Comprehension is the heart of every 11+ English paper, and it produces the most puzzling results. Children who read fluently and love books can score modestly, while apparently less bookish children who've been taught technique score well. The difference is rarely reading ability. It's exam craft.
Reading the passage is not the skill being tested
The 11+ tests something more specific than understanding a text: it tests finding, selecting and expressing evidence under time pressure. A child can understand a passage perfectly and still lose marks by answering from memory instead of the text, giving one point where the question's marks demanded two, or retelling the story when asked to explain a feeling.
This is why "just read more" doesn't fix comprehension scores, though wide reading remains the foundation underneath everything.
The habits that earn marks
The strongest technique I teach is answering with your finger on the line: every answer grounded in words actually in the passage, quoted or closely referenced. Vague answers drawn from general impressions are where marks quietly leak away.
Second, use the mark scheme as instructions. Two marks means two points, or a point plus evidence. Children who glance at the number next to the question before answering consistently outscore those who don't.
Third, learn the question families. Retrieval questions ("What colour was the door?") want speed and precision. Inference questions ("How do you think Sam felt, and how do you know?") want a feeling plus evidence. Vocabulary-in-context questions want the meaning in this passage, not the dictionary's first definition. Writer's-technique questions ("Why does the author repeat this word?") want effect on the reader, not just naming the device. Each family has a shape, and knowing the shapes turns a blank page into a routine.
The vocabulary ceiling
One honest caveat: technique cannot rescue a child from a passage full of words they don't know. Older texts appear regularly in independent school papers, and their vocabulary is the most common wall pupils hit. The fix is long-term: reading that stretches, including some older fiction, and an active habit of collecting unfamiliar words. This is the slowest ingredient to build, which is why comprehension preparation should start with reading habits well before exam technique.
Timing: the silent mark-loser
Comprehension papers punish perfectionism. A child who spends twelve minutes polishing a two-mark answer has spent ten marks' worth of time earning two. In practice sessions I train pupils to move on and return, because the last questions on the paper are worth the same as the first, and unread questions are guaranteed zeros.
Working on it at home
The most useful home habit costs nothing: talk about what they read. Ask why a character acted as they did, and follow up with "what makes you think that?" That one follow-up question is inference training in disguise, and a child who's used to justifying opinions from the text at the dinner table finds the exam version entirely familiar.
If your child's comprehension marks don't match their reading ability, the easiest first step is a free 15-minute phone chat.