11+ Tuition in London: Two or Three Systems at Once

Leading 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. For 2027 entry, Sutton's registration closed on 31 July 2026 and Tiffin School's at noon at the start of September 2026, while the Consortium's deadline is 6 November 2026.

That is what makes London different, and why a plan written for one test tends to fail here. A London family 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. 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.

Why a London Shortlist Is Really Three Shortlists

Parents 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 set theirs for 26 September 2026, and Wilson's School, Wallington County Grammar School and Sutton Grammar School for 3 October 2026. Bexley works the same way: its council uses a single test for all four of its grammar schools. Elsewhere the sharing stops: the Kingston and Barnet schools 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.

The Registration Calendar Is Where London Families Lose Places

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 gave its deadline as 12 noon on 1 September 2026 in its registration notice and 12 noon on 2 September 2026 in its determined admissions arrangements; its registration portal now reads "Registration has now closed"; its registration notice says no late applications will be accepted, and the arrangements admit a late form only in exceptional circumstances. The ISEB Guardian Portal opened on 9 June 2026, with live testing from 1 September 2026. The London 11+ Consortium, by contrast, sets its registration deadline at Friday 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, from 31 July to 6 November 2026, and the earlier one lands in the school holidays. There is no central London 11+ registration and no London-wide portal, so every deadline has to be diarised by the family.

The one genuinely London-wide date is the local authority application, which for September 2027 entry closes on 31 October 2026, 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.

If your shortlist mixes these systems, book a free consultation and our specialist 11+ tutors will set its registrations and test dates out in the order they fall.

Banded and Faith Comprehensives: Where Preparation Changes Nothing

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.

How We Build One Programme Across Two Systems

Most 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, and written accuracy. Every system on the list draws on it, and it is where most of the tutoring hours go. Verbal and non-verbal reasoning belong to the Consortium assessment and the ISEB Pre-Test, and to some grammar tests, but not to Sutton's Selective Eligibility Test or to Tiffin School's English and Maths tests. 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.

The London Aptitude Routes Most Families Never Register For

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 aptitude registration closed earlier: for 2027 entry, at 9:00am on Monday 6 July 2026, against the start of September for the academic tests.

This is worth a family's attention, but it is not a way round the academic tests. Tiffin School says boys ranked in the aptitude assessments still sit Stage One and Stage Two in English and Maths, with a slightly lower threshold applied at both stages, and that the vast majority of places are still awarded through academic performance. The aptitude places are open only to boys living within its 10km Priority Area. 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. Wilson's School in Sutton holds its own Aptitude Test Day, set for Saturday 10 October 2026 for 2027 entry; for any other school, its own admission arrangements document is the only reliable place to check, and it is published well before the registration opens.

What a London Programme Looks Like Term by Term

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 hard to get answered in August, and for 2027 entry the Sutton and Tiffin School deadlines fell either side of it, on 31 July and at the start of September 2026.

Autumn of Year 6. The state selective sitting arrives first — for 2027 entry Sutton's first stage was set for 15 September 2026 and its second stages for 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.

Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.

Which Tutors Cover Which Part of London

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 Godolphin and Latymer, a Consortium member in west London. South-west London through Kingston, Richmond and Wimbledon — see our Twickenham 11+ tuition and Wimbledon 11+ tuition pages — 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 choose tutors 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,.

Book a free consultation to plan preparation with a specialist 11+ tutor who knows the assessments on your list.

Reviewed September 2026: registration and test dates for 2027 entry, the Consortium and ISEB formats, the Tiffin aptitude route and the banding example checked against the London 11+ Consortium, ISEB, Sutton Grammar School, Tiffin School and Hammersmith Academy.

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