Some grammar schools are moving the 11+ to July – it's the right idea.

A handful of grammar schools made the news this weekend with a change that sounds small but matters a lot.

Reading School in Berkshire and seven Gloucestershire grammars – collectively known as the G7 – are moving their 11+ exams from September to July. Instead of sitting the test at the start of Year 6, children will sit it at the end of Year 5, before the summer holidays rather than after them.

The reason is pretty straightforward, and the headteachers involved have been admirably candid about it.

The summer problem

Historically, the 11+ has sat in that six-week gap between the end of primary school and the start of secondary applications. For families who can afford a tutor, that gap is a window of opportunity. For families who can't, it's six weeks of watching other children get further ahead.

Chris Evans, the headteacher at Reading School, put it plainly: "If you've got a home without much literacy and access to resources, then you're going to find that, in August, you don't sustain your vocabulary. You don't carry on learning and growing in the same way as a child who's being taken to the library to get books out all the time."

James Richardson, the headteacher at Pate's Grammar in Cheltenham, was equally direct. The current system gives tutors a six-week window to run mock exams, which "obviously raises the levels of anxiety for parents and for students." His point about what summer should be – ten-year-olds running around, not grinding through past papers – is worth sitting with for a moment.

The mental health angle

This matters beyond the fairness argument.

Anxiety around the 11+ is real and it starts early. Most children sitting these exams are 10 years old. A summer spent doing timed practice papers, with a high-stakes test looming at the end of it, is a particular kind of pressure – especially if it feels like everyone else seems to be having a normal holiday.

Moving the exam to July doesn't remove the pressure of the 11+ entirely. But it changes the shape of it. You finish school, take the test – and then have a summer holiday. That's a much healthier arc.

Evans made this point directly: "We don't think 10-year-olds should spend their summer holidays going through past papers for a school entrance test. If we're lucky, we have 80 summers, the best of them are when we are nine, 10, 11, 12 and exploring the world for the first time with a little bit of independence."

There's also something in the summer learning loss data that's easy to overlook. Studies of primary-age children in the US have found that over a three-month break, children lose – on average – around a quarter of the maths knowledge they gained in the previous nine months, and somewhere between 17 and 28 per cent of their English knowledge.

That loss isn't evenly distributed – it falls hardest on children without access to books, libraries or structured activity. By moving to July, the testing means every child is assessed closer to their actual ability, not their ability with six weeks of drift.

What doesn't change

It would be too easy to present this as a fix.

Moving the exam date doesn't make the 11+ fair. Tutoring will adapt – it always does. Families who want to get a head start can simply begin earlier.

Reading School has tried to develop a "tutor-proof" exam – FSCE – based on national curriculum content rather than verbal and non-verbal reasoning, which is a more substantive intervention. But most grammars aren't doing that.

The deeper inequalities – in school quality, family resources, cultural capital, access to books – aren't solved by a calendar change. And the question of whether selective secondary education is itself the right system is a separate argument entirely, one I'm not going to wade into here.

But within the constraints of the current system, this is a better version of it. Children have less anxious summers, fairer conditions and are assessed when they're at their peak, not after six weeks of uneven rest.

As Richardson put it: "You get your 11-plus done and out of the way and then you can have a summer holiday like all 10-year-olds should have."

What this means if you're preparing now

If your child is in Year 5 and you're thinking about the 11+, the schools mentioned above won't affect most families reading this. The Gloucestershire move starts next year and applies to a specific set of local schools; Reading School's change applies to its 2027 intake.

For the vast majority of grammar schools and independent schools running ISEB, the September timeline remains unchanged.

But the principle behind this change – preparation that fits into normal life, without dominating it – is one worth holding onto regardless of when your child's exam is. Children who build genuine understanding steadily, over time, tend to arrive at the exam in better shape than children who've been drilled intensively in the final weeks. That's true whether the test is in July or September.

HeyKitsu was built around that idea. Fifteen minutes a day, questions that adapt to where your child actually is, with or without a tutor – and no summer consumed.

If that sounds useful, the first three levels of every collection are free – no card required, no time limit.

Stephen ❤️