Preparation built around the state, Consortium and ISEB calendars your family is actually sitting.
Book a Free ConsultationLeading Tuition is an 11+ tutoring practice that prepares London children for more than one admissions system in the same year. A London family may sit a state super-selective test, the London 11+ Consortium's 100-minute assessment, and the ISEB Common Pre-Test, each with its own registration. Sutton's registration closes on 31 July 2026, Tiffin School's at 12 noon on 1 September 2026, the Consortium's on 6 November 2026. We plan backwards from that spread.
That is the whole of what makes London different, and it is why a preparation plan written for one test tends to fail here. A family in a county with a single county-wide test has one date, one format and one decision. A family in London can be holding a state selective registration, an independent assessment and a banding test for the local comprehensive at the same time, none of which talk to each other, and two of which close during the summer holidays. Our work starts with sorting out which of those the child is actually entering, because a good deal of what a London family is sold is preparation for a test that does not reward it.
Not sure which systems your shortlist commits you to? Bring us the schools you are considering and we will tell you which assessments they lead to, which registrations close first, and where preparation will and will not change the result. We are rated Excellent on Trustpilot, 4.8 out of 5 from 54 reviews, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppParents arrive with a list of schools. We turn it into a list of assessments, because that is what a child sits and what a tutor can prepare for. Almost every London list resolves into three groups, and they are not variations on a theme — they are separate systems with separate rules.
State super-selectives. A small number of grammar schools sit inside London boroughs, run their own admissions tests, and take children from far outside those boroughs. In Sutton, one first-stage paper is shared: the Selective Eligibility Test, sat on 15 September 2026 for September 2027 entry, feeds several schools, and the second stage then splits — Nonsuch High School for Girls and Wallington High School for Girls test on 26 September 2026, Wilson's School, Wallington County Grammar School and Sutton Grammar School on 3 October 2026. Elsewhere the sharing stops. Kingston, Barnet and the outer east London boroughs each register separately, with separate deadlines and separate papers. The borough guides carry the school-level detail: Barnet, Sutton, Kingston, Croydon, Enfield and the wider London borough comparison.
Independent entry. Here there are two shared assessments and a long tail of schools that set their own papers. The London 11+ Consortium is a group of London independent schools — its own site lists thirteen members, including Channing, Godolphin and Latymer, South Hampstead High School, Queen's Gate and both Francis Holland sites — that share a single bespoke assessment. It runs to 100 minutes, is taken online in the child's own school where that is possible, and covers cognitive reasoning, English comprehension, maths and creative components. The ISEB Common Pre-Test is the other. It is a set of four multiple-choice, adaptive, online tests in English, mathematics, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, and takes 2 hours 15 minutes.
Banded and faith comprehensives. This group is the one families misread most often, and it has its own section below, because the honest answer is that preparation does very little for it.
| What the child sits | What it actually is | What preparation changes |
|---|---|---|
| State super-selective test | A ranked, competitive paper; the mark decides the offer | A great deal — accuracy under time is the whole game |
| London 11+ Consortium assessment | One online assessment, 100 minutes, sat once for every member school applied to | Familiarity, pace and comfort with unfamiliar question types; not content cramming |
| ISEB Common Pre-Test | Four adaptive online tests, 2 hours 15 minutes, results shared with every school that asks | A great deal, and only once — there is no second sitting to improve on |
| Fair banding test | A sorting exercise that places a child in an ability band | Very little; the offer turns on the school's published criteria |
Source: the London 11+ Consortium, ISEB and the published admission arrangements of the schools named below.
Almost every family we speak to in the spring of Year 5 believes the 11+ is an autumn problem. In London it is a summer one. The first deadline that matters falls before the summer holidays end, and it is not the same deadline for any two systems on the same shortlist.
For September 2027 entry, Sutton's registration system opened on 1 May 2026 and closed on 31 July 2026 — inside the school holidays, when primary schools are shut and reference requests go unanswered. Tiffin School closed at 12 noon on 1 September 2026 and states plainly that no late applications will be accepted. The ISEB Guardian Portal opened on 9 June 2026, with live testing from 1 September 2026. The London 11+ Consortium, by contrast, closed on 6 November 2026, with the assessment sat on one of 27 November, 1 December or 3 December 2026 and offers on 12 February 2027.
Read those together and the shape of the London problem is clear. A family holding a state selective and a Consortium school is working to deadlines ninety-eight days — fourteen weeks — apart, and the earlier one lands in August. There is no central London 11+ registration, no shared portal, and no reminder. Schools do not chase you.
The one genuinely London-wide date is the local authority application, and it is not a test. Applying to a state school in another borough does not mean applying to that borough: as the Government’s guidance states, you apply through your local council even if you're applying for schools in another council area. A Barnet family aiming at a Sutton grammar registers directly with Sutton for the test, then names the school on the Barnet application form. Families who assume one covers the other lose the place before the paper is sat.
A large share of London children sit an assessment for a comprehensive school, and a large share of their parents believe it is an entrance exam. It usually is not. Fair banding exists so that a school admits a spread of ability rather than the top of it, and the result is used to sort, not to rank.
Hammersmith Academy states it about as plainly as a school can: the banding test "is not a pass or fail test, and it has no impact on whether your child will receive an offer." Each child is placed in one of five ability bands, A to E, and an equal number of children is admitted from each. The school confirms that results are used only to determine band placement, not to rank applicants. Applicants do not register separately; an invitation follows from naming the school on the local authority form, with test dates of 21 November 2026 and 28 November 2026 for September 2027 entry.
What follows from that is a recommendation we make several times every admissions season, and it costs us work. If a family's shortlist is entirely banded and faith comprehensives, we tell them not to buy 11+ tuition. A familiarisation session so the child is not surprised by the format is reasonable. A term of paid preparation is not, because a higher band does not improve the odds: places inside a band are allocated on the school's own criteria, which in London usually means distance, sibling links or faith practice. Buying tutoring to move a child from band C to band B changes nothing at all about the offer.
The exception worth naming: a handful of London comprehensives are partially selective, taking a proportion of the intake on aptitude or ability while banding the rest. Those places are competitive and preparation does count. Check the school's own published admission arrangements rather than assuming, because the two mechanisms sit in the same document and read almost identically to anyone who has not met them before.
We will tell you when not to hire us. Send us your shortlist before you commit to a programme. If the schools on it are banded, we will say so and we will not sell you a programme.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppMost London families we work with are preparing for two systems, occasionally three. Running two separate programmes doubles the workload on a ten-year-old and is the fastest way to lose both. What we build instead is one programme with a shared core and two short divergences, sequenced so that the divergences fall close to the assessment each belongs to.
The shared core is arithmetic fluency, comprehension and inference, written accuracy, and reasoning of both kinds. Every system on the list draws on it, and it is where most of the tutoring hours go. It is also the part that transfers: a child who can hold arithmetic under time pressure is better placed in every one of these assessments, whatever their surface differences.
The divergences are real but narrow. A state super-selective paper rewards ruthless pace on a fixed set of question types, so the last weeks before it are about accuracy at speed and answer-sheet discipline. The Consortium assessment is a different animal: the Consortium states that any prior knowledge it assesses is based on the National Curriculum for Year 5, so cramming ahead is wasted effort, and the useful work is familiarity with unfamiliar formats and the confidence to attempt a problem-solving question that looks like nothing seen in class. The ISEB Pre-Test is adaptive and multiple-choice, which changes how a child should handle a question they cannot do.
One constraint shapes the whole plan, and families are rarely told it early enough. Both shared assessments are sat once. ISEB describes the Pre-Tests as a shared assessment whose results can be accessed by all of the senior schools who require them, so children only have to take the tests once. The Consortium is the same: candidates only sit the assessment once, irrespective of the number of Consortium schools to which they are applying. There is no second attempt and no better score to send elsewhere, so the readiness decision has to be made before the sitting, not after it. When a child is not ready, we say so while there is still time to move the date or the shortlist.
One route into an oversubscribed London selective goes almost unmentioned in the advice families read, and it has an earlier deadline than the academic one. Tiffin School introduced a Sporting Aptitude Assessment and a Music Aptitude Assessment from September 2025 entry onwards. Up to 10% of places are awarded on aptitude — 5% for sport, 5% for music — and the school notes that earlier deadlines apply to register for them.
This is worth a family's attention for two reasons. A child who plays to a serious standard is competing in a much smaller field than the academic one, and the assessment tests something they have already spent years on. And because the registration is separate and earlier, it is the easiest thing on a London calendar to miss entirely. If a child has a genuine aptitude, we build the academic preparation around that earlier date rather than treating it as an afterthought. Other London selectives operate comparable arrangements; the school's own admission arrangements document is the only reliable place to check, and it is published well before the registration opens.
There is no standard length, because the right start date depends on which registration comes first. As a working shape for a family targeting September 2027 entry across a state selective and an independent school, the sequence runs like this.
Spring and summer of Year 5. Diagnostic assessment, then core work: arithmetic under time, comprehension, written accuracy, and an introduction to verbal and non-verbal reasoning. The shortlist is settled here, and the registrations are diarised, because Sutton's window shut on 31 July 2026 and ISEB's opened on 9 June 2026 — both of them before Year 6 began.
Summer holidays. Lighter, but not empty. Registrations are completed and evidence for access arrangements is gathered while it can still be obtained. Reference requests to a primary school are impossible in August, which is exactly when several deadlines fall.
Autumn of Year 6. The state selective sitting arrives first — in Sutton the first stage fell on 15 September 2026 and the second stages on 26 September and 3 October 2026. Preparation narrows to timed papers and technique. Once those are done, attention shifts to the independent assessments, which for the Consortium run from late November.
Winter and spring. Interview preparation for the schools that interview, and, where a state offer is uncertain, work on the appeal or the waiting-list position. Consortium offers land on 12 February 2027; local authority offers for state secondaries follow on national offer day in March.
Most of our London families work weekly across Year 5 and Year 6, with intensity rising for six to eight weeks before each assessment rather than being held high for two years. Children who are held at maximum intensity from Year 4 rarely peak in the autumn of Year 6, which is the only week that counts.
Every one of our 11+ tutors teaches online, so coverage is city-wide and does not depend on where a family lives. In practice most of our London 11+ work is delivered online, which is what lets a Bromley family work with a tutor who knows the Sutton papers, or a Hounslow family with someone who has taken children through the Consortium assessment year after year.
In-person tutoring is concentrated where the demand is. North London and the Barnet and Harrow corridor, where the super-selective and Consortium routes overlap heavily — see 11+ tuition in North London and the Godolphin and Latymer page for a Consortium member in west London. South-west London through Kingston, Richmond and Wimbledon, where the Tiffin schools dominate the state route and schools such as Wimbledon High School set their own papers. South-east London through Bromley and Bexley. And west London through Ealing and Hammersmith, where St Benedict's School and the Consortium schools sit alongside heavily banded comprehensives — the Ealing guide covers that borough.
We match on assessment experience, not postcode. A tutor who has taken a dozen children through the Consortium assessment is more use to a Consortium family than one who lives nearby and has not. For families whose child is entering at Year 9 rather than Year 7, our 13+ tuition in London page covers the schools that run a standard Year 9 entry, and the ISEB Pre-Test guide covers the assessment used at both ages. Our general private tuition in London page covers everything beyond entrance exams, and the London Consortium guide sets out which schools share the paper and how offers are decided.
No. There is no London-wide 11+, no shared registration and no common date. State grammar schools register borough by borough or in small groups — the Sutton Selective Eligibility Test served several schools on 15 September 2026, while Tiffin School registered separately and closed at 12 noon on 1 September 2026. Independent schools use the London 11+ Consortium assessment, the ISEB Common Pre-Test, or papers of their own. Most London families end up preparing for at least two of these.
Yes, and it is usually the right way to do it. The great majority of the work is shared: arithmetic under time, comprehension and inference, written accuracy, verbal and non-verbal reasoning. The divergence is narrow and late. A state selective paper rewards pace on known question types; the Consortium assessment rewards composure with unfamiliar ones and pegs its prior knowledge to the Year 5 National Curriculum. Running two entirely separate programmes doubles a child's workload for very little gain.
Usually not. Hammersmith Academy, to take a published London example, states that its banding test "is not a pass or fail test, and it has no impact on whether your child will receive an offer." Children are sorted into five bands, A to E, with an equal number admitted from each, and the result is used only for band placement rather than to rank applicants. One familiarisation session so the format is not a shock is sensible; a term of paid tuition is not. Check whether the school is partially selective as well as banded, because that changes the answer.
Once. ISEB describes the Pre-Tests as a shared assessment whose results can be accessed by all of the senior schools who require them, which is why children only have to take the tests once. The same applies to the Consortium, where candidates sit the assessment once irrespective of how many member schools they apply to. There is no resit and no better score to send elsewhere, so readiness has to be judged before the sitting. If a child is not ready, the useful conversation is about the date and the shortlist, not about extra hours afterwards.
Work backwards from the earliest registration on the shortlist, not from the exam. For September 2027 entry the Sutton registration window closed on 31 July 2026 and the ISEB portal opened on 9 June 2026, both before Year 6 started, while the London 11+ Consortium did not close until 6 November 2026. Most of our London families begin structured work in the spring or summer of Year 5, which leaves room to raise intensity for six to eight weeks before each assessment rather than holding it high for two years.
Yes, and it is common in London. Government guidance is that you apply through your local council even if you're applying for schools in another council area. The test registration is separate: you register directly with the school or consortium that runs it, then name the school on your home borough's application form. Missing either half loses the place. Note that some London selectives weight catchment in their oversubscription criteria and others do not, so check the school's own admission arrangements before travelling across the city.
Both. All of our 11+ tutors teach online, so every London borough is covered, and most of our London 11+ work is delivered that way. In-person tutoring is concentrated in north London and the Barnet and Harrow corridor, south-west London through Kingston, Richmond and Wimbledon, south-east London through Bromley and Bexley, and west London through Ealing and Hammersmith. We match tutors on experience of the specific assessment rather than on proximity, because knowing the paper matters more than living nearby.
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Send us the schools you are considering. We will map them to the assessments your child would actually sit, tell you which registration closes first, and say plainly where preparation will not change the result.
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