The maths check
24 questions, on the first day
How it works 11 plus maths and English
How Remelia plans 11+ practice for Years 3 to 6
Remelia builds your child’s 11 plus plan from their school year and term and, where you choose a school, the exam that school sets. A session is about 12 minutes: topics met before come back first, each after a longer gap, then something new. You see progress as a range, never as a pass prediction.
This is the method in full, so that you can judge it. Nothing here is a claim about results. Remelia follows the same rules for maths and for English. Every number on this page is read from the app itself when the page is built, so it says what the app does today.
At a glance
The 11 plus plan at a glance: from the first day to exam day.
The whole course on one line; each stop links to its detail below. Stops tagged “With an exam” come only when a chosen exam includes them. With none, the curriculum is taught in the same way, with no exam date.
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Day one
Setting up, then the first maths check
Seven short steps for a grown-up, then 24 questions that find where your child is.
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The next day
The first English check
16 questions, offered the day after the maths check. Never two new checks on one day.
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Four days a week
A session of about 12 minutes
Reviews of topics met before, then something new if it is time for it.
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Each new topic
Study, complete, do
A worked example, one half done, one alone. The first review is the next day.
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Day 1 to day 32, at the soonest
Reviews, until the topic has stuck
Each gap longer than the last. Secure means right after a gap of about 20 days.
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Every 6 weeks
A short re-check
10 questions on the topics standing highest, so the record stays honest.
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From Year 4, spring term
A passage to read together, each week
For every child who studies English. Short timed writing each fortnight too, when a chosen exam includes writing.
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From Year 5, autumn term With an exam
A reading day each week
An unseen passage and 9 questions, when a chosen exam plan includes English. Writing becomes weekly.
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About 9 to 10 months before the exam With an exam
Consolidating
About 15 minutes a session by default, more multi-step problems, more of it multiple choice, and one multiple-choice technique set a week.
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About 2 to 5½ months before With an exam
Final
Back to about 12 minutes, mixed. The pace limit lifts so everything in the exam’s scope is within reach, and one timed set a week.
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The last 14 days With an exam
Lighter
At most 8 minutes a session, and nothing new: only reviews, and topics already begun.
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After the exam With an exam
The curriculum carries on
At the everyday pace, to the end of Key Stage 2.
The first day
The first day: a few questions for you, then a maths check for your child.
The app starts from what your child already knows, not from zero, and not from a score.
- No marking during the check. Right and wrong are shown at the end, all at once, with explanations. Marking as it goes would turn a measurement into a lesson.
- “I haven’t learnt this yet” is an answer. It tells a topic not yet met from an unlucky guess, and takes away the reason to guess.
- It stops before it hurts. 3 wrong in a row and it drops back a school year.
- It starts from your child’s year and term. Work school has not taught yet is never reported as a weakness.
The English check
16 questions, from the next day
Setting up: 7 stepsOn your child’s device, before the maths check
- What this is. One screen, for the grown-up setting it up.
- Name, year group and pronouns. The only three things that cannot be skipped.
- The schools they might apply for. Tick as many as you like, grouped by exam, or choose “General 11+ preparation” for the curriculum with no exam date. None is chosen for you; skipped, the parents’ This week asks again.
- Mixed subjects, or one at a time. Why mixing maths and English in each session helps, and the choice: mixed (recommended, already chosen), one subject your child picks at the start of each session, or one subject alone. Change it any time under Settings.
- The school your child attends. Chosen from the register of schools, or typed. Optional, and never shown on your child’s screens.
- A grown-up’s account, or just this device. Link it now to share one record across devices, or keep everything on this one.
- Who is in the questions. The names and things word problems use. Optional.
The name stays on the device, and so does the record, unless a grown-up links it to an account.
What comes next
In the order school teaches it, at a pace you choose.
The Key Stage 2 curriculum for Years 3 to 6, broken into topics (the curriculum calls them objectives): 199 in maths and 90 in English. Maths follows your child’s school’s scheme: White Rose Maths, Power Maths (current edition), Power Maths (first edition, 2018), Maths No Problem! or Oak National Academy. English follows the national curriculum’s year-by-year order. Remelia is not associated with or endorsed by White Rose Education or Oak National Academy. The topic order for Oak National Academy is based on Oak’s published units, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The pace
- The default
- Only what school has taught. Nothing new until school has reached it, unless everything taught is secure: then the next topic opens early, one at a time. In the Final phase before a chosen exam, this limit lifts.
- Faster
- Up to a term ahead. New topics up to two half-terms before school teaches them, for a child ahead of the class.
- No limit
- The whole year, any time. Anything in the year range, whenever school gets to it.
You choose the pace in Remelia Parents. Among new topics the most important come first, and earlier years before later ones, so what a topic builds on comes before it. When a school with an exam plan is chosen, the years that exam covers come first.
Meeting a new topic: taught first, then tested
Three steps, usually in one session. They teach rather than test, and none of them moves the topic’s stage. The first review is the next day.
Study
A short note and one worked example. Your child reads it and says when they have; nothing is asked.
Complete
A question with the start of its working already written in, never the part that gives the answer away.
Do
A question on their own, as every later review will be.
A session
A practice session: about 12 minutes, reviews first, then something new.
The week asks for four sessions. You can set each anywhere from 8 to 20 minutes, and it has up to three parts. About 12 minutes by default. It is longer where a chosen exam sets four subjects or more (13 with four), so that each has its questions, and up to 15 minutes in the months before a chosen exam. With the scholarship switch on, a session can be up to three minutes longer, for a second puzzle.
Warm-up
60 seconds of quick facts, counted only against your child’s own last five. Once they are fast and right, it shrinks to half and then stops.
Today’s set
About 10 curriculum questions at the default length for a child with maths and English: 7 in maths and 3 in English. A longer session, or more subjects, holds more. Topics due for review come first, then any that went wrong lately, then something new if there is room. A wrong answer gets a second go.
With more than one subject, the planner reserves a share for each subject (maths 5, English 3, and 2 for each subject only an exam brings), and any left over go to whichever is further from where it should be by exam day. Introductions, available topics, trimming and the lighter last fortnight can mean fewer questions are actually asked. Shorter mixed sessions may not cover every subject. Maths comes first, so an 8-minute mixed session usually leaves no time for English or reasoning questions.
A puzzle
One problem to think about, chosen by your child from a few. Being stuck is part of it.
One day a week is a different shape
Midweek, after a few ordinary days: a question your child makes up for a grown-up to answer, then, nearer the exam, a multiple-choice technique set, and in the last months a timed set with a visible clock. From Year 5, autumn term, when a chosen exam plan includes English, it is usually the reading day instead. The reading day comes most weeks: it shares the final term with the timed set and is spaced out if passages run short.
Times tables check practice: a weekly practice check from March of Year 4, the same length and pace as the real check: 25 questions, with six seconds to answer each one. It takes that week’s different day, for a child who studies maths.
Reviews, and what “secure” means
Spaced practice: each topic comes back after a longer gap each time.
A review is one question, on a later day, once the topic is due. A right answer makes the next gap about 2 and a half times longer; a wrong one makes it shorter. Only reviews move a topic on: a run of right answers in one sitting is not evidence that it will be remembered.
- First review 1 day laterday 1
- Second review 3 days laterday 4
- Third review 8 days laterday 12
- Fourth review 20 days laterday 32 Secure
- Fifth review 50 days laterday 82 Mastered
…and on, each gap about 2 and a half times the last. A wrong review makes the next gap shorter.
When a topic counts as learnt
A topic counts as secure once it has been answered right after a gap of about 20 days. At the soonest that is day 32. Everything said about progress towards an exam is counted in secure topics. On your child’s map each topic is a star, from learning to secure and mastered: no scores and no percentages.
- Right on the second go, or after a first step of help, counts half: two of them make one right answer.
- Right with the working shown counts nothing either way, and the topic comes back tomorrow without it.
- A break costs nothing. A topic that falls due during a planned break waits.
A re-check every 6 weeks
A topic can rise on a run of good days and still be gone weeks later. So every 6 weeks your child is offered 10 questions on the topics standing highest, under the skills check’s rules. A miss brings that topic’s review forward; the re-check itself never takes a star away or gives one.
Mistakes
Mistakes: a wrong answer is explained, not just marked.
In maths, a wrong answer that comes from a known misunderstanding is recognised from the answer itself and named, so that the second go is a different go. There are 42 of them so far, in fractions and place value and addition and subtraction and multiples and factors and number and measures and position and multiplication and division and statistics. In English, every topic’s note says what to watch for.
English Year 3 Word
Watch for: Letters that trick you. “Hour” starts with h but sounds like “our”, so it is “an hour”. “Unicorn” starts with u but sounds like “you”, so it is “a unicorn”.
Maths Year 5 Fractions
13 + 16 =
Sam’s answer29
Not this time. It looks as if you added the numerators and added the denominators. First make the denominators the same, then add only the numerators.
The answer36, which is12
English, specifically
English: a little in every session, reading each week, and writing a parent marks.
English uses the same reviews, the same “secure” and the same checks as maths. Three things are its own.
Every session
Grammar, punctuation, spelling and vocabulary
In today’s set, for every child who studies English: word, sentence and text grammar, punctuation, spelling rules and the statutory word lists, and vocabulary.
Each week
Reading
From Year 4, spring term, for every child who studies English, a passage to read together, with questions for you to ask and what a good answer has in it. From Year 5, autumn term, when a chosen exam plan includes English, a reading day: one unseen passage and 9 questions on it, from a bank of 130. A passage is never shown twice.
When the exam has writing
Short timed writing
A short piece each fortnight from Year 4, spring term, and each week from Year 5, autumn term. A grown-up ticks what the piece shows. A tick is noted as evidence, but it never makes a topic look secure or puts off its review.
Towards an exam
For a chosen 11 plus exam: the same method, set to the exam’s date.
Choose one of the 329 schools with an exam plan and the plan follows that exam’s date and scope, through the phases on the timeline above. Before the first of them, it is in its Building phase: sessions of about 12 minutes, no test format at all, and one make-your-own-question day a week.
Reasoning practice: 23 verbal reasoning question types and 13 non-verbal reasoning types, mixed into the sessions when a chosen school’s exam sets them. Science too, only where a chosen exam sets it. Reasoning starts in the autumn of Year 5: a child in Year 3 or Year 4 has none until then. Reasoning question types Science, for the exams that set it
A chosen exam also adds a timed mock. It is of the whole exam for some exams and not for others. There are practice papers to print in that exam’s style where Remelia has one. The timed mock and papers, in full
- Each exam plan is dated from your child’s year group: Remelia works to the sitting for the September they start Year 7. A school without a plan of its own may still have its test under “Can’t find a school?”. Tick it, then choose its school year and month; Remelia plans for that provider’s usual test at the sitting you choose. If it is not there, choose “General 11+ preparation” for the Key Stage 2 curriculum with no exam date.
- No school is chosen for your child: when you set them up you tick the schools they might apply for, as many as you like, or choose “General 11+ preparation”. Until you choose, they learn the Key Stage 2 curriculum with no exam date; the schools can be changed at any time in Settings.
- A parent’s own session length still applies throughout, up to 20 minutes, except in the last 14 days.
Year 6 SATs practice: printable papers in the style of the national tests, covering arithmetic, mathematical reasoning, grammar and punctuation, spelling and reading. A grown-up can run a timed mock using all six papers, mark the answers and see an estimated scaled score as a rough guide. A parent can choose the SATs in Remelia Parents, alone or beside schools. For a child with a school chosen they also open on their own, within a few weeks of the last chosen exam. They do not open by themselves in time for SATs after a 13 plus test sat in Year 7 or Year 8 (22 of the 249 exams): the SATs week comes first, so a parent chooses them. The same applies to an unlisted-school Pre-Test chosen for Year 7 or Year 8. What Remelia practises for SATs KS2 scaled scores: every raw mark, test by test
Estimating the exam
Progress towards the exam: a range with its assumption, never a prediction.
Remelia Parents counts the topics in the exam’s scope, in the years it covers, and how many of them are secure. It then carries the pace of the last four weeks forward to the exam date and shows the result as a range, in one sentence: “On current evidence, between so many and so many of the exam’s topics will be secure by” the month of the exam.
- The range is wider the further off the exam is, because a few weeks’ pace says little about a year.
- It is never fewer than are secure now, and never more than the exam needs.
- It is about coverage, not marks. Each school or council sets its own mark on its own scale, and some set it only after their test has been sat. A range over results would be invented.
- How wide the range is drawn is a statistical choice that has not yet been checked against real children’s records.
An illustration
Topics the exam needs
- Secure now
- Likely by exam day, as a range
- Still to secure
Partly taught: spatial reasoning (hidden shapes, and folding and punching paper); the real section may set other types. Spatial reasoning Not taught: parts of some exams; each exam guide says which. What Remelia does not teach Left out on purpose: adverts, leaderboards and pass predictions. What it will not do
See a practice session for yourself.
Open the app on any browser. The first day is a few questions for you and a short check for your child.
Opens in this browser, so use your child’s device. No account needed to start.