West Midlands Grammar Schools, Paper 2, Exam 2
A complete West Midlands Grammar Schools 11+ Paper 2 exam experience.
The West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test is the shared 11+ used by 19 selective state grammar schools across Birmingham, Warwickshire, Shropshire, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Member schools include King Edward VI Aston, King Edward VI Five Ways, both Camp Hill schools, Queen Mary's Walsall, Haberdashers' Adams and Ashlawn. The test is sat as two papers on a single morning with a short break between, all multiple choice, marked on a separate OMR answer sheet.
Paper 2 puts four subjects into a single 50-minute booklet, each in its own internally timed section:
English is built around a single non-fiction passage of around 500 words, drawn from natural history, biography, history or popular science. Twelve multiple-choice questions follow, weighted toward retrieval, with one item testing Author's Purpose (the question style that consistently appears on non-fiction passages in the live test) and one item in the partnership's distinctive Choose TWO format (five options, each naming a pair of answers, single mark on the right pair).
Verbal Reasoning moves through four type-blocks in pace order, fastest first: Vocabulary Synonyms (Closest in Meaning, in the partnership's dual A-B-C plus X-Y-Z format, marked all-or-nothing on both letters); Words in Sentences (a 3-letter word has been removed from inside one of the words, find it); Insert Letter (a single letter completes one word and begins another); Letter Series.
Mathematics is 12 questions tested mentally, no calculator, no ruler, no scrap paper, covering four KS2 strands: fractions, decimals and percentages; geometry (2D and 3D shape, angle, position, coordinates, transformation); ratio and proportion; and algebra (sequences, simple formulae, function machines). The strands are interleaved across the section rather than presented in separate blocks.
Non-Verbal and Spatial Reasoning closes the paper: NVR Series, Analogies (the make-a-pair format), Matrix completion (2x2 and 3x3 grids), and 2D Rotation and Reflection in the spatial slot.
Pair with our Paper 1 for full coverage of the West Midlands partnership format. Answer key with explanations included.
