11+ comprehension in 30 minutes: where the marks are

Thirty minutes is enough for a comprehension section, but only if the time follows the marks. The marks are not spread evenly. In the most recent English paper the Essex consortium publishes, four of the twelve comprehension questions carry 19 of the 35 marks. Spend the section evenly and you have given the same time to a one-mark retrieval question as to a seven-mark one, which is how a child who understood the passage perfectly comes home with a middling score.

This article uses CSSE papers as its spine for one reason: the consortium prints its section timings on the cover of papers anyone can download . The method below is not specific to Essex, and the last section says which parts of it change when the paper is multiple choice.

How is the hour divided, and what is the reading window for?

The English paper lasts sixty minutes with ten minutes of additional reading time, which is what the consortium tells parents in its own guide . The guide does not say how the sixty minutes divides. The paper does, on its cover, where the child can see it: comprehension thirty minutes, applied reasoning ten, continuous writing twenty , and what the marker looks for in a creative writing task covers that last twenty minutes in full.

That cover belongs to the newest paper on the practice page, for 2023 entry , and the consortium has since dropped applied reasoning: its own site says the English paper has not contained those questions since 2025 entry . The sixty and ten still stand , but no published document says how the sixty now divides, so the thirty is the last split shown, with ten minutes unaccounted for.

Two things about the reading window matter more than they look.

The first is what the cover asks the child to read in it: the passage and the questions, not the passage alone. Ten minutes for a passage is generous; ten minutes for a passage and a page of questions is about right, and that difference is most of this article.

The second is that nobody stops the child again. The cover says plainly that once the reading window has ended there is no need to wait to be told to carry on . So the thirty, ten and twenty are the consortium’s advice about how to spend an hour, not gates a supervisor enforces. A child who overruns on comprehension is taking that time out of the writing section at the far end of the paper, and nobody will warn them. In our own teaching that is the commonest way an able child ends up with a disappointing English mark: not a wrong answer anywhere, just an unfinished story. That is a judgement from marking, not a measured figure.

How long should the passage take to read?

Our own paper timing code assumes a child reads with understanding at about a hundred and fifty words a minute, which is the usual working figure for this age group. Set that against the passages boards really use.

Text	Words	One careful read
CSSE English paper, 2023 entry: passage plus its introduction	792	About 5 min 20 s
CSSE English paper, 2022 entry: passage plus its introduction	680	About 4 min 30 s
Our own comprehension passages, mean of twelve	708	About 4 min 45 s

So a careful read of a real passage costs about half the reading window. The other half is meant for the questions, and that is the half children give away. A child who reads slowly and lovingly for the full ten minutes has not cheated themselves of comprehension; they have cheated themselves of the map, and they meet question six for the first time with the clock already running.

The introduction is not decoration either. In both papers above it is a short paragraph, written by the consortium rather than the novelist, telling the child who everyone is and where they are. Children skip it because it is not the story. It turns a confusing first paragraph into a familiar one, and it is the cheapest mark on the page.

Where are the marks?

Here is every question in that paper’s comprehension section, with the marks it prints in its own margin. We counted these off the PDF and checked the total against the page totals the paper prints for its marker.

Question	Marks	What it asks for
1	1	one fact stated in the passage
2	4	a yes or no tick, then three reasons for it
3	3	three things, in the order the narrator prefers them
4	1	what one verb means
5	3	a fact, a yes or no tick, and an explanation
6	7	a tick, then three quotations, each explained
7	3	a tick, then two explanations
8	4	two pieces of information about each of two men
9	2	a judgement, supported by evidence from the text
10	2	an emotion, and why the narrator feels it
11	1	one fact stated in the passage
12	4	two quotations, each explained
Total	35	in 30 minutes, so roughly 50 seconds a mark

Three things fall out of that table, and each changes how the half hour should be spent.

The section is top-heavy. Questions two, six, eight and twelve carry more than half the marks between them . Question six alone is worth as much as the five smallest questions put together. If your child is going to run out of time somewhere, it must not be there.

A mark is worth about fifty seconds. Thirty minutes across thirty-five marks is the arithmetic, and it is a far better guide than an even split across twelve questions . A one-mark question deserves under a minute; question six deserves about six.

The tick is never the question. Four of the questions offer a yes or no box and then ask for the reasoning. The boxes are worth four marks between them; the explanations attached to them are worth twelve . That is the discipline of this paper in one ratio: the part that feels like the answer is worth a third of the part that feels like extra.

How should your child read the paper?

In three passes, not one. The order that works, and the one to rehearse until it is automatic:

• The introduction, slowly. Who these people are, how they are related, where they are.
• The passage, once, properly. Not skimming, not annotating heavily. Just reading it as a story or an argument, so that the shape of it is in your head.
• The questions, before the clock starts. Not answering them: reading them, and noticing the marks printed in the margin. This is the pass that turns the next half hour into a plan.

Then answer in order, because the questions follow the passage and jumping about costs more searching than it saves. The exception is the biggest question on the paper: if the clock is against you, do that one before the small ones behind it.

Two habits sit behind all of this, and neither is drill. The consortium’s own headteachers say children should be familiar with reading and responding to texts with a reading age above eleven, and in the same breath that a few hours of familiarisation is enough and extensive coaching counterproductive . Read widely and slightly above comfort; rehearse the format briefly. It is the reverse of most preparation timetables.

How do the two kinds of question go wrong?

Everything above is about the clock. This is about the answers. The extract below was written for this article, numbered the way a paper numbers a passage.

1	Grandad sat on the harbour wall with the net across his knees,
2	working a wooden needle through the tear the way other people knit.
3	He did not look up when the boats came in, and he did not wave.
4	Nell counted them home for him instead. The Kittiwake first, then
5	the Providence, and last of all the Bright Star, low in the water.
6	“She’s full,” Nell said. “The Bright Star’s full.”
7	“Then Ridley will be pleased,” said Grandad, and pulled the thread tight.
8	Nell had asked her mother once why Grandad never went out with them,
9	and her mother had said that the winter the roof came off, the money
10	had to come from somewhere. He had signed his share of the Bright Star
11	over to Ridley on a Tuesday and was back on the wall by the Wednesday.
12	His hands were quick. His mouth was a straight line.

The first question is literal. Everything it wants is printed on the page, and it is still routinely half answered.

Give two things Nell does while the boats come in. (2 marks)

The usual wrong route

Children write one thing, at length and in careful handwriting, and score one of the two marks. It reads as a good answer, and it is a good answer to a one-mark question that was not asked. The number in the margin is an instruction about quantity, not a warning about difficulty.

The method

1. Read the mark allocation first. Two marks means plan two separate points before writing either one.
2. Find where Nell acts. Lines four and five: she counts the boats home for Grandad, naming them as they come.
3. Keep going rather than stopping at the first hit. Line six is a second action: she speaks to him, telling him the Bright Star is full.
4. Write them as two points, not one sentence. An answer that describes the counting and never mentions the speaking has answered half the question, however well it is written.

Answer: She counts the boats home for Grandad, and she tells him that the Bright Star is full.In the paper: About 1 minute 40 seconds, at 50 seconds a mark.

The second question is an inference, and it fails differently. The wrong answer is not careless. It is sensible, well expressed, and drawn from the reader’s own life instead of from the passage.

Why does Grandad no longer go out with the boats? Explain your answer using evidence from the extract. (3 marks)

The usual wrong route

The commonest wrong answer is that he is too old, or that his health has failed. It is a reasonable thing to believe about an old man on a harbour wall, and it is exactly the trap: the child is reading their own grandfather rather than this one. The extract says nothing about his age and nothing about his health. It does give a reason, and the reason is money.

The method

1. Find the lines that answer the question rather than the lines that feel relevant. Lines eight to eleven: the winter the roof came off, the money had to come from somewhere, and he signed his share of the Bright Star over to Ridley.
2. Now test the answer you were about to give. Does the extract mention his age? No. His health? No. If the words are not there, the answer is not there either, however likely it sounds.
3. State the reason and point at the evidence: the roof had to be paid for, the share in the boat paid for it, and Ridley has it now.
4. The third mark is for what it cost him. He is back on the wall the next day, his hands are quick, his mouth is a straight line, and the boat he will not look up at is the one that used to be his.

Answer: He gave up his share of the Bright Star to pay for the roof, signing it over to Ridley.In the paper: About 2 minutes 30 seconds, at 50 seconds a mark.

The test that separates the two is mechanical, and a child can apply it under pressure: point at the words that put the answer there. If your finger has nowhere to land, you are guessing, and a plausible guess scores what a wild one scores.

What should you do next for your child?

Practise the reading window on its own. Set ten minutes, give your child a passage and the questions, and ask them at the end what question six wanted. If they cannot say, the window was spent on the wrong thing, and that is a five-minute habit to change rather than a term of work.

Mark with the numbers visible. Going through a paper together, write the mark allocation beside each answer and ask how many separate points it contains. Most of the recoverable marks in an 11+ comprehension are here, in the gap between what the margin asked for and what the child supplied.

Check the format before you buy anything. Written comprehension of the kind above is what the Essex consortium sets, and you can see it on Colchester Royal Grammar School. Many areas set multiple-choice comprehension instead, where every question is worth one mark and the mark-weighting above does not apply. What carries across is the inference discipline and the habit of looking back. GL Assessment gives away free familiarisation material covering English among other subjects , and it is the right first download if that is your child’s board. If you are unsure which it is, start with which test your child is actually sitting or look up the format a named school sets.

Keep the score in proportion while you work. A raw comprehension mark is not what a school reads. Before you draw conclusions from a practice paper, read why the raw mark is never the score a school sees and what a qualifying score is, and what it is not. If the timetable itself is the question, our guide to how long a preparation run really needs sets out what can be built quickly and what cannot. Comprehension is firmly in the second group, unlike the verbal reasoning blocks a paper sets alongside it, which improve fast.

Common questions

How long should my child spend reading the passage?

Rather less than the whole reading window. CSSE gives ten minutes before the clock starts, and the passage in its most recent published paper runs to about eight hundred words including the introduction, which is a little over five minutes at the pace a child of this age reads with understanding . The rest of the window is for the questions. A child who spends all ten minutes on one slow read has followed the instruction on the cover only halfway.

Should my child read the questions before the passage?

Read the introduction, then the passage, then the questions, and only then start writing. Reading the questions first sounds efficient and is not: a child who knows what is being asked reads for those answers and misses the shape of the whole text, which is what the longest questions are about. The second pass through the questions is where the marks in the margin get read, and that is the pass most children skip.

Why does my child lose marks when the answer sounds right?

Usually because the answer is right about the world rather than right about the passage. An inference question asks what this writer has shown, and a sensible general explanation that the text never supports scores nothing. The test is mechanical: point at the words on the page that put the answer there. If you cannot, it is a guess wearing the clothes of an answer.

How does my child know how much to write?

The number in the margin says so, and it is the most under-used instruction on the paper. Three marks means three separate things, not one thing said at length. In the most recent CSSE paper the tick-box halves of the yes or no questions are worth four marks between them and the explanations attached to them are worth twelve, so the half most children rush is the half that carries three times the marks .