Most parents preparing a child for the 11+ operate on instinct. They know their child finds verbal reasoning tricky. They think maths is probably fine. They are not sure about English comprehension. They have a vague sense of where the gaps are, but they could not tell you precisely — and more importantly, they could not tell you whether things are improving week on week, or staying the same. If you have broader questions about the platform or the exam itself, the FAQ covers the most common ones.
This is not a failure of parenting. It is a failure of information. Without clear, consistent data on how your child is actually performing across every topic, you are navigating one of the most consequential academic processes of their primary school years largely in the dark.
That is what the 11Plus Tips weekly progress report is designed to fix.
What You Receive Each Week
Every week, 11Plus Tips sends an automated progress report directly to your email — or to a second contact if you have added one. If your child's account is linked to a tutor, they receive the same report.
The report covers five areas:
Minutes studied — how much time your child has spent practising across the week, broken down by session. This is not a vanity metric. Consistent daily practice is the single most reliable predictor of improvement, and the minutes studied figure tells you immediately whether that habit is forming or whether sessions have been missed.
Accuracy scores — how your child has performed across the questions they have attempted, expressed as a percentage. This gives you a headline picture of how the week has gone, but it is the topic-level breakdown beneath it that is most useful.
Target met or missed — whether your child has hit their weekly practice goal. Targets are set by year group and adjusted by parents in account settings.
Mastery levels by topic — this is the most important part of the report. Every topic in the platform — across all four subjects — is assigned a mastery level from 1 (Beginner) to 5 (Mastered). The report shows where your child currently sits on each topic and whether that level has changed since last week. At a glance, you can see exactly which areas are improving, which have plateaued, and which still need focused attention.
Weak topics to focus on — the report does not just show you the data. It tells you what to do with it. The bottom of the report highlights the specific topics where your child's accuracy is lowest or their mastery level has not progressed — the areas that most need practice before next week.
How to Actually Read It
Receiving a progress report and knowing what to do with it are two different things. Here is a practical guide to getting the most from it.
Start with the minutes studied figure, not the accuracy score.
This sounds counterintuitive, but hear it out. Accuracy scores fluctuate week to week depending on which topics your child has practised. If they have spent the week working on topics they find difficult — which is exactly what they should be doing — their accuracy score may be lower than a week when they practised topics they have already mastered. A lower accuracy score after a week of focused work on weak areas is often a sign that the platform is doing its job, not a cause for alarm.
The minutes studied figure, by contrast, tells you something more fundamental: is your child practising consistently? Five sessions of fifteen minutes is substantially more valuable than one session of seventy-five minutes, even though the total time is identical. If the report shows five separate sessions across the week, that is a positive sign regardless of the accuracy numbers.
Then look at the mastery levels by topic.
This is where the real picture emerges. Look for three things:
Topics where the mastery level has increased since last week — these are areas where your child is making genuine progress. Note them. It is worth acknowledging this with your child directly; visible progress is one of the most powerful motivators for continued effort.
Topics where the mastery level has stayed the same for two or more weeks — these are areas that may need a different approach, or simply more focused practice time. If letter sequences has been sitting at level 2 for three weeks, it is telling you something.
Topics where the mastery level has dropped — this is the most important signal in the report, and the easiest to miss. A mastery level drop means your child has been getting questions wrong at a difficulty level they were previously comfortable at. This can happen for several reasons: they may be rushing, they may have encountered a slightly different question format, or the topic may not be as consolidated as the previous level suggested. Either way, it warrants a focused session specifically on that topic before moving on.
Finally, act on the weak topics section.
The report does the diagnostic work for you. If it identifies that hidden words and code words are the areas most in need of attention this week, start the next session there — not with a topic your child already finds comfortable. Comfortable practice feels productive. Targeted practice on weak areas actually is.
What Tutors See
If your child's account is linked to a tutor — with your consent — they receive the same weekly report you do. This changes the dynamic of tutor sessions in a meaningful way.
Rather than beginning each session by testing where a student is — a process that can eat into twenty minutes of a one-hour session — the tutor arrives already knowing. They can see exactly which topics have improved since last week, which have stalled, and which are being avoided. The session can begin immediately with targeted work on the areas that need it most.
This is what 11Plus Tips means by working alongside a tutor rather than in competition with one. The platform handles the daily practice and the data. The tutor brings expertise, encouragement, and the human relationship that no platform can replicate. The progress report is the bridge between the two.
Second Contacts
If your child's 11+ preparation is a shared effort — whether between two parents, a parent and a grandparent, or any other combination — the platform allows you to add a second contact to the progress report. Both contacts receive the same weekly email, so everyone involved in supporting your child has the same picture at the same time.
This matters more than it might initially seem. One of the most common sources of confusion in 11+ preparation is when different adults are working from different information. One parent thinks maths is fine; the other is worried about it. A grandparent is drilling vocabulary at weekends without knowing which vocabulary topics most need work. The progress report creates a shared, objective reference point — so that everyone's efforts are pointing in the same direction.
The Bigger Picture
A single progress report is useful. A series of progress reports, read week on week over several months, is something more valuable: a genuine picture of how your child is developing across the full range of 11+ skills.
Over time, patterns emerge that are impossible to see in a single session or a single practice paper. You begin to understand which subject areas are your child's natural strengths, which topics take the longest to consolidate, and how their overall trajectory is moving. You can see whether the additional time you have spent on arithmetic over the past three weeks has translated into mastery level improvements. You can see whether the creative writing sessions your child has been resisting have started to move the needle on their English mastery scores.
This longitudinal picture — progress over time, not performance on a single day — is how informed 11+ preparation actually works. And it starts with a weekly email that takes five minutes to read, and tells you exactly where to focus your child's efforts next.
Sign up to 11Plus Tips and get the weekly progress report that takes the guesswork out of 11+ preparation — for parents, second contacts, and tutors alike.