Reigate Grammar School 13+ Past Papers

We hold three Reigate Grammar School 13+ past papers, and unusually they straddle both of the school's routes into Year 9: two English papers, one of them a pre-test paper sat in Year 6, and one calculator Maths paper from the Year 8 entrance route. Each is listed below with the format printed on the paper itself, and each downloads as a free PDF.

What is in each of the three papers

English Sample Paper, 2016 — one hour, 25 marks. This surprises most parents: there is no comprehension on it at all. The whole paper is one piece of creative writing. The candidate copies out one of two given openings and continues the story. The openings are “Rain and wind slashed at the windows of the house” and “The creature moved silently, all the while being watched from the hide”. The instruction is to focus on being descriptive and building a mood or atmosphere appropriate to the opening sentence, and the paper supplies a planning page and suggests ten minutes on it.

The paper then prints its own marking priorities on the page: spelling, paragraphing, punctuation, descriptive techniques, detailed description and interesting vocabulary rather than a sequence of events, and similes and metaphors appropriate to the story, setting and character. That is close to a mark scheme in disguise, and it is the single most useful thing on the paper. A child who writes a fast-moving plot with no description has written the wrong answer to this question, and the paper says so before they start.

Pre-Test English Sample Paper, January 2018 — 60 minutes. A different paper for a different route, and much gentler in its opening. The passage is an extract from David Almond's The Boy who Swam with Piranhas: a boy called Stan walks down through terraced streets to a fairground and rides the Ferris wheel alone. Nine reading questions follow, and their shape tells you exactly what a Year 6 pre-test is looking for.

• Give the meaning of three words used in the extract — shuffling, glinting, vastness (3 marks).
• Give a similar word or phrase for three more — handful, muttered, alone (3 marks).
• Draw a line to match four words to their meanings (4 marks).
• Identify three adjectives from a quoted sentence (3 marks).
• Two short inference questions, on what “he stepped shyly by” suggests about Stan and what the description of shipyards and factories suggests about the town (2 marks each).
• Explain a personification — “the steam from his uncle's machines seething through its roof” (2 marks).
• Why has the writer used repetition in “Round he went, up and down, round and round and up and down”? (2 marks).
• Choose two examples of how the writer emphasises the character's emotions and explain each, with one worked example already filled in for the candidate (4 marks).

Then the booklet turns over to a creative writing section with 30 minutes on it, five minutes suggested for planning, and the same printed checklist of spelling, paragraphing, punctuation, descriptive techniques and appropriate imagery that the 2016 paper carries. The continuity between the two papers is the point: Reigate is asking for the same qualities in Year 6 and in Year 8, at different depths.

Maths Sample Paper 2, Calculator, 2026 — 30 minutes, 42 marks. Short, dense and modern. The front page carries a page-by-page mark grid reading 7, 6, 7, 6, 9 and 7, and the instructions tell candidates to work through carefully and that they do not have to finish everything — a signal that the paper is designed to run long. The content is squarely Key Stage 3 into early GCSE:

• Substitute a = −5 and b = −2 into an algebraic fraction (3 marks).
• Given a circle of area 40 cm², find its circumference to three significant figures (4 marks).
• Write the nth term of 3, −1, −5, −9, then decide with clear reasoning whether −105 is in the sequence (2 + 2 marks).
• A car bought for £8000 and sold for £5400: find the percentage loss (2 marks).
• A polygon whose interior angle is five times its exterior angle: how many sides? (4 marks).
• A triangle of perimeter 81 cm with sides in the ratio 8 : 13 : 3 — find the longest side as a decimal (3 marks).
• Find an angle giving a reason at every stage of the working (3 marks).
• Simplify an expression in indices, and solve four equations including one with fractions on both sides (2, 3, 4 and 4 marks).

Because it is labelled Paper 2 and allows a calculator, there is almost certainly a non-calculator Paper 1 we do not hold. We would rather say that than let the numbering imply we have the whole set.

Two routes into Year 9, and which paper belongs to which

Reigate Grammar's own admissions process page, read on 8 September 2026, sets out two separate ways to join at 13+, and they are not two attempts at the same thing. The pre-test route is open to pupils in Year 6: they sit papers in Mathematics, English and Reasoning — verbal and non-verbal — and if successful are offered a guaranteed place for Year 9, subject to continued academic progress and a positive reference from their current school. There is an activity session on the exam day, and all applicants are automatically considered for scholarships. For 2027 the school lists applications closing on 6 November 2026, an entrance assessment day on 6 January 2027, interviews on 23 and 30 January 2027, scholarship assessments across 23 and 27 to 29 January 2027, and offers posted on 11 February 2027.

The entrance route is for pupils applying during Year 8, who sit an assessment in the spring term before entry covering English, Mathematics and Reasoning — either written or a cognitive abilities test — followed by an interview and a confidential reference from their current school. For 2027 entry Reigate lists applications closing 8 October 2026, entrance exams on 6 January 2027, interviews and scholarship assessment on 24 January 2027, offers posted on 11 February 2027 and acceptances due by 3 March 2027.

So the 2018 booklet on this page is a pre-test paper for a child in Year 6, and the 2016 English and 2026 Maths papers belong to the Year 8 route. Giving a Year 6 child the calculator Maths paper because it is the newest one in the set would be a mistake. Always confirm the current arrangements on Reigate's own admissions pages for your child's year of entry.

What is missing from this set

The biggest gap is reasoning. Reigate assesses reasoning on both routes — verbal and non-verbal at the pre-test, and either a written reasoning paper or a cognitive abilities test at the Year 8 entrance — and we hold no Reigate reasoning paper at all. Nor does the wider 13+ collection contain one: it covers Maths, English and Biology only, with no languages, humanities or reasoning papers from any school. If reasoning is the part your child is worried about, these three papers will not help with it and we will not pretend otherwise.

The second gap is the non-calculator Maths paper implied by the words “Paper 2” on the 2026 booklet, and the third is science: Reigate's published assessment subjects do not list a separate science paper at 13+, so there is nothing to be missing there, but a child moving into Year 9 will still be expected to have covered Key Stage 3 science. Neither of the two English papers is a comprehension-plus-essay paper of the sort several other schools set, which makes them narrower practice than their length suggests: an hour on one story in 2016, and an hour split between short reading questions and a story in 2018.

Does Reigate Grammar publish its own papers?

Yes. Reigate's admissions process page lists sample exam papers by name under each entry route: a 13+ Sample Maths Paper and a 13+ Sample English Paper under the Year 8 entrance route, with 11+ sample papers and a Maths paper summary listed under the 11+ section. As a control we requested an address on the same host that cannot exist and the server returned a proper 404, so what is on that page is genuinely on that page.

If Reigate is the only school on your list, go there first. What the school does not publish — and what we could find nowhere else either — is a mark scheme for any of them. That is what the £50 key is for, and it covers these three papers and the 33 others in the collection at the same time.

How to use these three papers

• Mark the creative writing against the printed checklist, not against your own taste. Both English papers list what Reigate wants. Read the list to your child first, then let them write, then mark against the list line by line.
• Do the 2018 vocabulary questions cold. Ten of the marks on the pre-test paper are word meanings, synonyms and matching. Those are learnable in a way that inference is not.
• Time the Maths paper properly. Thirty minutes for 42 marks is fast, and the paper tells candidates they need not finish. Practising the decision about which question to leave is worth as much as the algebra.
• Give the reasoning questions a second pass. “Determine if −105 lies in this sequence — you must show clear reasoning” and “give reasons for each stage of your working” are both marked on the explanation, not on the number.

What the £50 covers

The question papers are free — these three 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 and nothing above it to buy. Access lasts a year and any key can be downloaded again during that time.

The keys explain the working rather than listing the result. On a Reigate Maths question that awards four marks for a polygon whose interior angle is five times its exterior, the answer “12 sides” is worth one line and teaches nothing; the route from the angle relationship to the number of sides is the part a parent can actually use at a kitchen table.

The rest of the collection is on the 13+ past papers hub, with the subject sets on the 13+ English and 13+ Maths pages. 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 if you want a comparison point outside any one school.

Questions parents ask before buying