Grammar schools / Sutton boys' Stage 2 English (written) / Mock 3
Sutton Boys' Second Stage Examination · Second Stage
Sutton Boys' Second Stage English Mock Paper 3
Preparation for the Sutton Boys' Second Stage Examination, sat for admission to Wilson's School, Sutton Grammar School and Wallington County Grammar School. This is an original mock paper written by Revision Library. It is not a past paper and it is not an official specimen.
Print the paper (PDF)Paper and mark scheme (PDF)
- Time allowed
- 50 minutes
- Total marks
- 30
- Questions
- 1
- Level
- Selective standard
- You have 50 minutes. There is one task on this paper and it is worth 30 marks.
- Read the stimulus material and then the task itself twice before you begin. Everything you have to do is written down for you.
- Spend the first five to ten minutes planning, and plan on the paper rather than in your head. Planning is never marked as writing and crossing it out costs you nothing.
- Write in continuous prose on the lined pages. Use headings only if the form you have been asked for normally has them.
- Keep the last five minutes to read your work back for spelling, punctuation and sense. Your handwriting should stay readable when you are writing at speed.
- This is a practice paper written for Revision Library. Wilson's, Sutton Grammar and Wallington County Grammar release no specimen papers, so the task type here follows consistent independent accounts of the real examination rather than any published material.
English
Read the opening of the story below, then answer the task that follows it. Write your answer on the lined pages.
- 130 marks
Stimulus: the beginning of a story
The boat had been chained to the same iron ring under the bridge for as long as Rafi could remember. It had been green once. Somebody had painted a name along the side in careful white letters, and the river had spent years rubbing at them, so that all that survived now was SEVEN and the ghost of a longer word in front of it.
On the last Friday of the holidays the chain was lying open on the bank, coiled like something asleep, and the boat was gone.
Task: continue this story. Write what happens next, keeping Rafi as the main character and keeping the same narrator you have been given.
Planning: decide how your continuation ends before you write its opening, because a piece that knows where it is going reads completely differently from one that does not. Your writing must begin at the moment the extract stops rather than retelling it, show what Rafi does about the missing boat, and arrive at a proper ending instead of stopping when the lines run out.
You are being judged on how exactly you have followed the instructions above, on the evidence that you planned, on the quality of the writing and on the range of the vocabulary you reach for.
Spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Answers, mark scheme and worked explanations
- 130 marks
Following the task (8 marks)
- Continues from the final line of the extract rather than starting the story again.
- Rafi remains the main character and the narration stays in the third person and the past tense.
- Nothing in the extract is contradicted: the chain, the name on the side, the bridge and the holidays all still hold.
- The continuation reaches a real ending within the time available.
Planning and structure (7 marks)
- A shape is visible: something is set in motion, something is discovered or decided, and something is settled.
- Paragraphs change for a reason, whether that is a new place, a new moment or a new speaker.
- The last paragraph answers the first, so the piece feels finished rather than abandoned.
Quality of writing and vocabulary (9 marks)
- The voice matches the extract: plain, watchful, unhurried, with detail doing the work.
- Verbs and nouns are chosen precisely, and description belongs to the riverbank rather than to any story anywhere.
- Dialogue, where it appears, is used sparingly and reveals something.
Technical accuracy (6 marks)
- Tense is consistent and pronouns always have a clear owner.
- Speech is punctuated correctly and each new speaker starts a new line.
- Spelling is secure and the handwriting stays legible to the last line.
A continuation is a test of listening as much as of imagination. Before you write, read the extract once more and notice what kind of story it is. It is quiet. It notices small things, such as the coil of the chain and the letters worn off a boat. It is written in the third person, in the past tense, and it stays close to Rafi without ever telling you his feelings outright. Everything you write should sound like the next paragraph of that, not the first paragraph of a different book.
Use the stimulus instead of leaving it behind. The details you have been handed are gifts. The open chain means somebody unlocked it rather than cut it. SEVEN and the ghost of a longer word ask a question your ending could answer. The last Friday of the holidays gives you a deadline. A strong response takes two or three of those details and makes them matter. A weak one mentions the boat once and then invents a smuggler.
The commonest mistake is scale. Forty minutes is enough for one afternoon, one search, one meeting, one decision. It is not enough for a chase across three counties, and a story that tries becomes a summary of itself: and then, and then, and then. Choose something small and give it room. Rafi finds out who took it. Rafi discovers the boat was never really abandoned. Rafi decides not to tell anyone. Any of those can be excellent.
The second mistake is the ending. Examiners see a great many pieces that stop mid-sentence because the writer ran out of time, and a great many that end with the words then he woke up. Both throw away marks that were already earned. Plan your last line before you plan anything else and write it at the top of your plan, so that whatever happens you can steer towards it. The third mistake is starting again: if your first sentence retells the boat, the chain and the bridge, you have spent five minutes of writing time saying what the reader has just read.
Timing: about six minutes planning, and make that plan four or five short phrases, not a paragraph. Roughly thirty minutes writing, aiming for five or six paragraphs. Five minutes at the end for tense slips, speech punctuation and any sentence you cannot read aloud in one breath.
Sutton Boys' Second Stage Examination, Second Stage, English (written). Written by Revision Library on 2026-08-28, independent check pending.
The rest of the set
Free 11+ mock papers, no login
Original papers with full mark schemes and worked explanations, printable as PDFs.