Advanced English Workshops Year 5 QE & HBS
A specialist online English programme for pupils preparing for Queen Elizabeth’s School and Henrietta Barnett School. Skip the endless workbooks: target the precise weaknesses holding your child back, build confidence in just 1–2 focused hours a week and see clear, measurable progress. Rigorous teaching, weekly timed mock practice and focused paper walk-throughs help pupils build the English precision needed for the most competitive exams.
Not casual tutoring. A comprehensive English Workshop.
These are 90+ minute group lessons, designed around the demands of QE and HBS English preparation.
They are not comparable to a casual one-to-one lesson where a teacher simply asks what the child would like to look at that hour, finds a piece of work, solves it together and gives a few pointers. That style can feel reassuring, but it may also create complacency and a false sense of progress.
Why group learning works
In a strong group, children hear the questions that other capable pupils ask. They learn to defend answers, notice traps and explain subtle differences in tone, inference and meaning.
During the live lesson, pupils take part in lively debates, discussions and quizzes. This keeps the pace high and helps children look forward to meeting their cohort peers each week.
QEHBS lessons are deliberately structured, rigorous and cumulative. Every week has a clear purpose; every lesson builds exam technique, vocabulary depth, reading accuracy and confidence in difficult text-based reasoning.
The weekly QEHBS routine
The mock does not run during the 90+ minute Zoom lesson. Pupils complete the timed online mock before the live class, at home and at a suitable time before the lesson.
The live lesson is then used for the walk-through, teaching and discussion. This is where weak areas are exposed and corrected, whether they are foundation topics or advanced traps.
For strong readers
A child with a good reading age will enjoy the challenge. They can test their instincts against demanding questions, contribute to discussions and learn to distinguish a nearly-correct answer from the best answer.
- Sharper inference and evidence selection
- Greater precision in vocabulary and tone
- More disciplined exam timing
- Better awareness of red herrings
For pupils who are newer to this
A child who is new to advanced 11+ English may find the work challenging at first, but that challenge is productive. The weekly mock gives them something concrete to react to, and the live walk-through helps them learn the right questions to ask.
- Clear exposure to the exam standard
- Regular correction of weak habits
- Better understanding of how top answers are chosen
- Confidence built through repeated, structured practice
Comprehensive English coverage every week
Every aspect of the English exam is revisited through timed testing, teaching and discussion. Pupils are not only told the answer; they are trained to notice why tempting answers are wrong.
* Deep English expertise, school-specific assessment intelligence
* Demanding weekly testing
* Expert paper analysis and longitudinal performance tracking within a highly relevant peer cohort.
* Large adaptive-learning platforms with repetitive tasks from large question banks create a false sense of achievement.
* Broad tuition companies covering every 11+ subject only aim for some grammar school, like Slough or Kent, as opposed to the best grammar schools [QE and HBS are 10 times harder to get in].
Standalone workshops teaching isolated English topics or tutors offering personalised but less standardised preparation.
Whereas, our programme uses regular exam-length and exam-style assessment rather than postponing serious testing until the final months.
Unique Materials
Why pay a tutor simply to work through shop-bought workbooks and test packs that you could purchase and mark yourself? Specialist tuition should offer something more: expert teaching, carefully designed materials, precise diagnosis and targeted correction.
Momentum without sacrificing holidays
Holiday plans need not pause 11+ progress. QEHBS pupils can join online lessons from anywhere in the world, with recordings available when live attendance is not possible.
This helps children maintain momentum while still enjoying family time during Easter, Christmas and other busy periods.
Small cohort, serious outcomes
QEHBS is intentionally small. We do not operate as a mass-intake tuition centre; our bandwidth is limited to a carefully managed Year 5 cohort.
We are proud of our historically strong HBS and QE outcomes from a deliberately limited cohort. Parents are encouraged to review our Facebook result posts, parent feedback and success stories across the years for a fuller picture of our track record.
Why 55 weeks?
The current 55-week calendar is calculated around the historic timing of the QE and HBS entrance-exam process. QE preparation requires sustained Year 5 intensity; HBS has two rounds, and historically, around week 55, girls hear about their Round Two examination schedule from the school.
If the QE or HBS exam schedule changes substantially, QEHBS will adapt the programme so that families do not suffer monetary loss as a result of a major timetable change outside their control.
A focused English academy
QEHBS is a specialist English academy focused on preparation for Henrietta Barnett School and Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet.
Creative writing is offered separately. The Year 5 Advanced English Workshops focus on the weekly English skills pupils need for demanding comprehension, SPaG, vocabulary and exam-style reading.