Quest Assessment Scoring: What Score Do You Need for September 2026?

There is no single "pass score" for the Quest Assessment — the number your child needs depends entirely on which Quest-marked test they are sitting. Quest Assessments now provides the entrance test for more than 160 UK schools (over 100 senior schools and more than 60 prep schools), including all four Bexley grammar schools — for the first time, from the September 2026 test round — and all four Wirral grammar schools, alongside independent schools such as Dulwich College and the 14-school London Consortium. Each of these groups scores Quest differently. Bexley combines three standardised scores into one weighted total that averages around 200. Wirral and most independent schools use the age-standardised (SAS) scale most UK 11+ families already recognise, averaging 100. This guide sets out exactly how each system works, what score bands have converted into offers, and the full September 2026 test-date timeline for the two consortia now facing their first-ever Quest sitting.

How Is the Quest Assessment Scored? Two Different Systems, One Brand Name

"Quest Assessment" is not one exam with one scoring scale — it is a testing platform that different schools and local authorities configure in very different ways. Understanding which configuration your target school uses is the first step to understanding what score you actually need.

Independent schools on the Quest platform — Dulwich College, Haberdashers' Boys' and Girls', City of London School for Girls, and the 14-school London Consortium among them — run an online, partly adaptive test and report results as an age-standardised score (SAS), averaging 100, on a scale that typically runs from roughly 70 to 140. This is the same convention GL Assessment uses for grammar school papers, so families already familiar with SAS scoring from other 11+ routes will recognise the shape of the scale immediately.

Bexley and Wirral, by contrast, use a paper-based version of Quest administered through their local authorities. Wirral reports results on the same 100-average SAS scale as the independent sector. Bexley uses a distinct weighted formula — three separate standardised scores combined into one total that averages around 200, not 100 — described in full below. Knowing which of these three systems applies to your child's target school changes what "a good score" even looks like on the page.

What Score Do You Need for Bexley Grammar Schools in September 2026?

The Bexley Selection Test covers the four Bexley grammar schools — Beths Grammar School, Bexley Grammar School, Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, and Townley Grammar School — and is administered by Bexley Council. There is no fixed pass mark published in advance. Instead, every child's raw marks in Verbal Ability (including English comprehension), Numerical Ability (Maths), and Non-Verbal Ability are each converted into a standardised score, then combined using a weighted formula: 50% Verbal Ability, plus 25% Numerical Ability, plus 25% Non-Verbal Ability. Because Verbal Ability carries double the weight of either of the other two components, strong comprehension and vocabulary performance has a disproportionate effect on the final weighted total — a detail that is easy to miss when preparing evenly across all three areas.

The resulting weighted score averages around 200, with roughly two-thirds of children falling between 170 and 230. Bexley Council does not set a target score before the test; instead, the "selective standard" is calculated after every script from that year's cohort has been marked, so it reflects that specific year group's performance rather than a fixed historical benchmark. In the most recently published cycle, 5,866 children sat the test and 2,070 were assessed as selective — a rate of roughly 30–35% — competing for approximately 800 grammar places across the four schools. Being assessed as selective allows a family to apply to any Bexley grammar school; it does not itself guarantee a place, as oversubscribed schools then apply their own admissions criteria (typically distance and sibling links) to the pool of selective-standard applicants.

The critical 2026 wrinkle: this is the first year Bexley has used Quest Assessments rather than GL Assessment. Bexley moved to GL Assessment some years ago and briefly used CEM before that; for the September 2026 test round it has switched providers again, this time to Quest. The subjects assessed have not changed — English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning remain the core content — but the specific question style, timing, and the underlying standardisation model are new. This means any family using historic GL-based Bexley scores, past papers, or "what raw score got an offer last year" folklore from before 2026 is working from a scoring system that no longer applies. See our dedicated Bexley Quest Assessment guide for the full format breakdown.

What Score Do You Need for Wirral Grammar Schools in September 2026?

Wirral's non-Catholic grammar school assessment — covering Wirral's grammar schools including Wirral Grammar School for Boys, Wirral Grammar School for Girls, Calday Grange Grammar School, and West Kirby Grammar School — is delivered by Quest Assessments on behalf of Wirral Council. As with Bexley, there is no officially published pass mark: the council states only that meeting the required standard does not guarantee a place once demand for a particular school exceeds the number of places available.

Wirral's scoring follows the age-standardised (SAS) convention rather than Bexley's weighted formula — results average 100, with most scores falling between roughly 70 and 140. Based on 11+ preparation specialists' tracking of Wirral's published outcomes in recent cycles, the indicative qualifying score has typically sat around 110, though this figure is not officially confirmed by the council and can move year to year with cohort strength. Around 740 grammar places are shared across Wirral's four grammar schools, against roughly 1,700 applicants in the most recent cycle for which comparable figures are available — meaning fewer than half of test-takers ultimately receive an offer at a Wirral grammar school.

The 2026 sitting takes place on Tuesday 15 September 2026, a single fixed date rather than a window, for children starting Year 7 in September 2027. Registration closed on 1 June 2026 at noon (with a narrow exception for families who moved to Wirral after that date), and the deadline to apply for a secondary school place using the assessment result is 31 October 2026.

What Score Do You Need at Independent Quest Schools?

Away from Bexley and Wirral, the majority of Quest-using schools are fee-paying independent schools running the online, partly adaptive Quest Part 1 test: Dulwich College, City of London School for Girls, Haberdashers' Boys' and Girls', Forest School, Whitgift, Trinity Croydon, Chigwell School, The Perse School Cambridge, Surbiton High, and the 14 schools sharing the London Consortium's combined 100-minute test, among others. These schools report results as age-standardised scores (SAS) on the familiar 100-average scale, and none of them publishes an official cut-off score.

Based on experience supporting candidates across the Quest-using independent sector, competitive SAS scores at the most selective schools typically fall in the 115–130+ range, while less selective Quest-using schools may shortlist candidates from around 105–110 upwards. These are indicative figures drawn from experience, not official published thresholds. Because several of these sections are adaptive — question difficulty adjusts in real time based on each answer — a child's early accuracy has an outsized effect on the ceiling they can reach in the remaining time, which is one reason two children with the same raw number of correct answers can end up with meaningfully different SAS scores. For specialist preparation across every Quest-tested school, see our Quest Assessment tutoring hub.

For families weighing a Quest-tested independent school against the ISEB Common Pre-Test route for 13+ entry, our Quest vs ISEB comparison guide sets out how the two adaptive, computer-based systems differ in scoring and timing.

Quest Assessment 2026 Sitting Dates: The Full Timeline

Both Bexley and Wirral sit their Quest-marked tests within the same three-week window in September 2026 — the first Quest sittings either consortium has held. As of early August 2026, Bexley's window is roughly six weeks away and Wirral's single fixed date falls just over five weeks out.

Bexley test invitations — confirming the exact date, time and venue for each child within the 2–10 September window — were emailed to families from 3 August 2026, so most Bexley families now know their child's exact test day. Wirral's assessment falls on a single fixed date, 15 September 2026, with venue details confirmed to parents by the end of August 2026. Both consortia sit their tests for children born between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2016, currently finishing Year 6, applying for Year 7 entry in September 2027.

Why the GL-to-Quest Switch Makes Bexley's 2026 Scoring Especially Hard to Predict

Bexley's move to Quest Assessments was confirmed for the 2026 test round after some years of using GL Assessment, and a brief spell with CEM before that. Each provider change resets the practical value of "what score got an offer last year" — a benchmark many families rely on heavily when deciding how much further preparation their child needs. With GL, the content areas tested (English, Maths, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning) and question banks were consistent enough over time that tutors could calibrate expectations against several years of published outcomes. Quest's question style, timing structure, and the specific weighting of the 50/25/25 formula are new for Bexley in 2026, so that calibration effectively restarts.

This is precisely why "what score do we need" has become the peak-anxiety search for Bexley families this year in a way it has not been in previous cycles: the underlying test has changed at the same time as the stakes (roughly 800 places for several thousand applicants) have not. The most reliable response to this uncertainty is not to search for a number that does not yet exist in a stable, published form, but to prepare thoroughly across all three weighted components — with particular attention to Verbal Ability, given its 50% weighting — and to treat any pre-2026 Bexley score folklore as no longer directly applicable.

How Does Quest Standardisation Actually Work?

Every Quest paper, whether the online adaptive Part 1 used by most independent schools or the paper-based tests used at Bexley and Wirral, is marked automatically and then converted from a raw mark into a standardised score. Age standardisation compares each child only against other children who sat the same test within the same age band, typically calculated to the month, so a child born in July or August is not disadvantaged against a September-born classmate who has had several more months of primary education. This is the same underlying principle GL Assessment uses for grammar school papers elsewhere in the country, which is why families moving between different 11+ systems generally find the concept familiar even when the specific scale (100-average SAS versus Bexley's 200-average weighted total) differs.

For adaptive online sections, standardisation also accounts for the difficulty of the questions a child was routed to, rewarding a child who answered early questions correctly and was subsequently presented with harder material — even where they answered some of those harder questions incorrectly. Because standardisation resets the scale to reflect that specific year's cohort, a raw mark that would have been competitive in one year is not guaranteed to be competitive the next; the standardised score band that historically converts into offers tends to be more stable than any single year's raw pass mark, which is why school-published SAS ranges (where available) are a more durable planning tool than raw-score folklore.

For a broader explanation of how age standardisation works across GL and Quest-marked 11+ tests generally, see our 11+ standardised scores guide and our overview of what score you need to pass the 11+. For the full breakdown of Quest's four Part 1 sections and how each is timed, see our Quest Assessment Part 1 guide, and for the additional Creative Comprehension and Puzzles components some schools add, see our Quest Assessment Part 2 guide.

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