11+ Maths Topics: The Complete Checklist for 2026

The 11+ maths syllabus is the Year 6 programme of study: nine statutory strands, from place value to statistics. Sutton Grammar School states that its maths paper is broadly based on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and the other authorities test the same ground. The difficulty is the calendar. The Kent and Buckinghamshire tests fall on 10 September 2026, in the first week of Year 6, so most of that syllabus has not been taught yet.

Where Does the 11+ Maths Syllabus Actually Come From?

There is no published 11+ maths syllabus. What there is instead is the national curriculum, and the schools' own statements that they test it. Sutton Grammar School says plainly that it provides no specimen papers and that the content of the maths and English tests is broadly based on the Key Stage 2 curriculum. Its paper contains no verbal or non-verbal reasoning at all.

So the checklist below is not our opinion about what matters. It is the statutory Year 6 programme of study, strand by strand, with the terms in which each is typically taught.

The Problem With Every 11+ Maths Checklist

Read that final column again. Ratio, algebra, measurement, most of geometry and all of statistics are taught in the spring and summer terms of Year 6. Now put the test dates next to it.

A child sitting the Kent Test on 10 September 2026 has had about a week of Year 6. The paper draws on a syllabus their school will spend the following ten months teaching. This is the single most important fact about 11+ maths preparation, and no ranking page for this search says it.

It has a direct consequence. The topics that most often cost marks are not the hard-looking ones; they are the ordinary Year 6 topics that simply have not come up in class yet. Ratio and algebra are the two clearest cases, and both are statutory Year 6 content.

Which Year 6 Topics Are Most Likely to Be Untaught?

Two strands account for most of the gap, and both are worth quoting from the curriculum rather than paraphrasing.

Algebra. The statutory Year 6 content is: use simple formulae; generate and describe linear number sequences; express missing-number problems algebraically; find pairs of numbers that satisfy an equation with two unknowns; and enumerate possibilities of combinations of two variables. That last pair is the one that appears in 11+ papers as a puzzle rather than as algebra, and children who have never seen it treat it as a guessing game.

Ratio and proportion. The statutory content is: problems involving the relative sizes of two quantities using integer multiplication and division facts; the calculation of percentages of measures, for which the curriculum's own example is 15% of 360; similar shapes where the scale factor is known or can be found; and unequal sharing and grouping using knowledge of fractions and multiples.

Unequal sharing is the one to watch. A question that says two people share an amount in the ratio 3:5 is testing a Year 6 objective that most children meet in the spring term, and it appears in September papers every year. A child who is fluent in fractions but has never met ratio notation will read the question as arithmetic and get it wrong for the right reasons.

How Long Do You Get Per Question?

The checklist is half the problem. The other half is pace, and the authorities publish it.

Kent's first paper covers English and maths in one hour, and each section is a 5 minute practice followed by a 25 minute test. On a maths section of roughly 25 questions that is about 60 seconds a question, and the practice period is not part of it. Sutton's papers take between 40 and 50 minutes each, with a rest break between the two.

Those timings change what accuracy means. At a minute a question there is no time to check working, and long multiplication done carefully is slower than the paper allows. What pays is fluency in the things that are otherwise slow: times tables to the point of recall, fraction and decimal equivalence known rather than calculated, and percentages of round numbers done mentally. The curriculum's own example, 15% of 360, should take a well-prepared child a few seconds rather than a column of working.

What Does “Secure” Mean at This Pace?

A checklist invites a binary answer — covered or not covered — and that is the wrong test. At roughly a minute a question there are three distinct states, and only one of them scores.

A topic can be met, meaning the child has seen it and can do it with prompting and time. It can be independent, meaning they can do it unaided but slowly, working it out from first principles each time. Or it can be automatic, meaning the answer arrives without construction. Under exam conditions the first two behave almost identically: both consume the minute the question is worth, and both push the child behind the clock for everything that follows.

The Year 6 number and place value objectives make the point. The statutory content asks children to read, write, order and compare numbers up to 10,000,000 and determine the value of each digit, to round any whole number to a required degree of accuracy, and to use negative numbers in context including intervals across zero. None of that is conceptually hard. All of it is slow if it is being reasoned rather than recalled, and a paper that opens with three place-value questions can cost three minutes before the child has met anything difficult.

The practical implication is that practice papers measure the wrong thing if they are done untimed. A child who scores well with unlimited time and poorly at 60 seconds a question does not have a knowledge gap; they have a fluency gap, and the remedy is short, frequent, timed work on the specific operations that are slow, rather than more full papers.

Using the Checklist in Year 5 and in Year 6

In Year 5, the checklist is a syllabus to be taught. The child will not have met most of the Year 6 strands, and there is a year in which to introduce them properly, in the curriculum's own order, alongside consolidating Year 5. That is the comfortable case, and it is why families who start in Year 4 or early Year 5 are not being sold something — the work genuinely takes that long if it is done at the pace of understanding rather than of cramming.

In Year 6 with a September sitting, the checklist is a triage tool. There is no time to teach nine strands from scratch, so the question becomes which untaught topics carry the most marks for the least teaching. Ratio and algebra usually win that calculation: both are self-contained, both are heavily represented in papers, and both can be brought to a usable level in weeks rather than terms. Statistics and position-and-direction, by contrast, tend to appear in fewer questions and can be left later if time is short.

How Should the Checklist Be Used?

For a child preparing for 2027 entry, work down the strand table in order and mark each one taught, partly taught or not yet met. That gives a genuine picture, and it will usually show the last four or five strands unmarked in a Year 5 child. Then prioritise in reverse: the strands the school has not reached are the ones preparation has to supply, because nobody else is going to.

Two cautions. First, the Year 5 programme of study matters as much as Year 6, and a weakness there will not be visible in a Year 6 checklist — if long division or fraction equivalence is shaky, that is a Year 5 objective and it needs fixing before any Year 6 topic is useful. Second, a topic ticked as taught is not the same as a topic secure at speed, and the timings above are the standard to test against.

For the specific formats, our Kent Test, Sutton SET and Buckinghamshire pages set out what each authority's papers contain, and our guide to 11+ pass marks covers what the resulting score has to clear.

Reviewed August 2026: every strand and every quoted objective checked against the statutory Year 6 mathematics programme of study on GOV.UK, and the sitting dates and paper timings checked against Kent County Council, Buckinghamshire Council, Sutton Grammar School and CSSE. The teaching-term column is the usual sequence in English primary schools and is not statutory; schools order the year differently and yours may.

Frequently Asked Questions