At Stepping Stones Tutors we prefer to prepare the students from Year 4 (or, even better, Year 3) for 11+ and Private School entry. However, a number of students have come to us much later than this and have been successful.

We will assess students before embarking on a programme to discover where tuition should be concentrated and will suggest how many hours of tuition might be required. Quite often, if it is new to the student, we will have to start at a basic level for Verbal Reasoning and build up. We usually find that most children need to improve their vocabulary and we offer guidelines as to how to do this.
Reading is another important factor for both English and Verbal Reasoning. The standard required has up to now been much higher than expected from a student in Year 6, so we encourage children to read more classics and stimulating literature. We will provide a list of suitable books.

We have quite often found that the maths taught in schools is not advanced enough for 11+. This, together with the fact that the 11+ is now taken at the beginning of Year 6, means that even children who are very good at maths need quite a lot of tutoring to get them up to the required standard. It is therefore best to start with us in Year 4. Otherwise, we will advise (after the initial assessment) how many lessons we feel a student would need to reach the required standard.