The 11+ is a timed exam, but a lot of preparation doesn't actually reflect that. Children work through questions at their own pace, with no clock in sight, and then wonder why they freeze up when it counts.
Timed Practice on HeyKitsu is designed to fix that. It's a focused, flexible mode that puts your child under light time pressure, helping them build the speed and confidence they'll need on the day.
Here's how it works.
Choose your time
Start by picking how long you want the session to last. Options range from a quick drill right up to a full 60-minute practice run.
The right length depends on what you're after:
- A short session – a few minutes – is perfect for warming up, squeezing in some practice before school or testing a single topic quickly.
- Longer sessions are better for building stamina and simulating what a real exam feels like.
Adaptive or standard?
Before starting, you can choose whether the session is adaptive.
In adaptive mode, the difficulty adjusts as your child answers questions. Get a question right, and the next question is a little harder. Get something wrong, and it eases back slightly. The session finds the right level and keeps pushing from there.
This matters for one very specific reason: Quest Admissions – the test used by many independent schools, including some of the most selective in the country – is an adaptive exam. The only way to get comfortable with that format is to practise in it.
Timed Practice gives your child the chance to do exactly that, in a low-stakes environment where they can build familiarity before the real thing.
Standard mode keeps the difficulty steady. It's a good choice when you want to consolidate a topic rather than be challenged on it.
Choose your topics
This is where Timed Practice stands out. You can select exactly what you want your child to practise – down to a very granular level.
Want to work on maths and nothing else? Want to focus purely on apostrophes because they keep coming up wrong? Want to mix English punctuation with verbal reasoning ahead of a mock exam? You have complete control.
It's entirely up to you. There are no static papers here – every question is taken from our database of more than 100,000 questions, so no two mocks are the same.
How the session works
Once they start, your child sees one question at a time.
They answer, move on, answer, move on – working through as many questions as they can before time runs out. There are over 100,000 questions available across the 11+ curriculum, so they should never run out!
Meanwhile the timer counts down in the corner, so they always know how long they’ve got left. (Find the timer distracting? No problem – you can hide it.)
After the session
When the timer runs out, the session ends and your child gets a summary of how they did. They can go back through every question they answered, see which ones they got right and wrong, and read the full explanations for anything they missed.
That review step is where a lot of the learning actually happens. Knowing you got something wrong is one thing – understanding why is when it sticks.
When to use it
Timed Practice works well in a few different situations:
- In the run-up to an exam, use it regularly to simulate exam conditions. Increase the session length gradually as the date approaches. A child who has practised under time pressure dozens of times will find the real thing far less daunting.
- To test knowledge of a specific topic, select just that topic and run a short session. It's a fast, structured way to see how well something has been understood – not just whether your child can do it slowly, but whether it's become automatic.
- To get familiar with adaptive tests, switch on adaptive mode early rather than leaving it until the last minute. The format takes some getting used to, and the first time shouldn't be in the exam hall.
Timed Practice is available to all HeyKitsu subscribers on iOS and web. If you haven't tried it yet, it's worth building into your regular practice routine – especially as the exam date gets closer.
Adaptive practice that knows your child
HeyKitsu adapts every session to your child's level — building confidence on what they find tricky and stretching them where they're strong.
Written by
HeyKitsu Team