Two real Haberdashers' Boys' 13+ entrance papers, free to download as PDFs — Biology and English. Worked answer keys for every 13+ paper we hold are £50.
The two Haberdashers' Boys' question papers below are free. The £50 key covers those and every other 13+ paper we hold — 36 in all, from 23 institutions.
We hold two Haberdashers' Boys' School 13+ past papers: the Biology section of the 2015 Science paper and the full 2016 English entrance paper. Both are entrance papers rather than scholarship papers, and both are from the Elstree school. Each downloads as a free PDF.
| Paper | Subject | Year | Format on the paper | Free PDF |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haberdashers Askes School — 13 Plus Biology Exam Paper 2015 | Biology | 2015 | Biology third of a 1-hour Science paper; 20 minutes suggested, 5 questions, 33 marks | Download PDF |
| Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School (HABS) — 13 Plus English Entrance Exam 2016 | English | 2016 | 1 hour 10 minutes; Part 1 Reading 40 minutes including 10 reading, Part 2 Writing 30 minutes | Download PDF |
Habs publishes example papers — but not in English.
The school gives away 2026 example papers in Maths, Science, History and Theology and Philosophy. It publishes no English example and no mark schemes. The worked answer keys for all 36 papers in our 13+ collection are £50 — £1.39 a paper, paid once.
Get the 36 worked answer keys — £50Habs is one of the more open schools in this collection. Its admissions process page, read on 8 September 2026, tells candidates that examples of the types of questions can be found linked to the subjects, and those links lead to 2026 example papers for History, Maths, Science, and Theology and Philosophy. We checked each of them resolves to a real PDF rather than to a redirect, and requested an impossible address on the same host as a control, which returned a proper 404.
Two things are absent from that set, and both matter. There is no English example paper, even though English is one of the subjects Habs examines at 13+ — which is precisely the hole the 2016 English paper on this page fills. And there is no mark scheme for any of the four subjects Habs does publish. A parent who downloads the school's own 2026 Science example paper will find, exactly as with our 2015 Biology paper, that the answers are nowhere.
So the honest position for Habs is a split one. For Maths, Science, History and Theology and Philosophy, go and get the school's own 2026 examples first: they are newer than anything here. For English, this page has the only Habs 13+ paper we are aware of anywhere. For marking, nobody publishes anything, and that is what the £50 key is for.
13+ Biology, 2015 — 33 marks. The instructions do the most useful work on this paper. The Science paper is divided into three sections, Biology, Chemistry and Physics; the whole Science paper is one hour; candidates should spend no more than 20 minutes on each section; long answers are not expected; a calculator may be used on numerical questions. The examiner's grid on the front sets out the marks for the five questions as 4, 9, 3, 8 and 9.
Nearly half the paper — question 4's later parts and the whole of question 5 — asks the candidate to reason about something rather than recall it. That is the part twenty minutes makes hard.
13+ English, 2016 — one hour ten minutes. The paper is split into two explicitly timed parts. Part 1 tests reading and runs 40 minutes, of which the first ten are reading time in which the candidate is told they may underline, highlight or annotate the passage. Part 2 tests writing and runs 30 minutes, and must be begun on a new sheet of paper. Candidates write in ink, put their name and examination number at the top of every new sheet, and are told not to take the question paper away.
The reading passage is an extract from David Mitchell's novel Black Swan Green, narrated by a thirteen-year-old boy, Jason Taylor, describing a game of British Bulldog on a frozen lake — charging runners, bulldogs pinning shoulders, the moment a captured runner is forced to switch sides, and the narrator's flat observation that games and sports are really about humiliating your enemies. It is a strong choice for the age group: contemporary, first-person, funny, and full of the sort of voice-driven detail an examiner can ask about.
The ten minutes of annotation time is worth practising in its own right. Most children do not use it and start reading the questions instead, which throws away a sixth of Part 1.
Habs lists five formal entry points — 4+, 7+, 11+, 13+ and 16+ — and its admissions process page, read on 8 September 2026, says that each year around 20 Year 9 places are available to external candidates at 13+, for candidates aged 13 and below the age of 14 on 1 September in the year of entry. Candidates sit written entrance exams covering English, Maths, Humanities — which the school breaks down as History, Geography, and Theology and Philosophy — and Science, which it breaks down as Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Those successful in the first round are invited for interview.
The school also runs an 11+ deferred route: a child assessed at 11+ is offered a place starting in Year 9, and Habs says it strongly recommends that route for children at prep schools finishing in Year 8, with approximately 25 to 30 external places available that way. For 2027 entry the key dates listed for Year 9 are a registration deadline of Friday 6 November 2026, the same date for scholarship applications, a bursary deadline of Thursday 26 November 2026, a first-round assessment on Thursday 26 November 2026, a second-round assessment on Monday 18 January 2027, offers emailed on Friday 12 February 2027, an offer holder event on Tuesday 23 February 2027 and a conditional acceptance deadline of Thursday 25 February 2027.
Read against our two papers, the subject coverage lines up: English and Science are still examined, and Science still means all three sciences. What two papers from 2015 and 2016 cannot tell you is whether the timings and mark totals have held, which is a good reason to download the school's own 2026 Science example alongside our Biology paper and compare them. Always check Habs's own admissions pages for the year your child is applying.
Habs marks its Biology section out of 33. So does Radley on all five of the Biology scholarship papers we hold, and so does Westminster on all three of its Challenge Biology papers. Three different schools, eleven papers, one number — and the reason is arithmetic rather than coincidence. A 13+ science paper is conventionally one paper in three equal sections, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and three sections of 33 give a paper marked out of 99. Habs says the Science paper is one hour and each section should take no more than 20 minutes; Radley's 2016 paper says 90 minutes for all three science papers, making each section 30 minutes, which is exactly what its 2018 and 2019 Biology papers print on their covers.
The practical consequence is that a standalone 13+ Biology paper is never a whole exam and should never be timed as one. If you give your child an hour with the Habs Biology paper because an hour is what the Science paper is worth, you have given them three times the real allowance and learned nothing about whether they can work at the required speed. Twenty minutes is the test. The same correction applies to every Biology paper in this collection.
Two papers out of the four subject areas Habs examines. We hold no Habs Maths paper, no Chemistry or Physics section from the same 2015 Science paper, and nothing from the Humanities group at all — no History, no Geography, no Theology and Philosophy. We also hold nothing from the 11+ deferred route. The wider collection has the same boundaries: 36 papers across Maths, English and Biology only, from 23 institutions, with no languages, humanities or reasoning papers in it anywhere.
The question papers are free — these two and all 36 in the collection. The £50 unlocks the worked answer key for every one, which is £1.39 a paper, paid once, with no subscription, nothing above it to buy, and a year of access with unlimited re-downloads.
The keys explain the reasoning rather than listing results. On the woodlice question, “sensitivity and movement” is a correct answer that teaches nothing; an answer that says why counting every two minutes matters, and why three repeats change what you can conclude, is something a parent can use with a child who got it wrong. That distinction is the entire product.
The rest of the collection is on the 13+ past papers hub, with the Biology papers on the 13+ science page and the English papers on the 13+ English page. We run the same free-papers-paid-answers arrangement at 11+, and everything else is in the resources library. ISEB publishes one free specimen set per subject with its mark scheme.
Yes. Both question papers download as PDFs with no payment, no account and no email address. The £50 buys the worked answer keys, and it covers all 36 papers in the 13+ collection rather than these two alone.
Yes, for four subjects. Its admissions process page links 2026 example papers for History, Maths, Science and Theology and Philosophy. There is no English example paper in that set, which is exactly the gap the 2016 English paper on this page fills.
No, and the paper says so itself. The Science paper is divided into Biology, Chemistry and Physics sections, the whole Science paper runs one hour, and candidates are told to spend no more than 20 minutes on each section. The Biology section is marked out of 33.
Entrance papers. Both are headed 13+ Entrance Examination on their own covers, with no mention of scholarship, so unlike several other schools in this collection these are a fair measure of the standard for an ordinary place.
In subject coverage, largely. Habs still examines English, Maths, Humanities and Science at 13+, and Science still means Biology, Chemistry and Physics. What we cannot tell you from a 2015 and a 2016 paper is whether the timings and mark totals are unchanged, so use the school's own 2026 example papers for the current shape.
Not for a Year 6 assessment. These are Year 8 papers for entry into Year 9. Habs also runs an 11+ deferred route where a child assessed at 11+ joins in Year 9, and that is a different assessment altogether.