One-to-one preparation for the three-paper entrance examination both Divisions sit, and the interview that follows
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Leading Tuition's Bolton School programme is one-to-one 11+ preparation built for a foundation that runs two Divisions through a single entrance examination. Boys' Division and Girls' Division candidates sit the same three multiple-choice papers — non-verbal reasoning in 20 minutes, mathematics in 50, English in 45 — on the same day, then interview in different weeks. We prepare for that shape, and we quote per programme after a free consultation.
We start from the school's own published format rather than from a general 11+ syllabus, because the two differ in ways that decide where a family's hours should go. Bolton School sets three multi-choice assessment papers: non-verbal reasoning at 20 minutes, mathematics at 50 minutes and English at 45 minutes. That is under two hours of assessment in total, and every mark in it is recorded on an answer sheet rather than in a script a marker reads.
Two things follow at once. There is no verbal reasoning paper, so hours spent on cloze passages, letter codes and word chains earn nothing here. There is no extended writing either, so the creative-writing coaching that fills most 11+ courses earns nothing at this school. Our programme drops both and puts the time back into the three papers that are actually sat.
The examination is also not the whole decision. The school says the pupil's school report, the Headteacher's reference and the information provided in the application form are taken into account alongside it, and that candidates are invited back for an interview afterwards. We plan for a two-stage process for that reason, and we treat the interview as scored work rather than as a friendly chat at the end.
This is the first question we get from Bolton School families, and the answer is not symmetrical. Preparation is shared. The application is not.
On the assessment side the two Divisions are the same. The Boys' Division and the Girls' Division publish the same three papers at the same lengths, and in the 2026 entry cycle both sat on Thursday 15 January 2026. A child preparing for one is preparing for the other, which is why a family entering a son and a daughter in the same year runs one joint programme with us rather than two.
On the application side they are separate. Bolton School takes a Boys' Division senior school application and a Girls' Division senior school application through different online forms, and each Division has its own admissions registrar. You do not apply to the foundation and get allocated; you apply to a named Division. We raise it in the first conversation because the parents who assume a single foundation application are the ones who end up chasing a divisional deadline.
Forty-five minutes of multiple-choice English is a different examination from the comprehension-plus-composition paper most independent schools set, and it rewards a different child on the day. A pupil who writes beautifully but reads carelessly will underperform here; a pupil who reads precisely and writes plainly will do better than their school report suggests.
So we drop composition drills entirely and teach four things in their place. Inference from a passage where every option is defensible in isolation and only one is supported by the text. Vocabulary in context rather than vocabulary lists, because the paper gives the sentence and asks which meaning fits it. The grammatical function of a word inside a sentence, which is the part of a multiple-choice English paper that is genuinely learnable in a term. And recognising the distractor that restates the passage accurately without answering the question asked, which is the single most common way a strong reader loses marks on this format.
Underneath all four sits elimination discipline. A child who can rule two options out in seconds banks time for the questions that need the passage read again. We teach that out loud first: the pupil says why each rejected option is wrong, in a sentence, until the reasoning is fast enough to stop being spoken. It is slow for a fortnight and then it is the reason a paper finishes.
Families who want the background on why the questions look the way they do can read our guide to GL Assessment and CEM question styles; the school points parents at GL Assessment's own materials.
Bolton School gives parents an unusually candid warning, and we build a working rule out of it. The school directs families to GL Assessment familiarisation materials and practice packs, then says the actual assessments may not be exactly like the practice papers, and that the entrance examination may have more questions.
Read that next to the clock and the consequence is concrete. Non-verbal reasoning is the shortest paper of the day at 20 minutes, so it is the paper where per-question pace is least forgiving: a child who is a few seconds slow on each item does not lose a few marks, they lose the last block of the paper entirely. If that child has rehearsed only at the density of a practice pack, and the real paper carries more questions in the same 20 minutes, the shortfall arrives on the day with no warning.
We therefore do not rehearse at pack pace. We set the target above it, so that finishing the real paper is the easy case rather than the lucky one, and we hold the accuracy standard fixed while the clock tightens. Speed bought by guessing is not speed; a pupil who finishes and drops marks has trained the wrong thing. The full method sits in our non-verbal reasoning parent guide, and we run the same progression for Bolton School candidates.
Room conditions get rehearsed too, because they are published and there is no reason to leave them as a surprise. Candidates bring two pencils, a ruler and an eraser; calculators and devices with a calculator function, including watches, are not allowed in the examination room. That makes the 50-minute mathematics paper an entirely unaided arithmetic paper, so mental methods and written short division are practised without a calculator anywhere on the table from the first session, not from the last month.
Not sure which Division, or how long you have? Tell us your child's school year and we will map the papers, the interview window and a realistic programme length against the Bolton School cycle — before you commit to anything.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe school publishes the shape of its own cycle: applications for the Senior School entrance examination can be submitted from September, pupils sit in January, and offers are made afterwards. Counting from the start of September to a mid-January examination gives about nineteen weeks, and roughly two of those are the Christmas holiday. That is the working length of a full autumn programme, and it is short enough that the order of the blocks matters more than the number of hours in them.
| Block | What we do | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|
| Opening weeks | Untimed baseline on all three papers, marked question by question with the pupil | Tells us which paper is the constraint. Timing a child before you know what they can do untimed measures nerves, not ability |
| Middle block | Skill teaching on the weakest paper, still untimed; the strongest paper moves to the clock | Accuracy is built before speed on the weak paper and speed is banked early on the strong one |
| Late autumn | Full-length sets on all three, non-verbal reasoning run above pack density | The first time a child sits three papers back to back should not be the real day |
| Christmas holiday | Short maintenance sessions only, no new material | A fortnight of nothing costs pace; a fortnight of cramming costs the child |
| Final fortnight | Sitting conditions, unaided arithmetic, and interview work begins | Interview work has to start before the examination for Girls' Division candidates — see below |
Families who come to us earlier, in the year before entry, run the same blocks over a longer arc rather than a denser one: the same sequence, fewer sessions a week, and a much larger share of the time in the opening two blocks. That is the version we recommend where there is a choice, because the parts of this examination that respond best to teaching — grammar function, elimination discipline, unaided arithmetic fluency — are the parts that need repetition rather than intensity.
This is the scheduling detail that changes a plan, and it sits on the school's own site rather than on any tutoring page we could find for this search.
Both Divisions examine on the same day and then interview every candidate, but not in the same week. In the 2026 entry cycle the Girls' Division interviewed between Monday 19 January and Wednesday 21 January. The Boys' Division interviewed between Thursday 22 January and Wednesday 28 January.
Set those against an examination on Thursday 15 January and the asymmetry is obvious. A Girls' Division candidate can be interviewed four days after the paper, with a weekend in between and nothing else. A Boys' Division candidate can have close to a fortnight. Interview preparation cannot be left to the gap on a girls' plan, because there is no gap; it has to be substantially done before the examination, with a short refresher after. On a boys' plan we can hold more of it back and spend the extra pre-examination sessions on papers instead.
That is not a detail a family can safely infer, and it is the reason we check the school's published dates for the current cycle before setting any Bolton School plan rather than carrying last year's shape forward. Interview technique itself we cover the same way for both Divisions, along the lines set out in our 11+ interview preparation guide.
We also tell children what the room will be like, because the school describes it and there is no advantage in leaving it unknown. Candidates sit in small supervised groups — no more than 11 in a Girls' Division room — with Sixth Form pupils on hand to take children to breaks, and there is a snack and a drink between papers. A ten-year-old who has been told this walks in expecting it.
At most schools the interview is a confidence question. At Bolton School it is also a money question, and that is why we cost interview sessions into the programme rather than offering them as an add-on.
Year 7 scholarships at the school are worth up to £1,000, are not means-tested, and are awarded — in the school's words — on exceptional performance in the Entrance Examination and interviews, alongside the school reference and application form. The interview is not appended to a scored paper; it is one of the two things the award is decided on. A family that prepares only for the papers is preparing for half of what the money turns on.
What we actually do in those sessions is narrow. We work until a child can talk for a minute about one book they finished and why it was worth finishing, one thing they made, played or organised outside school, and one thing they found genuinely hard and stayed with anyway. We do not write answers for them. An experienced interviewer at a selective school can hear a scripted answer in about six words, and a child reciting one loses the warmth that is the whole point of meeting them. What we remove is the silence, the one-word answer and the shrug.
Bolton School's bursary is unusual in that the size of the award is set partly by how the child performs, not only by what the family earns. The school states that the awards are based on the child's performance in the Entrance Examination and the degree of assistance required, with the financial side assessed from an annual declaration of income and assets.
That changes what a programme should optimise for. A family seeking a place needs the child over the bar. A family on the bursary track benefits from every mark above it, because the margin is what the award is scaled against. So on a bursary plan we do not ease off the strongest paper once it looks safe, which is the standard and otherwise sensible move; we keep pushing it, because on this particular route the safe paper is where the extra marks are cheapest to win.
The school's published income guidance is blunt and we repeat it rather than soften it. Parents whose income is less than circa £20,000 may be offered full remission of fees; parents whose income exceeds circa £80,000 will not qualify for assistance. The school says one in five of its pupils holds a bursary-assisted place. If a family sits above the upper threshold, we say so at the consultation instead of selling a programme against an award that is not coming.
We match on the format of this examination rather than on the postcode, and the criteria come straight out of the papers above.
We do not publish tutor counts or school-by-school pass rates, and we would rather say that plainly than print a figure we cannot evidence. What we will do at the consultation is name the tutor we propose for your child, say what they have taught at this level, and arrange for you to meet them before anything is committed. Sessions run online across the UK, and in person where a suitable tutor is within reach of you; which of the two we recommend depends on the child, and we will tell you which we think is better rather than which is easier to staff.
We are rated Excellent on Trustpilot, 4.8 out of 5 from 54 reviews, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. Those are practice-wide figures across every level we teach, not a Bolton School-specific cohort — we do not publish a school-by-school pass rate, because we do not hold one we could evidence.
No. Both Divisions publish the same three multi-choice papers at the same lengths: non-verbal reasoning at 20 minutes, mathematics at 50 minutes and English at 45 minutes. In the 2026 entry cycle both sat on Thursday 15 January 2026. What differs is the application and the interview week — each Division takes its own senior school application form and has its own admissions registrar, and the Girls' Division interviewed between 19 and 21 January while the Boys' Division interviewed between 22 and 28 January. Preparation is shared; paperwork and scheduling are not.
Not according to the school's published format, which lists three papers only: non-verbal reasoning, mathematics and English. This matters because much generic 11+ tuition sold in the Bolton area bundles verbal reasoning in as standard, and several of the tutoring pages ranking for this search advertise it. Hours spent on letter codes, cloze passages and word chains do not convert into marks at this school. We check the school's current published format before every programme rather than assuming it, and we tell families when material they have already bought will not be used.
The school describes all three papers as multi-choice, and gives the English paper 45 minutes. There is no extended writing task in that format, which is why our English work for this school is comprehension, vocabulary in context, grammar function and elimination discipline rather than composition practice. That surprises parents whose older child sat a different independent school with a written paper. It does not mean writing stops mattering — the school also weighs the school report and the Headteacher's reference — but it does mean composition drills are not where a Bolton School term should go.
Applications open in September and the examination is in January, which gives an autumn-only programme roughly nineteen weeks, two of them Christmas holiday. That is enough if the child is broadly on track and the work is sequenced properly: baseline untimed, teach the weakest paper, then move everything to the clock. Where a family has the year before entry available we use it, running the same blocks at a lower weekly intensity. The parts of this examination that reward teaching most — grammar function, elimination discipline, unaided arithmetic — are repetition-hungry rather than intensity-hungry.
The school says that following the entrance examination the child will be invited back for an interview. The gap depends on the Division. In the 2026 cycle, with the examination on Thursday 15 January, the Girls' Division interviewed from Monday 19 January to Wednesday 21 January and the Boys' Division from Thursday 22 January to Wednesday 28 January. A girls' candidate can therefore be interviewed four days after the paper. On our girls' plans interview work is largely finished before the examination for that reason, with one refresher session afterwards.
We run one-to-one programmes built on the school's published format: the 20-minute non-verbal reasoning paper trained above practice-pack pace, the 50-minute mathematics paper taught unaided because no calculator is permitted in the room, the 45-minute multiple-choice English paper taught as reading precision rather than composition, and interview sessions costed in because scholarships turn on them. We sequence the whole thing against the Division your child is applying to, since the interview weeks differ. Start with a free consultation and we will map it before you commit to anything.
Bolton School publishes its format, dates and fees openly — you can read them on the school's own Entrance Examination FAQs. What we add is what to do about them. Tell us the Division and the year, and we will come back with a plan and a price.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBook a free consultation — we will map the three papers, your Division's interview week and a realistic programme length before you commit.
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