Pathway Eleven is an online 11 plus course for children in Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5. We give your child a daily plan, teach the question types they find hard, and show you what is improving. Every question a child sees is reviewed and approved by a qualified teacher before it is released.
Most families have plenty of practice material. What they do not have is a way of knowing which piece of it matters most this week. That is what we built. Your child logs in and sees one task for the day. You can look at the parent area whenever you want to see how the week has gone.
The plan is personal from the first login. A four-subject Starting Assessment finds where your child is. There is no pass or fail, and it is not presented as an official score. After that the daily work stays balanced across maths, English, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, and gives more time to the skills that need it as the evidence builds up.
How we help a child prepare
We run from Year 3 to Year 5, for the test sat in September as a child moves into Year 6. Most families start in Year 3, and starting that early is what makes the rest of it manageable. The questions begin gently, the difficulty rises as each skill strengthens, and the routine is already normal by the time the exam year arrives. Our full preparation guide sets out how the years fit together.
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Year 3
Building the foundations
Short daily revision, guided teaching and gentle timed practice. Mock papers stay locked, because a child this far out needs skills rather than rehearsals.
What to do in Year 3 -
Year 4
Full papers begin
Skills keep building, and a full paper in the real format joins the plan. You choose the day and the time each one is sat.
What to do in Year 4 -
Year 5
Exam ready
Timed work sharpens, weak skills get the attention they still need, and complete rehearsals become routine well before the sitting.
What to do in Year 5
What your child does each day
Four kinds of work. The plan picks them, so you are not choosing from a menu at the end of the day.
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Daily revision
A short set of questions across the four subjects, weighted towards the skills that are still shaky. This is the habit everything else rests on.
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Guided learning
The same questions, with the method taught alongside them. Every answer is followed by a worked explanation of how it is reached.
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Timed drills
Short blocks against a clock, so a child gets used to working at speed without sitting a whole paper.
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Mock papers
A complete rehearsal in the real format, with spoken instructions, a practice example before each block, a separate answer sheet and a proper break. Mocks are part of full membership and are not included in the free week.
Where the questions come from
Every question is written in house against the skills the entrance papers sample. Nothing is scraped and nothing is bought in. Each one then goes through an automatic screen that catches the faults that are hard to catch in your own material: two options that mean the same thing, a stem that gives the answer away, a number that does not reconcile.
A question that clears that screen is still not live. It then goes to a qualified teacher, who reviews it and either approves it, sends it back for repair, or rejects it. Only approved questions reach the bank your child draws from. If your child ever meets a question that looks wrong, the report control inside the app takes it out of their progress at once and puts it back in front of the reviewer.
The people behind the work
Two people sign what this site publishes, and both are named at the top of every page they are responsible for, beside the date it was last revised. Nobody writes here anonymously, and anything checkable in a guide is linked to the source it came from.
Farah Hussain
Farah Hussain is the qualified teacher behind the Pathway Eleven question bank: every question a child sees is reviewed and approved by her before it is released. A fuller profile is coming.
See the questions she has approvedJames Ford
James Ford is the Pathway Eleven education writer. He writes the guides on this site: the year-group plans a parent reads first, the subject explainers, the West Midlands school pages and the reference tables of dates and scores. Pathway Eleven names a reviewer beside his byline on every guide he signs.
Read the guides he writesWhat you see, and what your child sees
Your child sees the work. Scores, trends and settings sit in a parent area behind a PIN, so you see a difficult week before your child does.
Your child needs no email address and has no public profile. There is no messaging between children, no posting and no contact with strangers. The app carries no advertising and no analytics trackers. It works on a phone, so a session away from home is the same as one at home.
If this is all new, start with what the 11 plus is, or ask for the free practice papers by email and work through one with your child before you decide anything. If you teach at a primary school rather than prepare a child of your own, Pathway Eleven for primary schools is a free 11 plus guide you can hand to your parents.
The first week is free. After that it is £49 a month and you can cancel at any time from the parent area.
- How to prepare for the 11 plus, the full guide to timing, routine and the four skill areas.
- All 11 plus guides, indexed by year group, subject and stage.
- West Midlands 11 plus, the schools, the shared test and the dates that go with it.
- Contact us, if what you want to know is not written down anywhere here.