Free Year 7 entrance exam (11+) past papers for 2026-27 entry: real sources by school, subject and exam board (GL, CEM, ISEB), plus how to use them well.
Book a Free ConsultationGenuinely free, official Year 7 entrance exam (11+) past papers are rarer than most search results suggest — the majority of "free 11+ past papers" sites republish unofficial CEM-style or GL-style practice papers, not real papers set by a school or exam board. For 2026-27 entry, only a specific set of schools, local authorities and consortiums publish real past or familiarisation papers free of charge, and several exam boards (including CEM) have never released official papers at all. Below is a directory of exactly who publishes what, organised by subject and by test style, followed by a prep timeline that explains how to actually use the papers you find.
We checked the admissions pages of grammar schools, local authorities and the two main test providers directly (rather than relying on third-party resource sites) to confirm what is genuinely free and official. The table below covers the sources our specialist tutors verified as of the 2026-27 admissions cycle.
| School / Board | What They Publish Free | Subjects Covered | Format | Official Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manchester Grammar School | Real past entrance papers, 2014-2024 (not every year) | Arithmetic, English (no VR/NVR — MGS does not test reasoning) | PDF, with mark schemes for arithmetic | mgs.org admissions pages |
| The Latymer School (North London) | 6 English specimen documents (2 texts x extract/questions/answers) + writing mark scheme | English (Maths/VR samples pointed to GL Assessment) | latymer.co.uk Year 7 admissions | |
| GL Assessment (official test setter) | Roughly 10 hours of free familiarisation material across six test types | Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, English, Maths, combined NVR+Maths, Verbal Skills | PDF for home printing | 11plus.gl-assessment.co.uk/pages/free-materials |
| Kent County Council (Kent Test) | Official Kent Test familiarisation booklet, licensed from GL Assessment for free distribution | Reasoning (verbal, non-verbal, spatial); English & Maths | kent.gov.uk | |
| Buckinghamshire Council / Bucks Grammar Schools | Familiarisation materials issued to every Year 5 family, plus a short practice test before the real one | Verbal, non-verbal and mathematical skills | PDF, posted/emailed to registered families | buckinghamshire.gov.uk; thebucksgrammarschools.org |
| CSSE (Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex, 12 member schools) | Free downloadable familiarisation papers plus a "Preparing for 11+" guide | English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning (CSSE-specific format) | csse.org.uk/examination | |
| Redbridge Council | Direct links to GL Assessment's free familiarisation set for its own two-paper test | English & Verbal Reasoning (Paper 1); Maths & Non-Verbal Reasoning (Paper 2) | redbridge.gov.uk/11plus | |
| ISEB (Common Pre-Test) | Free official "Pre-Tests Walkthrough" tool, free non-verbal reasoning postcards, and a family prep guide | English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning | Online interactive tool + PDF | iseb.co.uk families hub; iseb.eva.tech/walkthrough |
| King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls (Birmingham) | Free 11+ familiarisation via an Atom Learning partnership | Mixed KS2/11+ topics | Online platform (free for Pupil Premium families; 5-day trial for others) | kingedwardvi.bham.sch.uk/free-11-familiarisation |
Two patterns stand out from this list. First, schools that set their own papers in-house (Manchester Grammar School, The Latymer School) are the most generous with genuine past papers, because they own the copyright and have no reason to withhold older sittings. Second, council and consortium test administrators (Kent, Buckinghamshire, CSSE, Redbridge) mostly distribute GL Assessment's official familiarisation set rather than true past papers, because GL Assessment owns the papers and licenses limited-use "style" materials rather than releasing full past sittings for free.
Coverage differs sharply by subject, largely because reasoning-paper questions are expensive to write and are reused across cohorts, while English comprehension extracts (drawn from published books) age out of relevance faster and are easier for schools to release.
English. This is the best-served subject for genuinely free official material. Manchester Grammar School releases full comprehension passages, question papers and mark schemes; The Latymer School releases full specimen extracts from named texts (The Long Winter and Great Expectations) with questions, answers and a writing mark scheme; Kent, Buckinghamshire and CSSE all include an English component in their free familiarisation packs.
Maths. Almost no school publishes full free maths past papers directly — Manchester Grammar School is the notable exception, with arithmetic papers and mark schemes back to 2014. Everywhere else (Latymer, Kent, Buckinghamshire, Redbridge, CSSE), families are directed to GL Assessment's free familiarisation set rather than a real past paper, because most areas' actual maths papers are held back to protect year-on-year test integrity.
Verbal Reasoning. Free material here is almost entirely familiarisation-style rather than a genuine past sitting, because VR question banks are recycled. GL Assessment's free pack, the Kent Test booklet, the ISEB Walkthrough and the CSSE familiarisation papers are the only genuinely official free VR sources our specialist tutors could verify; none of them are full, retired real papers.
Non-Verbal Reasoning. Same picture as VR — GL Assessment's free pack (includes a combined NVR+Maths familiarisation paper), the Kent Test booklet, and ISEB's free non-verbal reasoning "postcards" are the legitimate free options. NVR is the subject where paid practice materials most heavily outnumber free official ones, because question styles (codes, sequences, rotations) are highly reusable and providers protect them commercially.
A huge number of parents search for "free CEM 11+ past papers" and never find a genuine one — and there's a specific reason for that which most resource pages don't explain. CEM (the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, run by Durham University) operated on a deliberate policy of never releasing official past papers to the public, precisely to prevent over-preparation and coaching from skewing results. On top of that, CEM stopped administering paper-based 11+ tests altogether in late 2022, with the local authorities and consortiums that used it (around 28 areas at CEM's peak, roughly 40% of the market) moving over to GL Assessment or to bespoke papers written for that specific area. Anything sold today as a "CEM past paper" is therefore an unofficial, style-matched imitation, not a genuine former exam.
GL/Standard style is the opposite in one important respect: GL Assessment, which now sets the majority of English grammar school 11+ tests, does release a substantial free familiarisation pack (around 10 hours of material) directly to families, even though it still withholds full real past papers from public download. This is why councils such as Kent, Buckinghamshire and Redbridge can legally distribute genuinely official (if not "past-paper") preparation material at no cost.
ISEB Common Pre-Test is different again: because it is a computer-adaptive test taken on a laptop or tablet rather than a fixed paper, there is no "past paper" in the traditional sense — each child's exact question set is generated individually and age-standardised. Instead, ISEB provides a free official Walkthrough tool (iseb.eva.tech/walkthrough) so families can see the interface, accessibility options and question styles without a real paper existing to leak in the first place. For the 2026-27 cycle, ISEB's Guardian Portal opens for registration on 9 June 2026, with live testing running from 1 September 2026 through to late May 2027.
Preparing for a Year 7 entrance exam or 11+ test?
Whether your child is sitting a GL/standard-style test (Kent, Buckinghamshire, Redbridge, CSSE), a school-set paper (Manchester Grammar School, The Latymer School) or the ISEB Common Pre-Test, our specialist tutors build a subject-by-subject plan around real papers where they exist and carefully matched practice material where they don't, tracking your child's error patterns so revision time goes where it's actually needed.
Rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot. Families we've supported through 11+ preparation have gone on to secure offers at grammar and independent schools across the Kent, Essex, Buckinghamshire and London consortium areas.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppWorking through dozens of past papers without a plan wastes the two most useful things a real paper can tell you: which topics your child hasn't learned yet, and how they perform under timed pressure. Our specialist tutors sequence papers deliberately across the run-up to the test, rather than treating every paper the same way.
| Time Before the Test | How to Use Past/Familiarisation Papers | What You're Checking For |
|---|---|---|
| 12-18 months out | One full paper, untimed, with no prior revision, purely as a diagnostic baseline | Which subjects and question types are genuinely weak, not assumed weak |
| 9-12 months out | Topic-sorted extracts cut from past/familiarisation papers, not full timed sittings | Whether specific taught topics (e.g. codes, cloze passages, ratio) have actually been absorbed |
| 6-9 months out | Single timed sections (e.g. one 20-minute VR section) rather than whole papers | Working speed and accuracy under a clock, in isolation from fatigue |
| 3-6 months out | Full timed mock sittings under exam-hall conditions, roughly one every 2-3 weeks | Stamina across a full paper and whether pace holds up in the final third |
| Final 4-8 weeks | Papers matched exactly to the target school/board's real format (Kent-style, CSSE-style, ISEB-style, etc.) | Familiarity with the exact layout, instructions and timing your child will meet on the day |
| Final week | One light familiarisation paper only — no new topics, review the error log instead | Confidence and technique reminders, not new content under pressure |
Three habits our specialist tutors build into every timeline:
Keep an error log, not just a score. A single percentage tells you almost nothing about what to fix next. After every paper, we log each wrong answer by topic and error type (careless slip, timing pressure, genuine knowledge gap), so the next two weeks of tutoring targets the actual pattern rather than the whole subject.
Space out repeats of the same paper. Because question banks such as GL Assessment's and CSSE's familiarisation sets are reused across families and years, doing the same paper twice within a few weeks mostly tests memory of the specific questions, not real skill. We leave at least 4-6 weeks between any repeat of the same paper, and alternate with genuinely unseen material in between.
Match the format, not just the subject. A child preparing for the Kent Test (separate Reasoning paper, then English & Maths paper) needs different pacing practice from a child preparing for the CSSE format (English, Maths and Verbal Reasoning tested differently) or the ISEB Common Pre-Test (computer-adaptive, no fixed paper length). Using the wrong format's papers right up to the test can leave a child correctly prepared academically but wrong-footed by an unfamiliar instruction style or timing structure on the day.
Not every site offering a free download is a safe or accurate source, and this matters for both legal and academic reasons.
Unlicensed re-uploads of real school or council papers. Several of the official sources above (the Kent Test familiarisation booklet, for example) explicitly state the material may not be resold, redistributed commercially, or used "as part of any product or service, including via private tuition." Copies of these booklets sometimes appear on unofficial forums or file-sharing sites stripped of that notice — using them is a copyright breach, and there's no guarantee the version hasn't been altered or contains errors introduced during re-typing.
Sites selling "official CEM past papers." As explained above, CEM never released official past papers, so anything marketed this way is, at best, an unofficial CEM-style imitation written by a tutoring company or publisher, not a genuine former test. That's not automatically bad practice material, but it should never be presented to a family as "the real 2019 CEM paper" because no such public document exists.
Outdated familiarisation packs for a board that no longer sets the test. Because roughly 28 areas moved away from CEM after its 2022 discontinuation, old "CEM-style" packs circulating online may no longer match the format your target school or local authority actually uses. Always confirm the current test provider directly with the school or local authority before relying heavily on any practice material, official or otherwise.
Poor-quality scanned PDFs with missing pages or answer keys. A downloaded paper without an accurate mark scheme can do more harm than good, because a child (or parent) marking their own reasoning paper incorrectly reinforces the wrong technique. Where an official source doesn't provide a mark scheme (Manchester Grammar School, for instance, does not provide answers for its English comprehension paper, since responses are judged individually), that's worth knowing before you rely on self-marking.
For background on how consortium testing works more broadly, see our guide to how 11+ consortium schools share a paper and decide offers, and our full grammar school preparation guide for 2026 entry. If your child is preparing specifically for exam technique under timed conditions, our 11+ exam technique guide covers pacing and time-management strategies that complement the papers listed here. Families targeting a specific consortium school, such as those covered in our Colchester Royal Grammar School 11+ guide (a CSSE member school) or our Chesham Grammar School 11+ guide (Buckinghamshire), should read the school-specific page alongside this directory, since format details vary even within the same consortium. Our King Edward VI Birmingham 11+ guide also covers the King Edward VI Foundation schools referenced in the table above.
One point worth repeating clearly, since it's the single most common confusion we see from parents contacting us: this page covers Year 7 entry (age 11, the standard "11+"). If you're instead researching entry at 13+ (Year 9, Common Entrance or Common Academic Scholarship), you'll need papers specific to that admissions point — the format, timing and in many cases the schools involved are different, even where the same senior school name appears at both stages.
Very few do it directly. Manchester Grammar School publishes real arithmetic and English past papers (with mark schemes for arithmetic) from as far back as 2014 through to 2024 on its own admissions website. The Latymer School in North London publishes six free English specimen documents built around two set texts, plus a writing mark scheme, though it directs families elsewhere for maths and verbal reasoning samples. Most other schools rely on their local authority's or consortium's familiarisation pack instead of releasing their own past papers.
GL Assessment, which sets the majority of English grammar school 11+ tests, publishes around 10 hours of free familiarisation material on its official website, covering six test types: verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, English, maths, a combined non-verbal reasoning and maths paper, and verbal skills. These are downloadable PDFs designed for home printing. They are official familiarisation material rather than full retired past papers, since GL Assessment does not release real past sittings to the public for free.
No — and this surprises a lot of parents. CEM (Durham University's Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring) had a deliberate policy of never releasing official past papers to the public, to prevent over-preparation from distorting results. CEM also stopped administering paper-based 11+ tests altogether in late 2022, with the roughly 28 areas that used it moving to GL Assessment or bespoke local papers. Anything sold or shared as a "CEM past paper" is an unofficial, style-matched imitation, not a genuine former exam.
There's no traditional "past paper" because the ISEB Common Pre-Test is computer-adaptive: each child sits an individually generated, age-standardised question set on a laptop or tablet rather than a fixed paper. ISEB instead provides a free official Walkthrough tool at iseb.eva.tech/walkthrough, plus free non-verbal reasoning "postcard" exercises and a family preparation guide, covering English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. For 2026-27, the Guardian Portal opens on 9 June 2026 and live testing runs 1 September 2026 to late May 2027.
Yes, it's genuinely free — Kent County Council distributes it at no cost to pupils, parents and teachers under licence from GL Assessment, the booklet's producer. It covers a Reasoning paper (verbal, non-verbal and spatial reasoning, around an hour) and an English & Maths paper (also around an hour). However, the licence explicitly states it "may not be sold or distributed as part of any product or service, including via private tuition," so tutors can discuss and use it with a family's own copy but cannot resell or repackage it commercially.
There's no fixed magic number — quality of use matters more than quantity. A realistic timeline is one untimed diagnostic paper 12-18 months out, then topic-sorted extracts and single timed sections through the middle of the year, moving to a full timed mock roughly every 2-3 weeks in the final 3-6 months, plus format-matched papers for the specific school or board in the last 4-8 weeks. That typically totals 10-15 full-length sittings plus dozens of shorter topic drills, spaced so the same paper is never repeated within 4-6 weeks.
Our specialist tutors build a subject-by-subject plan for the exact test your child is sitting — whether that's a GL/standard-style consortium test (Kent, Buckinghamshire, CSSE, Redbridge), a school-set paper like Manchester Grammar School's, or the ISEB Common Pre-Test — using real past papers where they exist and carefully matched familiarisation material where they don't. We track each child's error log by topic and error type so revision time goes to genuine gaps rather than repeating what's already secure, and we pace mock sittings to match the exact format and timing of the target school or board.