13+ Maths Past Papers

The 12 13+ Maths past papers, and where to download each one

Twelve papers, from twelve different independent schools, each one a direct PDF download. No school appears twice, so this is breadth rather than a run of consecutive years from a single school. Click any link and the paper opens.

One caveat on dates, because it is easy to be misled by a filename: only 13 of the 36 papers in the collection print a year on the paper itself. Every one of the nine above is an undated specimen or sample paper. A year in the table is the cycle we catalogued the paper in, not a date the document claims.

What is actually in these twelve papers?

• Nine are current specimen papers, catalogued 2026. The other three — Dulwich College, Emanuel School and Forest School — are from 2023. Nothing on this page is older than 2023.
• Every paper catalogued 2026 in the whole 13+ collection is a Maths paper. The English shelf stops at 2019 and the Biology shelf at 2020, so Maths is by a wide margin the most current subject we hold.
• All twelve are specimen, sample or practice papers — papers a school published to show the format — rather than papers that were sat by a real cohort and then released. That is worth knowing: a specimen paper tells you the shape, length and question style of the exam, but nothing about how hard a real group of children found it.
• Two are dual-purpose papers. Dulwich College’s front page is headed “Year 9 Entrance and Scholarship Examination” and Forest School’s reads “13+ Entrance and Scholarship Sample Papers”. At those two schools one paper does both jobs, so expect them to bite harder than the rest.
• One of the twelve is an image-only scan. Ashford School’s PDF has no selectable text, so nothing on its front page can be searched, copied or read by a screen reader. It downloads and prints perfectly well.
• Not all of it is London. Three of the twelve schools name their location outright — Hereford Cathedral School, Truro School and The Grammar School at Leeds — so the geography here is wider than a South East list.
• None of the twelve is a Common Entrance paper. All twelve were set by the schools themselves. The one ISEB paper in our collection is a Biology paper, not a Maths one.

How long is each paper, and can they use a calculator?

We opened all twelve PDFs and read what each front page states, because none of this is on the school websites in one place. The answers are not consistent, and the spread is wide enough to change how you use them.

• The time allowed runs from 30 minutes to an hour and a half. Reigate Grammar School’s calculator paper is 30 minutes and Chigwell’s is 45. Seven of the twelve give an hour. Dulwich College and Epsom College both give an hour and a half. Timing a child against the wrong one of those teaches them the wrong pace.
• A calculator is allowed on three of the twelve. Dulwich College and Epsom College both say calculators may be used, and the Reigate paper is the calculator half of a two-paper set. Eight state plainly that calculators are not allowed. Ashford’s is the scan, so we cannot tell you.
• Only two print a total mark on the front page. Chigwell’s is 60 marks across 20 questions; Dulwich’s is 100 marks. The other ten give the marks per question in brackets and leave you to add them up.
• Epsom College’s paper is not only a 13+ paper. Its own front page says it is for candidates applying to Year 9 or Year 10, which is worth knowing if you are looking at 14+ entry rather than 13+.

Every figure in that list and in the table above is transcribed from the paper’s own front page. Where a paper does not say, the table says so rather than guessing.

How recent are they, and does it matter?

Nine current specimen papers and three from 2023 makes this the freshest set of the three subjects, and it is the reason to start here if your child is preparing now. A current specimen paper is the closest thing available to a statement of what a school currently wants a Year 8 candidate to be able to do.

The 2023 papers are not waste. The arithmetic, algebra, ratio and geometry a 13+ Maths paper tests move slowly; what moves faster is format — the length, the mark allocation, whether a calculator is allowed. Our reading is that the sensible use of this set is the specimen papers for the shape of the exam and the 2023 papers for extra practice on the content, rather than treating all twelve as interchangeable.

Do these schools still set a 13+ Maths paper?

Not all of them, and that is the honest caveat on every page like this one. A past paper is evidence about the past. It is not a statement of what a school runs now.

The clearest example on this page is Colfe’s School. Its Maths sample paper is here and it is a genuine document. But Colfe’s own admissions section, read on 8 September 2026, lists entry at 3+, 4+ and 7+ into the junior years, at 11+ into Year 7, and at 16+ into Year 12 — and no 13+ or Year 9 route at all. The paper survives the entry point that produced it.

Other schools have kept a 13+ intake but moved the decisive assessment earlier, into a pre-test sat in Year 6 or Year 7, so the Year 8 paper is no longer the thing that gets a child a place. Before you build a revision plan around anything in the table, open the school’s own admissions page and check what it runs for your child’s entry year. Use these as practice material, which is what they are good for.

What does the £50 buy, and what does it not?

The question papers on this page are free. Download any of the twelve as a PDF, with no account, no email address and no payment. The £50 buys the worked answer key for every paper in the 13+ collection — all 36 of them, across Maths, English and Biology. That is £1.39 a paper, paid once.

Here is the part most sites leave out. There is no single-subject option. If the Maths answers are the only ones you want, you are paying £50 for twelve keys, which works out at £4.17 each, and the other twenty-four arrive whether you use them or not. Spread across all 36 it is £1.39. Both figures are the same £50 — we would rather you saw the one that applies to you before you pay than after.

Access lasts a year from the link emailed at the moment of payment, and you can download any key again during that time. There is nothing else to buy: no tier above this one, no per-subject add-on, and no renewal.

What do the worked answer keys look like?

A mark scheme that gives the final figure tells you your child got question 14 wrong. It does not tell you where it went wrong, which is the only part a parent can act on. Every key in this set writes the method out in sentences — the working a marker is looking for, step by step, in the order the marks are awarded.

The practical effect is that a parent who last did algebra twenty years ago can still sit down and explain why an answer earned the marks. You can read a line from one of the keys, quoted verbatim, on the 13+ past papers hub; the published excerpt happens to come from the Biology set, but the keys are written the same way across all three subjects.

When is a 13+ paper actually sat?

“13+” describes the entry point, not the exam date. It means entry into Year 9, and the papers are sat in Year 8. That is why a Year 8 past paper is the right level to practise on, and why a Year 6 pre-test paper is not the same thing at all.

ISEB, which sets Common Entrance, runs its 13+ assessment in three sessions a year — in November, January and May/June — and makes three papers compulsory: English, mathematics and science. Candidates may also sit optional papers in a range of other subjects, among them Classics, French, Geography, German, History, Spanish, and Theology, Philosophy and Religion. Plenty of senior schools no longer use Common Entrance at all and set their own papers instead.

All twelve papers here are school-set rather than Common Entrance, which is a fair snapshot of where 13+ Maths has drifted.

Where else can you download free 13+ Maths papers?

We would rather tell you this than have you find it out afterwards. Several of the schools in the table publish their own material free on their admissions pages. If your child is applying to one school and only that school, start on that school’s site — it will be the most current thing available and it costs nothing.

ISEB publishes its Common Entrance specifications and specimen material free on its own site, and sells real past papers through its shop. That is the other place worth looking before you spend anything here.

What this page offers is not exclusivity. It is twelve schools’ Maths papers on one screen, each with a worked answer key behind it, instead of a dozen school websites and the discovery that most of them publish the question paper and keep the mark scheme to themselves.

The rest of the collection sits alongside it: 13+ English past papers, 13+ science past papers, the full 11+ past papers for other entry points, and 13+ past papers hub if you want all three subjects in one filterable table.

One more honest limit. This collection has no languages, no humanities and no reasoning papers at 13+ — only Maths, English and Biology. If your child needs French or History practice, this is not the place, and the resources library is.

Questions parents ask before buying