Passive is not past: verb tenses
The Short Answer
Tense questions ask when something happens — past, present or future — and whether a passage keeps to one tense throughout. The trap is the passive voice, which uses a form of to be plus a past participle and therefore looks past whatever tense it is in. The tunnel is inspected weekly is present tense and passive at the same time.
What is a verb tense question?
Two shapes. Either your child is asked what tense a sentence is in, or a passage slips from one tense to another and they are asked which word breaks the pattern.
Neither is hard on its own. What makes this type worth teaching separately is a single confusion that spoils both.
Passive does not mean past
This is the trap, and it is worth stating as a rule at home.
The tunnel is inspected weekly.
Most children read inspected and answer past tense. It is present. It happens now, and regularly — weekly says so.
What has confused them is the voice. The sentence is passive: the tunnel is not doing the inspecting, it is having inspecting done to it. And the passive is built from a form of to be plus a past participle, so it always contains a word with a past-tense shape, whatever tense it is actually in.
Tense is carried by the to be word, not by the ending:
- is inspected — present
- was inspected — past
- will be inspected — future
Teach your child to find that word and read the tense off it.
Can you show me a worked example?
Active and passive
Worth being able to convert between them, since questions sometimes ask.
Passive: The engine was repaired by Nadia. Active: Nadia repaired the engine.
The doer moves to the front, and the sentence usually gets shorter. That shortening is a decent signal your child has done the conversion correctly.
The passive is not a mistake, incidentally. It is the right choice when the doer is unknown or beside the point — the window was broken when nobody knows who broke it. For the 11+, recognising it matters more than judging it.
Where do pupils lose marks?
Answering past for any passive sentence, which is the whole reason this post exists.
Checking verbs one at a time rather than against each other, so a tense slip has nothing to be inconsistent with.
Reading silently, when the slip is audible.
Try it yourself
For each one, name the tense first — when does it happen? — and only then consider the voice.
- The tunnel is inspected weekly. What tense?
- The tunnel was inspected last year. What tense?
- Which word breaks the pattern: 'She opened the door, walked into the hall and sees the light on'?
- Rewrite in the active voice: 'The engine was repaired by Nadia'.
- Is 'the lanterns will be hung above the harbour' past, present or future?
- Present. It happens now, or regularly, and 'weekly' confirms it. It is also passive — the tunnel is not doing the inspecting — but passive is not a tense, and that is the whole trap in this question type.
- Past. Also passive, and here the two happen to coincide, which is exactly why children conclude that passive means past.
- sees. The first two verbs are past — opened, walked — and the third slips into the present. Reading aloud catches this faster than reading silently.
- Nadia repaired the engine. The person doing the action moves to the front, and the sentence gets shorter, which is usually a sign the active version is right.
- Future. 'Will be' places it ahead of now. It is passive as well, and once again the voice tells you nothing about the tense.
How much practice does this type need at home?
A minute at a time. Say a sentence in the present and ask your child to put it in the past, then the future. The tunnel is inspected weekly. Then ask which word they had to change — and it will be the is, every time.
That is the whole lesson, arrived at by doing rather than being told, and it makes the passive stop looking like a tense.
Free: an English workbook
Questions across the English question types, with the method printed at the top and full answers at the back. One workbook for the whole strand, not a sheet per question type.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between tense and voice?
Tense is about when: past, present or future. Voice is about who is doing the action — active if the subject does it, passive if it is done to them. They are entirely independent, which is why every combination is possible. 'The tunnel is inspected weekly' is present and passive; 'Nadia repaired the engine' is past and active. Children who treat them as one thing get the tense wrong every time the voice is passive.
Why does the passive look past?
Because it is built from a form of 'to be' plus a past participle — inspected, repaired, hung. The past participle is doing the work of the verb and it carries a past-tense shape, so the eye reads past. The tense is actually carried by the 'to be' part: is inspected is present, was inspected is past, will be inspected is future. Teach your child to look at that word rather than the ending.
How does my child spot a tense slip in a passage?
Read it aloud. A slip from past to present is much more audible than visible, and children reading silently skim straight over it. Then check the verbs against each other rather than one at a time — the question is not whether a verb is wrong on its own but whether it matches the ones around it.
Should my child avoid the passive in their own writing?
Not avoid it — choose it. The passive is right when the doer is unknown or unimportant: 'the window was broken' when nobody knows who did it. It is wrong when it hides someone who ought to be named, or simply makes a sentence longer for no gain. For the 11+, what matters is recognising it rather than judging it.
Sources
- GL Assessment — 11+ familiarisation materials and question type descriptions Published 2025.
- Clever Clogs Academy — our own Year 4 and Year 5 lesson records, Winslow Published September 2025 to July 2026.
We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to GL Assessment or Buckinghamshire Council. Test arrangements change; always check the council's own pages for the current year's dates.
We Teach This Method Every Week in Winslow
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