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12 free questions
Stage one uses multiple-choice English and Maths. Stage two requires written answers. Start with the route your child needs.
For Sutton Grammar, Wallington County and Wilson's. The written English format is not published in full; this original task practises reading evidence and composition.
Boys' second-stage English task
Read the passage, answer the two questions in full sentences, then write the story. The schools say each written paper lasts around 45 minutes to an hour, so try the whole task against one of those clocks.
The spare key
[1]Every Saturday, Mr Okafor left the spare key to the allotment shed under a flat grey stone. Jonah had watched him do it for three summers without once being trusted to use it himself.
[2]This Saturday the stone was bare. Jonah lifted it twice, as if the key might be hiding underneath the underneath. Through the shed window he could see the watering cans lined up on their shelf, exactly where he had left them. The beans along the fence had begun to droop.
[3]He could climb the fence and fill the cans from the trough on the other side. It would take ten minutes. It would also mean walking across Mrs Patel's plot, and Mrs Patel had once shouted at a pigeon for landing on her cabbages.
[4]Jonah knocked on her gate instead. She listened without smiling, then disappeared into her own shed and came back with a battered green hose. "It reaches," she said. "It has always reached. Nobody ever asks."
[5]By the time Mr Okafor arrived, the beans were standing straight again and the hose was coiled neatly by the fence. He looked at it for a long moment. On the following Saturday there were two keys under the stone.
Why does Jonah decide not to climb the fence? Use evidence from paragraph 3.
What does the last sentence suggest about how Mr Okafor now sees Jonah? Explain how the writer shows this without saying it directly.
Write a story in which a character has to ask someone for help they would rather not ask for. Show why asking is hard, and what changes afterwards.
Plan for a few minutes first.
0 words
The kite had been in the sycamore since lunchtime, its tail twitching whenever the wind remembered it. Maya had tried a broom, a tennis ball and, briefly, shouting. Next door, Mr Harris's ladder leaned against his shed, exactly where it had been on the day she had knocked his gnome off the wall and walked away very fast.
Her brother stood under the tree in his party shirt. He had stopped asking when she would get the kite down. That was worse. Maya put the broom beside the gate and pressed the neighbour's bell. Before anyone answered, she pressed it again, more softly, as though that might cancel the first ring.
Mr Harris opened the door holding a paintbrush. 'Well?' he said. Maya looked at the flecks of blue on his thumb. She could ask for the ladder and pretend nothing else had happened. Instead, she said, 'It was me who broke your gnome. I'm sorry. I should have told you.' The words came out in a rush. Then she explained about the kite.
He looked over her shoulder at the tree. 'I wondered when you would say something.' Maya waited for him to shut the door. He put down the brush. 'I will bring the ladder. You can hold the kite when it comes down.'
Five minutes later her brother was running across the grass with the kite above him. Maya stayed by the wall. The gnome stood there again, with a crack across its coat. 'What colour was it before?' she asked. Mr Harris handed her the smaller brush. 'Blue,' he said. 'Still is, mostly.' Maya dipped the brush carefully. This time, she stayed until the job was finished.
Why it works. The broken gnome gives Maya a specific reason to avoid asking. Her confession turns the story. Staying to repair the gnome makes the change visible.
A weaker route. 'Maya was nervous. She asked for help. Everything was fine.' This states the events but gives no reason asking is difficult. Add the broken gnome, her hesitation at the bell and the confession.
Read your child's finished draft. Tick only what you can point to in their writing. This is our practice rubric.
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