolnshire, which has fifteen, and Essex, whose four grammar schools sit inside a consortium of ten selective schools spanning the county and Southend. Neither is a short journey from Cambridge, and for most families in the city the honest answer is that a daily commute to Bourne, Spalding or Colchester is not realistic. But north Cambridgeshire is a different question — Bourne and Spalding are closer to Wisbech, March or Peterborough than most Cambridge independent schools are — and both systems accept out-of-county applicants as a matter of course.

The exams are not variations on a theme. They test different things, and preparation for one is not preparation for another:

Read the bottom two rows together, because that is where families come unstuck. Sitting the test is not applying for the place. In both state systems the test is registered for directly with the consortium or the school, months in advance, while the place itself is applied for later through Cambridgeshire County Council’s ordinary admissions form by 31 October — the same form, and the same deadline, as for any comprehensive. Miss the first step and the second one cannot rescue it.

If you are weighing this seriously, the decision belongs in Year 5, not Year 6, and it is worth being honest about the journey before the preparation starts. When to start 11+ preparation covers the timing question in general. Which preparation follows depends entirely on which route you pick: the Lincolnshire test is nothing but reasoning, so verbal reasoning question types is where to start for that one, while CSSE sets no reasoning paper at all and rewards curriculum depth in English and maths instead.

The timetable is later than you think — and that cuts both ways

A grammar school 11+ is effectively over by the October half term of Year 6. Independent school entrance runs through the autumn and winter instead, which means a family who discovers the process in September of Year 6 has not missed it. That reprieve applies only to the independent route — if you want one of the out-of-county state grammar places described below, September of Year 6 is already too late, because you register for those in the spring of Year 5.

The Perse, as the school most Cambridge searches are really about, publishes its own dates: assessment on Saturday 16 January 2027 for Year 7 entry in September 2027, with outcomes in early February and an acceptance deadline in early March. Registration for that cycle closes on 1 December 2026. Candidates must attend in person — the school states that no remote or overseas testing is possible.

What the assessment actually looks like now

This is the part that has changed most, and where old practice material does the most damage. Cambridge independent school entry has moved substantially onto screen.

The Perse's assessment runs in two parts on the same day. Part one is a 70-minute computer-based test delivered by Quest, split across maths (20 minutes), English (30 minutes), non-verbal reasoning (10 minutes) and verbal reasoning (10 minutes). Part two is a 30-minute handwritten creative writing task. There is also a group activity and a short, informal interview.

Reasoning still carries real weight even at 10 minutes a section, and it is the part of the test least covered by school. Verbal reasoning question types covers what actually comes up, and if your list includes any school still using a GL-style paper, GL Assessment explained covers that format instead.

Does an online tutor work for a Cambridge 11+?

For this particular exam, the objection that online tutoring is a compromise is weaker than usual — because the test itself is delivered on a computer. Practising timed, adaptive, screen-based questions with a tutor watching the same screen is closer to the real thing than a paper exercise at a kitchen table.

The exception is the creative writing task, which is handwritten and marked by a human reader. That needs to be practised on paper, under time, and marked properly — not typed. Any preparation that skips it because it is inconvenient online is preparing for two thirds of the assessment. If you are weighing the formats generally, online versus in-person tutoring sets out the honest trade-offs.

One-to-one 11+ tutoring with us is one hour, on Google Meet in the browser, with a shared screen so the tutor and child work through the same question at the same time. Every family starts with a free demo class of about 40 minutes including a short assessment, and the honest feedback afterwards includes whether tutoring is the right answer at all. Lessons start from £20, there is no contract, and you can stop at any time.

A sensible preparation window

1. Year 4

   Nothing formal

   Reading widely, mental arithmetic fluency, and handwriting that does not hurt after twenty minutes. That is the whole job at this stage.

2. Year 5

   Foundations and school visits

   Close the gaps in number and comprehension, and introduce reasoning as puzzles rather than papers. Visit schools this year — it is what actually narrows the list.

3. Year 6, autumn

   Format and pace

   Register. Move to timed, on-screen practice matched to each school's format, and start weekly handwritten writing under a 30-minute clock.

4. Year 6, January

   Assessment

   Taper in the final fortnight. Sleep and calm are worth more than another paper by this point.

Two years of gentle, consistent work beats six months of intensive cramming, and it is far less likely to put a child off the schools you are trying to get them into.