Quest Assessment vs ISEB Common Pre-Test: Which Schools Use Which?

Quest Assessment and the ISEB Common Pre-Test are two admissions assessments used by selective independent schools in the UK. They look similar on the surface — both cover English, Mathematics, Verbal Reasoning, and Non-Verbal Reasoning — but they come from different providers. ISEB describes its Pre-Tests as “adaptive, online”; Quest Admissions describes its assessments as “Bespoke and branded to your school”, so what a family meets depends on the school.

This guide clarifies which schools use Quest, which use ISEB, what the substantive differences are in format, content, timing, and scoring, and how families should approach preparation when targeting both assessments in the same academic year. For specialist tuition covering either or both assessments, visit our Quest Assessment preparation page or our ISEB Common Pre-Test preparation page.

Entry Stages: Where Each Test Appears

Neither test belongs to a single entry year. The schools' own admissions pages show each being used at both 11+ (Year 7) and 13+ (Year 9).

Quest Assessment is used for 11+ entry to Year 7 by schools including Forest School, whose page says “The 11+ digital on-screen assessment is a Quest assessment which lasts one hour and ten minutes”, and Haberdashers' Boys' School and Haberdashers' Girls' School, both of which say “Habs Boys and Habs Girls will use the same QUEST first round assessment.” It is used for 13+ entry to Year 9 by Rugby School (“Quest tests in English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning (VR) and Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR) (totalling around 70 minutes) will be carried out on the day”), by Uppingham (“Our online assessments are provided by Quest”) and by Sherborne Boys (“The assessment has been designed in partnership with Quest”). The Perse School sets Quest-delivered tests for “Year 7 and 9 entry”.

ISEB Common Pre-Test: ISEB's page for families says the Pre-Tests are “used by leading independent schools as part of the admissions process for Year 7, or delayed entry in Year 9”, and: “Your child will most likely take the ISEB Pre-Tests once during their Year 6 for Year 7 entry (11+), however, some senior schools, such as Eton and Harrow, use the Pre-Tests as a precursor to Year 9 entry (13+).” Sevenoaks School names the ISEB pre-test for 11+ entry (“Candidates will need to take the ISEB online pre-test by 27 November if their current school offers this”) and for 13+ entry (“Admission at Year 9 is by ISEB pre-test”).

At the 13+ schools listed below, the pre-test is one stage of a longer process rather than an offer. Eton says “We will review the results of the Pre-Tests and the Head Teacher’s report and select boys to go forward to Stage 2”, and Wellington College says candidates “sit the ISEB Common Pre-Test in either Year 6 or 7 and on the basis of their results and the strength of their head teacher’s reference they are invited to spend a day at Wellington”.

A family applying to several schools can therefore be asked for both tests in the same admissions cycle — Quest by one school, the ISEB by another — so each school's own admissions page is the place to confirm which it sets.

Which Schools Use Quest Assessment vs ISEB?

The lists below show schools whose own admissions pages name each assessment. They are not exhaustive — always check each school's own page. If your shortlist also includes state grammar schools, the comparison to read alongside this one is Quest versus GL Assessment. Geography is no guide to which test a school sets either: Channing School, Francis Holland (Regent’s Park), South Hampstead High School and St Margaret’s School are among the 13 members of the London 11+ Consortium, whose assessment is, in the Consortium's words, “a collaboration between the Consortium and Quest Assessments”; Haberdashers' Boys' sets the Quest first round assessment on paper; and in the same part of London North London Collegiate says its entrance exams “are sat on paper rather than on a computer” and Highgate sets its own English and Mathematics papers. Our guide to North London independent schools that use the Quest Assessment covers the Quest side of that picture.

Some schools use the same test at both stages: Sevenoaks School names the ISEB pre-test for both 11+ and 13+ entry, and The Perse describes one set of entrance assessments for “Year 7 and 9 entry”. Families applying to several schools may find themselves preparing children for both assessments in the same academic year.

Format Comparison: Quest Part 1 vs ISEB Common Pre-Test

The Key Structural Difference: English Adaptivity

One structural difference between the two tests is in how the English section works.

In the Quest Part 1 assessment at The Perse, the English section is non-adaptive: “English follows a fixed sequence of questions. Candidates can move back and forth and revise their answers.” At Forest School, English and Puzzles and Problem-Solving are non-adaptive and students “will have the ability to move backwards and forwards through questions”. At those two schools this allows children to use strategic approaches such as answering easier questions first and returning to harder ones. The London 11+ Consortium also describes its English section as non-adaptive, but says “once a section has been completed, candidates cannot go back to amend it”.

In the ISEB Common Pre-Test, the English section is adaptive: ISEB says “children are presented with questions based on their previous answers” and, in an adaptive test, “the system does not allow them to go back and change previous answers”. This is the same dynamic as the Maths, NVR and VR sections of The Perse's Quest Part 1, which the school describes as adaptive: “Candidates cannot skip or revisit questions.”

This difference has a direct implication for exam strategy: a child practising for The Perse's Quest Part 1 needs to understand two distinct approaches (non-adaptive for English, adaptive for Maths/NVR/VR), while a child practising for ISEB needs the same adaptive strategy applied consistently across all four sections.

Even that is a simplification on the Quest side. Our guide to the Quest maths and problem-solving section sets out that the maths component is adaptive in the online Part 1 module, but a fixed 20-question, 20-minute paper in the familiarisation version matching some in-person sittings — and that decides whether early accuracy or skip-and-return is the right instruction to give a child.

Content Overlap: What Preparation Is Shared

Despite the differences in provider and format, the subject content of both tests overlaps substantially. Both Quest and ISEB test children on:

English: Reading comprehension, inference and deduction, vocabulary in context, identifying literary devices, understanding writer's purpose and technique. In some Quest configurations, SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar) is also included in the English module.

Mathematics: The core KS2 national curriculum topics, including number and place value, the four operations, fractions and percentages, measurement, geometry, and data interpretation. The London 11+ Consortium says its Maths “questions are based on the National Curriculum for Year 5 and we do not test anything on the Year 6 curriculum”.

Non-Verbal Reasoning: Pattern recognition, shape sequences, spatial reasoning, matrices, odd-one-out questions, and rotations and reflections.

Verbal Reasoning: Word analogies, letter codes, sequences, find the word, hidden words, and language logic tasks.

Because the content overlaps so significantly, a child preparing for one test will build skills directly applicable to the other. The preparation can be largely integrated — with specific attention to format differences (particularly the adaptive vs non-adaptive English section).

Schools That Use ISEB: A Closer Look at the Pre-Test Stage

ISEB describes the Common Pre-Tests as “used by leading independent schools as part of the admissions process for Year 7, or delayed entry in Year 9”. Schools whose own admissions pages name the ISEB Common Pre-Test include:

Boarding schools: Eton College, Harrow School, Charterhouse, Marlborough College, Radley College, Shrewsbury School, Wellington College and Wycombe Abbey. See our full range of 13+ school preparation guides for detailed information on each school's admissions process.

Day and boarding schools: Sevenoaks School, which names the ISEB pre-test for both 11+ and 13+ entry, and Tonbridge School, whose Year 9 (13+) page says “Boys applying in Year 6 are required to sit the ISEB Pre-Test.”

ISEB says the Pre-Tests are “a shared assessment, which means that a child’s results can be accessed by all of the senior schools who require them. This means that children only have to take the tests once.”

Scoring: How Quest and ISEB Results Compare

ISEB reports a Standardised Age Score (SAS) that is “adjusted for age and placed on a scale which makes a comparison with a standardisation sample taken from the independent schools’ sector (the average is 100)”. Forest School's guidance says “All results will be age-standardised to ensure parity between candidates”, and the London 11+ Consortium describes “An age-standardised measure of ability”.

Schools use results alongside other information. The Perse describes “a combination of tests, a group activity and a short informal interview with a Perse teacher”; Harrow says it will invite a boy to the Harrow Test if he “reaches the required standard in the ISEB Common Pre-Test” and the school has “received a strong supporting reference”.

One important difference is how many sittings a family faces. ISEB results are accessed by every school that requires them from a single sitting. The Consortium's assessment works the same way for its members: “Candidates only sit the assessment once, irrespective of the number of Consortium Schools to which they are applying.” At Forest School and The Perse the sitting is the school's own: Forest School's 11+ entrance exam day for September 2027 entry is Thursday 17 December 2026 and The Perse's entrance assessments for Year 7 and 9 entry in September 2027 are on Saturday 16 January 2027, so a child applying to both for Year 7 entry sits two separate assessments on different days.

When to Start Preparing, and How to Manage Both in Year 6

Families applying to schools that set different tests can build the common skills once — Maths depth, VR and NVR fluency, reading comprehension breadth — and then look at each test's familiarisation materials. The schools' own guidance on preparation is explicit: The Perse says “No formal preparation is expected beyond viewing the familiarisation materials”, Forest School's guidance says pupils “will not need any special tuition or intensive practice”, and the London 11+ Consortium says “your daughter does not need special tuition or intensive practice for this assessment.” Families who use Bond workbooks for VR and NVR practice should know what they do and do not replicate: our guide to Bond Assessment Papers and their limits explains the age bands and Stretch tiers, and states plainly that the series is most closely aligned to GL Assessment-style paper tests rather than to the computer-adaptive formats the ISEB and some Quest schools use.

Key calendar points for Year 6 families managing both: each school sets its own date. For September 2027 entry the London 11+ Consortium assesses on one of Friday 27 November, Tuesday 1 December or Thursday 3 December 2026, Forest School (11+) on Thursday 17 December 2026 and The Perse (Year 7 and 9 entry) on Saturday 16 January 2027. ISEB says its testing session “runs from the autumn term to the spring term of each academic year”, and Eton says for 13+ entry that boys “sit the ISEB Common Pre-Tests during October or November”. The test windows can therefore overlap, so check each school's own dates.

Frequently Asked Questions: Quest vs ISEB