About GrammarMock
Why this site exists
The 11+ in South West Herts is one of the most competitive entrance exams in the country. Thousands of families across Watford, Rickmansworth, Croxley Green and the surrounding villages sit it each September. Most of them will spend hundreds — sometimes thousands — of pounds on practice papers, tutors, online subscriptions and weekend courses across the 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 12 papers spread across five different websites.
The mission
Free practice papers for every family preparing for the South West Herts 11+. Region-targeted, exam-board accurate, fresh content added throughout the year, with worked solutions parents can actually use. No subscriptions, no upgrade prompts, no chasing trial periods.
Eventually the site will expand to other consortia — Bucks, Kent, Trafford — and other subjects, but the South West Herts community is where we started because it’s the one I know.
The story behind it
I’m a software engineer based near Watford. I have two sons. The older one went through the 11+ a few years ago and now attends one of the local grammar schools — he’s in Year 9 today. The younger one is in Year 5, preparing for his own 11+ this September. I remember the year leading up to his older brother’s exam 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. Now I’m doing it all over again.
What struck me most wasn’t the difficulty of the exam. It was the unevennessof 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 If you didn’t, you were stuck with whatever was on the first page of Google — often outdated, often generic, often paywalled three pages in.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.
So when my younger son started his own preparation, I decided to build the resource I wished I’d had the first time around. Region-specific. Free. Honest about what’s a real practice question and what’s filler. Updated regularly. Open about how it’s made.
GrammarMock is that resource.
What you’ll find here
- Full-length practice papers in the GL Assessment format used by the South West Herts Consortium, across maths and verbal reasoning, at three difficulty levels.
- Worked solutions for every question — written so a parent without a maths or English background can talk a child through the reasoning, not just confirm the answer.
- A vocabulary trainer built from the actual word register that appears in real GL Verbal Reasoning papers — not a generic dictionary list.
- Practice on any device — papers work on a phone, tablet or laptop. Most kids end up doing a few questions on the bus.
- Printable PDFs if you prefer the traditional paper-and-pencil approach.
New papers are added through the spring and summer of each exam year. By exam day in early September, the site holds enough material for a child to have practised every topic and question type they’ll see.
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, no advertising. The site costs me about £15 a month to run.
If it stays useful and the audience grows, I may add optional paid features later — things like detailed diagnostic reports or tutor accounts for managing multiple children. The core practice papers will always be free.
Why I don’t take donations
Several parents have asked. The honest answer is: this is something I want to do, and accepting money would change what it is. Pay it forward instead — if your child gets into the school they were aiming for, find a way to help the next family. Lend your old practice books. Share notes on Mumsnet. Tell another parent which Saturday class is actually worth the money.
The 11+ community in South West Herts is genuinely strong when it leans into helping each other. GrammarMock is one small piece of that.
Who I am
A software engineer, a husband, and a father of two boys. Watford-based. Long-time 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. I read everything.
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.