North London Independent Schools Quest Assessment Guide 2026

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5. North London Independent Schools Using Quest

Five North London independent schools currently use the Quest Assessment for 11+ entry: Channing School, South Hampstead High School, Francis Holland School Regent's Park and St Margaret's School Hampstead through the London 11+ Consortium's shared digital test, and Haberdashers' Boys' School in Elstree through its own standalone Quest platform. Two of the area's other most-searched independent schools — North London Collegiate School and Highgate School — do not use Quest at all, which trips up families who assume geography determines test format. This guide names every North London school currently on Quest, explains exactly what each one tests, and sets out fees, places, dates and preparation priorities school by school.

North London's independent school market is unusually dense and unusually varied in how it tests. Within a few miles of one another you have schools sharing a single Quest-built exam through the Consortium, a school running its own separate Quest instance, and two of the most competitive schools in the country setting entirely bespoke papers with no digital adaptive component at all. Treating "North London 11+" as one exam is the single most common planning mistake families make — and it is a genuinely different mistake from the one made further south, where the equivalent South London Quest schools cluster around Dulwich, Alleyn's and the JAGS-led Consortium group instead.

Which North London Independent Schools Use the Quest Assessment?

Five schools make up the current North London Quest picture, split between two distinct delivery models. Channing School (Highgate, N6), South Hampstead High School (Hampstead, NW3), Francis Holland School, Regent's Park (NW1) and St Margaret's School, Hampstead (NW3) are four of the 14 member schools of the London 11+ Consortium, which shares a single Quest-built digital assessment across the group. Haberdashers' Boys' School (Elstree, WD6, on the Hertfordshire border serving the Barnet and Mill Hill catchment) is not part of the girls' Consortium but runs its own separate Quest Assessment with a comparable but distinct component structure. For a full breakdown of the Quest platform itself, see our Quest Assessment preparation hub.

The practical difference matters for preparation. Consortium families sit one shared Part 1 paper in November that every applied-to Consortium school sees, then attend a school-specific Part 2 in January. Haberdashers' Boys' families sit a Quest test that belongs to that school alone — a strong Part 1-equivalent score at Channing tells you nothing about readiness for the Haberdashers' Boys' sitting, because they are different tests on the same underlying platform.

Fee and place figures are drawn from each school's current admissions pages where published; several Consortium schools do not publish exact fee or place figures centrally, so "contact school" reflects that gap rather than an oversight — always confirm current figures directly with the school before budgeting or planning applications.

What Does the Quest Assessment Actually Test at Each School?

The two Consortium schools with the most detailed published component breakdowns — Channing and South Hampstead — both follow the same two-part structure, which gives a reliable template for what to expect at the other Consortium schools too. Part 1 is sat online in November and has four components: English comprehension (30 minutes, non-adaptive — candidates can review and revise answers before submitting), Mathematics (20 minutes, adaptive), Non-Verbal Reasoning (10 minutes, adaptive), and Verbal Reasoning (10 minutes, adaptive). In the adaptive sections, question difficulty adjusts in real time based on performance and submitted answers cannot be revisited — a fundamentally different experience from a paper exam where a child can skip a hard question and return to it later.

Part 2 is sat in person at each individual school in January and typically comprises Creative Comprehension (analysing unseen text, image or data-based material) and a handwritten Creative Writing task. Because Part 2 is set and marked by each school independently, this is where genuine differentiation between Consortium schools happens — two girls with identical Part 1 scores can receive very different outcomes at Channing versus South Hampstead based on how their Part 2 work matches each school's specific priorities.

Haberdashers' Boys' School's standalone Quest test uses a five-component structure: Maths (covering geometry, measurement, number, statistics and arithmetic), Non-Verbal Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, English (comprehension, spelling, punctuation and grammar), and Creative Comprehension (extracting information from texts, maps, diagrams, timetables and charts), plus a separate handwritten creative writing task completed alongside the online assessment. The content areas overlap substantially with the Consortium format, but the exact section order, timing and creative writing prompt style are specific to Haberdashers' Boys' and not interchangeable with Consortium practice materials.

Which North London Schools Don't Use Quest — and Why It Matters?

This is the distinction most other guides miss, and it is the single most useful fact for a family building a North London application strategy: North London Collegiate School (NLCS) in Edgware and Highgate School in N6 — two of the most competitive independent schools in the country, offering around 100 places each at 11+ — do not use the Quest Assessment. Both set their own bespoke English and Mathematics papers, marked internally, with no adaptive digital component and no shared Consortium sitting. NLCS's exam tests comprehension, vocabulary and written expression alongside multi-step mathematical problem-solving; Highgate's process centres on an English paper with heavy emphasis on extended writing, a Mathematics paper, and a reasoning or problem-solving element.

Why this matters practically: families often research "North London 11+ schools" as a single category and assume preparation transfers directly between geographically close schools. It does not. A child preparing exclusively with adaptive Quest-style timed modules for a Channing or South Hampstead application will not automatically be ready for NLCS's or Highgate's very different, non-adaptive, extended-writing-heavy papers — and vice versa. Families applying to a mix of Quest and non-Quest North London schools in the same admissions cycle need two distinct preparation tracks running in parallel, not one generic "North London 11+" programme.

How Does the London 11+ Consortium Work for North London Families?

The London 11+ Consortium is a group of 14 independent girls' schools across London that share a single Quest-built digital assessment rather than each running a separate exam. Within North London specifically, the Consortium members are Channing School, South Hampstead High School, Francis Holland School Regent's Park, and St Margaret's School Hampstead — the Consortium also includes schools further south and west, including Godolphin and Latymer, Notting Hill and Ealing High, and the South London group covered in our South London Quest Assessment guide.

The mechanical benefit of the Consortium for families is real: a single Part 1 sitting in November produces a result that every Consortium school on your application list can see, so a girl applying to three North London Consortium schools sits Quest Part 1 only once rather than three separate times. The trade-off is that Part 1 performance alone does not decide outcomes — Part 2, sat individually at each school in January, and the subsequent interview, both carry significant weight, and schools within the Consortium do not publish a shared pass mark or shared ranking. A strong Part 1 score opens the door to Part 2 at every school on your list; it does not guarantee an offer at any of them.

For the official current list of Consortium member schools and exam-cycle dates, see the London 11+ Consortium's own website, and for background on the Quest platform itself, see Quest Assessments.

How Should Families Plan Travel and Catchment Across North London's Quest Schools?

North London's Quest-assessed schools span a wider geographic footprint than the South London cluster, which is helpful to map before deciding which schools to shortlist. Channing School sits in Highgate village, close to Highgate and Archway Underground stations on the Northern line, and draws heavily from Highgate, Muswell Hill, Crouch End and the wider N postcodes. South Hampstead High School and St Margaret's School Hampstead are both in NW3, within easy reach of Finchley Road (Jubilee and Metropolitan lines) and Swiss Cottage, serving Hampstead, Belsize Park, St John's Wood and West Hampstead families. Francis Holland Regent's Park sits in NW1 near Baker Street and Marylebone, drawing a mix of Regent's Park, Primrose Hill and Central-North London families.

Haberdashers' Boys' School sits furthest out, in Elstree on the Hertfordshire border, reachable via Elstree & Borehamwood station on the Thameslink line or by road via the A1 and A41 corridor — it draws heavily from Barnet, Edgware, Mill Hill, Radlett and the wider Hertfordshire commuter belt rather than the more central NW postcodes served by the other four schools. Families weighing a Highgate/Hampstead cluster of schools against Haberdashers' Boys' should factor in a genuinely different daily journey, not just a different exam.

When Should You Register and Sit the Quest Assessment for 2026/2027 Entry?

Across North London's Consortium schools, the admissions calendar follows a consistent shape. Registration typically opens in the autumn term of Year 5 and closes on or around the first Friday of November at midday of Year 6 for the following September's entry — for 2027 entry this falls around 6 November 2026. The shared Quest Part 1 assessment is sat in late November (Francis Holland Regent's Park's 2027-entry Part 1 sitting, for example, is scheduled for 27 November 2026). School-specific Part 2 assessments and interviews follow through December and into January, with offers typically issued in mid-February — Francis Holland Regent's Park's 2027-entry offers are due 12 February 2027.

Haberdashers' Boys' School, running its own standalone Quest test outside the Consortium, follows a broadly similar shape — registration in early November, assessment in November, interviews in January, offers in February — but with its own specific deadlines each cycle rather than the shared Consortium dates. Families should confirm exact current-cycle dates directly with each school, since dates shift slightly year to year and are published fresh each autumn.

How Should Preparation Differ Between Quest and Non-Quest North London Schools?

The adaptive sections of Quest — Maths, Non-Verbal Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning at the Consortium schools, and the equivalent sections at Haberdashers' Boys' — reward a specific skill that traditional 11+ preparation does not automatically build: sustained accuracy under a system that punishes early mistakes disproportionately. Because difficulty rises in response to correct answers and cannot be revisited once submitted, a child who rushes to reach harder-scoring questions but makes careless early errors will often score worse than a child who works more slowly but more accurately through the same material. Preparation for Channing, South Hampstead, Francis Holland Regent's Park, St Margaret's Hampstead or Haberdashers' Boys' should therefore prioritise checking habits and controlled pacing over raw speed drilling from the outset of Year 5, not as an afterthought closer to the exam.

By contrast, preparation for NLCS and Highgate — with no adaptive component — should weight extended writing and multi-step, worked mathematical reasoning much more heavily, since both schools reward depth of written expression and the ability to show clear method under untimed-feeling conditions rather than rapid-fire accuracy under an adaptive algorithm. A family with a daughter targeting both a Consortium school and NLCS, or a son targeting both Haberdashers' Boys' and a non-Quest alternative, should expect to run genuinely separate preparation strands from Year 5 onward rather than a single blended programme — treating the two exam types as interchangeable is the most common and most costly planning error we see among North London families.

One further distinction worth planning around: the Consortium's Part 2 Creative Comprehension and Creative Writing components, and Haberdashers' Boys' equivalent Creative Comprehension section, sit closer in spirit to NLCS's and Highgate's extended-writing emphasis than Part 1's adaptive sections do. This means a strong extended-writing programme benefits a child across every North London school on this list — Quest or not — while the adaptive-specific pacing and checking discipline needs to be built separately and specifically for the Quest schools alone.

Frequently Asked Questions