The Best 11+ Forums and Facebook Groups for Parents
ArielleOrganic Search & Marketing @ PipUpdated August 2026
10 min read
Pip cannot be a forum, we are a practice app, so we have nothing to gain by sending you to one. But if you searched for an 11+ forum, you are probably after something we cannot give you: another parent who has actually sat in the same waiting room. We checked which 11+ forums and Facebook groups genuinely exist and are still active, tell you honestly what each is good for, and where forum advice can lead you astray, because it sometimes does.
Short on time? The quick verdict:
Best for detailed, regional, school-specific threads: Mumsnet's Secondary Education board, over 700 pages of threads deep, though discussion can turn intense and comparison-heavy close to results day.
Best for a community built for nothing else: the Eleven Plus Exams Forum, over 750,000 posts from over 40,000 members, organised into subject and regional sections, though it sits alongside a commercial tutoring and publishing business.
Weakest fit despite showing up in searches: The Student Room has no dedicated 11+ section at all, just old, scattered threads inside its general school-support forum aimed mostly at teenagers.
Full transparency: we visited every community below ourselves this month to confirm it is real, active and actually discusses the 11+, rather than assuming from its name. Where we could not verify genuine, current activity, such as with a couple of other sites and subreddits that turn up in searches for "11 plus forum", we left them out rather than guess.
What forums are good for, and what they are not
Good for: knowing you are not the only one panicking about a mock score, a specific grammar school's actual pass mark from a parent who just lived through it, regional detail that no national guide covers (which Kent test centre has easier parking, whether a particular school's interview really is as relaxed as its prospectus claims), and plain moral support at nine in the evening the night before results day.
Not a substitute for: official information from the school or local authority, since catchment areas, pass marks and appeal deadlines change and a confident forum post from two admissions cycles ago can be quietly wrong by the time you read it, or professional advice if your child is genuinely struggling with anxiety, a specific learning need, or the pressure of the whole process.
A forum thread is peer support, not admissions law or pastoral care.
All four, side by side
The whole comparison up front, so you can skip to whichever fits. Checked directly this month; a community's activity level can shift from one admissions cycle to the next, so treat this as a snapshot.
Detailed, sometimes intense, regional threads on specific schoolsThe Mumsnet Secondary Education board index, where most of its 11+ threads live.
Wheremumsnet.com/talk/secondary, part of Mumsnet's much wider "Talk" forums covering every topic of parenting
FormatThreaded discussion with a fully searchable archive going back years; free to read, a quick sign-up to post
ActivityOver 700 pages of threads in this one board alone at time of writing, including recurring, dedicated year-cohort threads such as "11+ 2025 support thread" and "2023 Eleven Plus support thread"
Best forHyper-specific detail on individual grammar schools and regional test differences, from parents who have just been through exactly your process
Watch outThreads can turn comparison-heavy and anxiety-inducing close to results day, a confidently stated opinion is not the same as a verified fact, and advice is regionally biased: what a Kent parent says does not apply to Buckinghamshire's different test
Mumsnet does not have a section called "11+", it lives inside the wider Secondary Education board, but that is where the bulk of UK 11+ parent discussion actually happens.
The board runs a recurring pattern of year-specific support threads, we found live examples for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 cohorts, alongside regional threads (we saw one specifically for South West London) and one-off questions on everything from tutoring timing to how to explain a "no" to a child.
It is the largest, most detailed community on this list, and also the one where the comparison-anxiety effect is most visible: long threads where parents post practice scores back and forth can be genuinely useful for benchmarking, or genuinely stressful to read at 11pm, depending on the week.
2The Eleven Plus Exams Forum
A community built for nothing but the 11+The Eleven Plus Exams Forum: a dedicated, volunteer-moderated 11+ community since 2004.
Whereelevenplusexams.co.uk/forum, its own standalone forum rather than a section of a general parenting site
FormatA classic phpBB-style forum organised into Forum Rules, an 11+ Subjects section split into Verbal Reasoning, Maths, English and Non-Verbal Reasoning boards, regional boards, a general section and a "Beyond 11 Plus" section for after results
ActivityThe site itself states more than 750,000 posts from over 40,000 members, volunteer-moderated; we saw current, dated activity on our visit, including a live "Re: How to get quicker at VR?" thread and a moderator post dated this year
Best forThe single most 11+-specific community on the internet, with dedicated subject and regional boards, free to browse and post
Watch outThe same organisation also runs a tuition centre, a Virtual Learning Environment and its own publications by its own account, so treat it as community-run but commercially adjacent, not an independent nonprofit; the interface is dated 2000s-forum style, which some parents find less approachable than Mumsnet or Facebook
This one is worth knowing about even if you never post: it is the only forum on this list built from the ground up for the 11+ and nothing else.
By its own account it started in 2004 when a father built an online learning page and forum so he could coach his son through the exam from a distance; other parents found the free resources, started using the forum too, and the site never closed.
Two decades on it is run day to day by volunteer parent moderators, organised so you can go straight to your region or your weak subject rather than sift a general parenting board.
The trade-off is that the same organisation now sells 11+ tuition and materials alongside the free forum, and the interface has an old-school, unpolished feel next to something like Mumsnet.
3The Student Room
Reading how it looks in hindsight, not day-to-day 11+ supportA genuine 11+ thread on The Student Room, filed under general Secondary School support, not a dedicated 11+ board.
WhereNo dedicated 11+ board exists; individual threads sit inside the general "Secondary School, Sixth Form and FE College Support" forum, confirmed by the breadcrumb on every thread we checked
FormatA large, modern, mainstream UK student forum where GCSEs, A-levels and university admissions dominate
ActivityReal but thin: searching "11 plus" surfaces a genuine scatter of threads, several years old, some explicitly marked "this discussion is now closed"
Best forGeneral debate about grammar schools and selection, and occasional exam-technique questions, more useful once your child is already a teenager looking back than while you are living through it
Watch outThe Student Room's core users are teenagers and young adults, not parents of 10 and 11 year olds, so do not expect the depth, currency or parent-specific detail of Mumsnet or the Eleven Plus Exams Forum here
We include The Student Room because it turns up in searches for "11 plus forum" and it is a genuinely large, real, active site, just not for this.
We found real threads, including one simply titled "The 11 plus examinations" asking what practice-paper score should count as good, and debate threads on whether the Kent test disadvantages poorer pupils.
But every one we checked was filed under the general Secondary School support forum alongside GCSE and university content, not a section of its own, and the specific ones we found were years old.
If your child is younger and you want live, current parent discussion, this is not the right stop; if you want to see how the exam looks from the other side once it is over, it has some value.
Facebook groups: a category, not a link
Facebook groups are genuinely one of the most active places 11+ discussion happens, often more current than any public forum, since they are usually full of parents going through the exact same year's process in your exact area.
We are deliberately not linking specific groups here: the useful ones are almost always closed or private, membership churns as each year's cohort moves on, and a group we verified as well-run today could be inactive or differently moderated by the time you read this. Search for it yourself instead, using the guidance below.
What to search for: try "[your county] 11 plus parents [target exam year]" (for example "Kent 11 plus parents 2027"), "[school name] applicants [year]", or "[local authority] grammar school parents". Most are set up fresh each admissions cycle, so include the year.
Red flags of a low-quality group
You cannot see the member count, rules or recent activity before requesting to join
No visible admin activity, or it is unclear who actually runs and moderates it
Full of tutoring-agency adverts and spam rather than parent-to-parent discussion
No pinned post organising key information, so the same questions get asked on repeat
A culture of shaming families for tutoring, or for not tutoring, rather than sharing information plainly
One honest caveat that applies more to Facebook than to open forums: because groups are closed, nothing in them can be searched, cited or fact-checked by anyone outside, including by us.
Real-time chat also tends to amplify comparison anxiety even faster than a forum thread, since a worrying message lands in front of the whole group instantly rather than sitting in an archive someone finds later. Treat a closed group as a fast, local, unverifiable source, useful for exactly that, and nothing more.
How to use forum advice well
The single most useful habit: treat a forum as the place you find out what to check, not the place you get your final answer. Specific numbers are exactly where forums drift out of date fastest, so verify them separately before you act on them.
🆓 VERIFY IT HERE INSTEAD
Skip the forum guesswork on catchment
"Are we in catchment?" is one of the most argued-about threads on every 11+ forum, and the honest answer is that it depends on exact address, exact year and exact school, none of which a stranger's post can know for you.
Our free grammar school catchment checker ranks all 162 grammar schools in England by distance from your actual postcode, shows them on a map, and flags which ones use a catchment at all versus taking top scorers from anywhere.
For the other classic forum debate, exactly what a raw mark means, our 11+ score calculator turns a raw mark into an estimated standardised score instead of relying on someone else's rule of thumb.
And for questions about exam format and timing, which shift by board and by region, our own 11+ exam types explained guide and the specific board pages linked from it (GL, CEM/Cambridge, ISEB, CSSE, Kent, Bucks and more) are kept current and cite official sources, rather than a memory of how the test worked when someone else's child sat it.
Mixed, and that is true of any forum. Practical details like a specific school's cut-off score two years ago, or which test centre is easiest to park at, are usually reliable because they come from someone who was actually there.
Broader claims, especially about pass marks, catchment radii or 'guaranteed' entry, drift out of date fast or were never quite right, and get repeated as fact by people who read them on the same forum.
Treat first-hand, specific, recent posts as useful evidence, and treat sweeping general claims as a starting point to verify, not a final answer.
Which is the best 11+ forum?+
There is no single best one, they do different jobs. Mumsnet's Secondary Education board has the most detailed, most regionally specific parent discussion.
The Eleven Plus Exams Forum is the only community built for nothing but the 11+, organised into subject and regional sections.
The Student Room is genuinely not a strong option for this: its 11+ content is old, thin and scattered inside a general school-support forum aimed mostly at teenagers, not parents of 10 and 11 year olds.
Should I trust forum advice on pass marks and catchment areas?+
Not on its own. Pass marks move year to year with cohort size and paper difficulty, and catchment radii can and do change, so a confident forum post from two admissions cycles ago may already be wrong.
Use forum threads to find out what to check, then verify the actual number with the school or local authority directly, or with a tool built specifically to track it, such as our own free grammar school catchment checker and score calculator, before you rely on it.
Are Facebook groups better than forums for 11+ advice?+
They are more current and more local, which is genuinely valuable: current-year parents in your own catchment, talking in real time.
But closed groups cannot be searched or fact-checked by outsiders, moderation quality varies enormously from one admin to the next, and the same anecdotal-advice problem applies, just faster and harder to verify afterwards. They complement a public forum's searchable archive rather than replace it.
Does The Student Room have a dedicated 11+ section?+
No, and it's worth knowing that before you go looking for one. 11+ threads on The Student Room sit inside its general 'Secondary School, Sixth Form and FE College Support' forum alongside GCSE and A-level discussion, rather than in a section of their own.
The site's core audience is teenagers and young adults, so 11+ content is a small, often years-old, minority slice of a much bigger platform.
Do I need to join a forum to prepare for the 11+?+
No. Forums are optional moral support and information-gathering, not part of the exam itself, and plenty of families prepare well without ever posting on one.
If you do join, treat it as one input alongside official school and exam-board information and, for the actual practice, structured resources such as past papers or a daily practice app.
How do I find a good local 11+ Facebook group?+
Search Facebook directly for terms like '[your county] 11 plus parents [target exam year]' or '[school name] applicants [year]', since these groups are almost always closed and will not turn up in a general web search.
Before joining, check for visible admin activity, a clear set of pinned rules, and a membership that looks like real local parents rather than tutoring accounts. A group with no visible rules, inactive moderation, or that is mostly adverts is a weaker source than one with active, engaged admins.
