About GrammarMock
Why this site exists
The 11+ in South West Herts and North London is among the most competitive entrance exams in the country. Thousands of families sit it each September, and most of them will spend hundreds — sometimes thousands — of pounds on practice papers, tutors, online subscriptions and weekend courses across two years of preparation.
GrammarMock exists to change one part of that. Practice papers should be free, plentiful, and matched to the specific exam your child is sitting. Not generic 11+ material. Not paywalled. Not a dozen papers spread across five different websites.
The mission
Free practice papers for every family preparing for the 11+. Region-targeted, exam-board accurate, fresh content added through the year, with a worked explanation for every question that a parent can actually use. No subscriptions, no upgrade prompts, no trial periods.
The site started with the South West Herts Consortium, because that is the exam I know. It now covers the North London schools too — Queen Elizabeth’s, Henrietta Barnett, Latymer and St Michael’s — with English papers in their format. Other consortia will follow.
The story behind it
I’m a software engineer based near Watford, with two sons. The older one went through the 11+ a few years ago and is now at one of the local grammar schools. The younger one sat his own this September. I remember the first time vividly — the late nights printing practice papers off five different websites, the stack of half-finished CGP books on the kitchen table, the second-guessing about whether we’d done enough. The second time, I built the resource I wished I’d had.
What struck me most wasn’t the difficulty of the exam. It was the unevenness of what was available to families. If you had the time, the money and the network to ask around, you could find good resources. If you didn’t, you were stuck with whatever was on the first page of Google — often outdated, often generic, often paywalled three pages in.
The 11+ is competitive by design. The preparation around it shouldn’t be a wealth test on top. GrammarMock is my answer to that: region-specific, free, honest about what’s a real practice question and what’s filler, and open about how it’s made.
GrammarMock so far
- 250+
- families
- 1,200+
- tests since August
- 30
- full-length papers
- 33
- mini-tests
- 6,000+
- words practised
What you’ll find here
- Full-length practice papers in the GL Assessment format: maths and verbal reasoning for South West Herts, and English, maths and verbal reasoning for North London, at three difficulty levels.
- Fifteen-minute mini-tests on a single topic — fractions, letter codes, punctuation — for the evenings when a full paper is too much.
- A worked explanation for every question — written so a parent without a maths or English background can talk a child through the method, not just confirm the answer.
- A progress page that shows where your child stands against other children on the same papers, adjusted for age the way the real exam does, and which topics to work on next.
- A vocabulary trainer of more than 850 words drawn from the register of real GL Verbal Reasoning papers — not a generic dictionary list — with spaced repetition, flashcards, a matching game and a timed arena, so learning them feels like play rather than a list.
- Any device, or paper — every paper works on a phone, tablet or laptop, and every one has printable PDFs for the traditional pencil approach.
What has changed because of you
Every page has a feedback link, and I read all of it. Most of what the site has become this year came from parents saying what they needed:
- Parents asked for proper worked explanations, not one-line answers. Every question on every published paper was rewritten to teach the method.
- Parents asked for progress tracking. The progress page now shows scores over time, strengths and weaknesses by topic, and how your child compares with others.
- Parents asked for more comprehension. Two new English papers went up this month, with more to come.
- Parents told me which papers were too easy. Those are now labelled so, and harder papers are being written.
- Parents reported questions that looked wrong. Every one is checked against the passage or the working, and the parent gets a reply either way.
How it stays free
GrammarMock isn’t a business. It’s a personal project I work on in the evenings. There’s no team, no investors, and no advertising. The site costs me about £45 a month to run, and that is a price I’m happy to pay.
The practice papers, the explanations and the progress page are free, and will stay that way.
Who I am
A software engineer, a husband, and a father of two boys. Watford-based. Twice an 11+ parent.
I’d rather the site be judged on whether it helps your child than on my CV. If something on the site is broken, wrong, or could be better, the feedback link at the bottom of every page comes straight to me.
Get in touch
The quickest way is the feedback page — it comes straight to me. Or email hello@grammarmock.co.uk for anything else.
Good luck. You’re going to be more involved in your child’s preparation than you expect, and it’s going to be harder than the websites make it look. But thousands of families have done this before you, and your child will too.