13+ Tutors in Oxford: The School-by-School Guide (2026-27)

"13 plus tutors Oxford" is a search about Year 9 entry into an Oxford senior school, not about applying to the University of Oxford - several of the results Google currently shows for this term are the latter. In the city itself, four senior schools run a distinct 13+ admissions round into Year 9: Magdalen College School (MCS), St Edward's School, Headington Rye Oxford and Oxford High School GDST. A fifth school, the Dragon School, does the opposite: it is a preparatory school that sends its own pupils out to more than 40 senior schools nationwide at 13, rather than receiving them. Each of the four Year 9 admissions rounds runs on its own test format, timetable and fee scale, and none of them is covered - by name, by date, or by fee - on any of the pages currently ranking for this search.

No, Oxfordshire Does Not Have Grammar Schools - Whatever One Search Result Claims

One of the pages ranking on page one for "13 plus tutors Oxford", run by Adnan Khan Tutoring, sells "12 Plus and 13 Plus" preparation framed explicitly as "Late Transfer Test" tuition for "late entry into a top Grammar School in Oxford", built around the CEM and GL exam boards used for grammar-school transfer tests elsewhere in England. This is not a matter of interpretation: Oxfordshire has no grammar schools. The Good Schools Guide states plainly that "there are no grammar schools in Oxfordshire itself", with the nearest options across the county boundary in Warwickshire or Buckinghamshire. A parent in Oxford acting on that page's framing would be preparing a child for a test, and a type of school, that do not exist in the county.

What Oxford has instead is a small group of independent senior schools running their own 13+ admissions rounds, each testing differently - set out school by school below.

Which Oxford Schools Actually Offer 13+ Entry, and How Each One Tests

Four Oxford senior schools run a 13+ (Year 9) admissions round, and no two of them test candidates the same way.

Magdalen College School (MCS) splits its Year 9 route in two. Candidates from a prep school that continues to Year 8 without preparing pupils for Common Entrance or PSB sit MCS's own online adaptive assessment, including a Creative Writing paper, in Year 8. Candidates whose current school does prepare for Common Entrance instead register for MCS's separate ISEB Common Pre-Test route in Year 6 or 7. Either way, MCS does not use traditional Common Entrance at 13+ in the way many families assume.

St Edward's School ("Teddies") is the school where 13+ is the main event: the Shell, Year 9, takes in approximately 150 pupils each year - more than any other single entry point in the school. Which test a candidate sits depends on when they apply: those applying in Year 6 or 7 sit the ISEB Common Pre-Test in the Autumn Term, while those applying in Year 8 instead sit an online CAT4 cognitive abilities test, also in the Autumn Term.

Headington Rye Oxford holds a single 13+ Entrance Examinations day at the school for direct-entry candidates, run separately from its Academic Scholarship assessments.

Oxford High School GDST assesses Year 9 candidates on an Experience Day, combining taster lessons, entrance assessments and a meeting with the Head, rather than a single sit-down exam. For the school's Year 7 (11+) route, fees and general admissions detail, see our full Oxford High School GDST 11+ guide - this page covers its 13+ route only.

2026-27 13+ Deadlines and Exam Dates, School by School

The four schools run to four different clocks, and one of them is worth explaining in full because nothing else ranking for this term mentions it. Oxford High School GDST has three separate Year 9 (13+) application rounds open for registration at the same time: for September 2027 entry, the deadline is Sunday 3rd January 2027; for September 2028 entry, Sunday 21st February 2027; and for September 2029 entry, Sunday 8th November 2026 - the earliest of the three, despite being for the latest entry year. In practice, that means a family with a child currently in Year 4 can register for a Year 9 place three academic years out, and the deadline to do so falls before the deadline for a child entering just one year sooner. Getting this the wrong way round is an easy way to miss a place, since the earliest-closing deadline belongs to the furthest-out entry year, not the nearest one.

The other three schools run single-cycle rounds for September 2027 entry. MCS's registration deadline is Saturday 31 October 2026, with entrance examinations on Saturday 16 January 2027, results sent Thursday 4 February 2027, and an acceptance deadline of Monday 1 March 2027. Headington Rye Oxford's 13+ direct-entry deadline is Wednesday 14th October 2026, with entrance examinations on Saturday 7th November 2026 - the earliest exam sitting of the four schools. St Edward's runs its process around the applicant's year group rather than a single fixed date: Year 8 applicants are offered a place in early December, while Year 6 or 7 applicants hear in late February - a three-month gap that matters if a family is weighing an offer from St Edward's against one from a school on a different calendar.

What 13+ Costs at Each Oxford School

Termly fees vary considerably across the four schools, and one figure needs a caveat before it goes in the same table as the rest. St Edward's most recently published fee schedule, at time of writing, is still dated 2025-26 rather than 2026-27 - the school has not yet rolled its published rates forward the way the other three have - so its £16,461 day fee and £20,576 boarding fee, both per term, are one year older than the 2026-27 figures quoted for MCS, Headington Rye Oxford and Oxford High. Treat the St Edward's figure as the most recently published rate, not a like-for-like 2026-27 comparison. MCS's Senior School fee for 2026-27 is £10,036.00 per term inclusive of VAT. Headington Rye Oxford's Year 7-11 day fee from September 2026 is £9,346 per term. Oxford High School GDST's Years 7-11 fee for 2026-27 is £8,148 per term. None of these figures appears on any page currently ranking for "13 plus tutors Oxford".

Two Schools That Have Changed Shape Since You Last Checked

Two of the four schools running 13+ entry are mid-transition, and neither change shows up on a single competitor page. Rye St Antony officially closed on 28 March 2024, recorded on the government's Get Information about Schools register as "Result of Amalgamation/Merger", when it merged into Headington School to form a single school, Headington Rye Oxford. Headington's own 2023 announcement had described the plan as building "a new senior and prep school" from the two together. A family still searching for Rye St Antony by name is looking for a school that no longer exists separately.

MCS, historically a boys' school, is moving to full co-education - but gradually. Girls join Years 3 and 4 in the Junior School from September 2027, and only join Year 7 of the Senior School from September 2030, with the whole school co-educational across every year group by September 2034. That matters specifically for 13+: MCS's Year 9 intake will not itself go mixed for several more years yet, even once its younger year groups already have.

Where Oxford's Prep-School Leavers Go at 13+

The other half of Oxford's 13+ picture is families whose children are already at an Oxford prep school and are about to leave one at 13, not apply into a senior school for the first time. The Dragon School is the city's best-known example: it does not itself offer 13+ entry, since its own pupils leave at 13 to move on elsewhere, to more than 40 different senior schools nationwide. The school's own numbers show what that leaving cohort achieves - in 2025, Dragon School leavers won 63 Scholarships and Awards to their senior schools, and in the 2023-24 leaving cohort, over 80 pupils gained academic or co-curricular awards. A 13+ tutor working with a Dragon School family is therefore preparing a child for whichever of the receiving schools above (or elsewhere in the country) that family has chosen, not for a Dragon School entrance test. The Dragon's own fees, for context, run to £11,575 per term for day pupils and £17,250 per term for boarders, both from September 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions