GL Assessment, ISEB, Cambridge, Quest and school-set papers all test 11+ maths differently — here is what changes, and why.
Book a Free Consultation11+ Maths is not one national exam: it is a mathematics component set by whichever provider a family's target school or council uses, and it can be a standalone paper, part of a combined test, fixed or adaptive, and pitched anywhere from the end of Year 5 (GL Assessment's own stated scope) to a full four-part Key Stage 2 assessment (the ISEB Pre-Tests). The provider a school uses can also change between one admissions cycle and the next.
Preparing for 11+ maths, whatever the format?
Our specialist 11+ maths tutors build every programme around the actual test a child will sit — GL Assessment's fixed multiple-choice paper, the ISEB Pre-Tests' adaptive maths section, a combined Quest paper, or a school-set test such as FSCE's.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppA parent whose older child sat a grammar school's 11+ test several years earlier cannot assume a younger sibling will sit the same one. Warwickshire County Council's own announcement, published for 2023 entry, confirms that the county moved its grammar-school applicants onto a new exam provider following “a joint procurement exercise with The Schools of King Edward VI Foundation, which took place when the previous contract with CEM came to an end.” The council states plainly that its new papers “test the same four competencies of Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning as the CEM papers have in previous years” — so the subjects stayed the same; only the provider, and with it the maths paper itself, changed.
The Slough Consortium of Grammar Schools — Herschel Grammar, Langley Grammar, St Bernard's Catholic Grammar and Upton Court Grammar — has since announced a switch of its own, away from GL Assessment. Its own admissions page states: “The Slough Consortium of Grammar Schools has contracted with Quest Assessments as the test provider for the 11+ examination to be held in September 2027.” Under the new arrangement, “pupils will sit two test papers, with questions covering a combination of verbal and non-verbal reasoning, English and mathematics,” with the eligibility score “set at 111 on a standardised scale,” placing successful candidates in “the top 35% of the cohort sitting the examination.” The maths content moves out of a fixed, paper-based GL format and into a combined Quest paper as part of the same switch. Our Quest Assessment maths section guide covers the mechanics of that combined paper in full.
Neither change was announced years ahead of the admissions cycle it affected. The only reliable way to know which provider — and therefore which maths format — a target school will use is to check that school's or council's own admissions page directly for the specific cycle in question, rather than relying on what an older sibling sat.
The honest answer is: it depends entirely on the provider, and sometimes on the individual school even within the same provider. Buckinghamshire Council's own admissions guidance describes its Secondary Transfer Test — produced by GL Assessment — as testing verbal, non-verbal and mathematical skills across two papers, stating that children “sit two test papers, each about 60 minutes long, with a break between.” Maths is not given a paper of its own.
| Authority / provider | Maths: standalone or bundled | Fixed or adaptive |
|---|---|---|
| Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test (GL Assessment) | Bundled: two ~60-minute papers covering verbal, non-verbal and maths together | Fixed, paper-based, multiple choice |
| Pate's Grammar School, Gloucestershire (GL Assessment, September 2027 entry) | Bundled: maths shares a paper with non-verbal reasoning; verbal reasoning has the other | Fixed, paper-based |
| ISEB Pre-Tests | Standalone: one of four separate sections | Adaptive, online |
| Slough Consortium (Quest Assessments, 11+ exam September 2027) | Bundled into a combined paper with verbal and non-verbal reasoning and English | Not stated by the provider |
| Essex CSSE | Standalone: one of two tests, with no reasoning paper at all | Not stated by the provider |
| Northern Ireland SEAG | Standalone: one of two papers, with no reasoning paper at all | Not stated by the provider |
| Reading School, Berkshire (FSCE) | School-set paper | Not stated by the provider |
Pate's Grammar School in Gloucestershire, which also uses GL Assessment for September 2027 entry, splits the same idea differently again. Its own 2027-entry FAQ states that “the other test paper assesses non-verbal reasoning and mathematical knowledge, skills and understanding,” meaning maths and non-verbal reasoning share one paper while verbal reasoning has the other — a different split from Buckinghamshire's, despite both authorities using the same provider.
The ISEB Pre-Tests take the opposite approach entirely. ISEB's own site confirms “there are four parts to the Pre-Tests: English, mathematics, verbal reasoning (VR) and non-verbal reasoning (NVR),” and that these are “a set of online, adaptive tests.” Maths is entirely standalone, sat and scored separately from every other subject, and the same result is “a series of four online, adaptive and shared entrance assessments” sent to every school an applicant registers with.
A family preparing for a bundled GL-style paper is training a different skill from a family preparing for a standalone ISEB maths section: switching between question types under one instruction sheet and one clock is not the same task as a maths section sat entirely on its own. Our GL Assessment maths format guide covers what a bundled GL paper looks like question by question; this page's job is comparing the shape of the paper across providers, not replaying any one provider's questions.
Not every 11+ authority tests reasoning at all. Essex's CSSE consortium guide for 2027 entry states plainly that “your child will take two separate tests, one in English and one in Mathematics” — no verbal reasoning paper, no non-verbal reasoning paper, nothing beyond the two core subjects.
Northern Ireland runs a separate system again. SEAG's own assessment guide confirms its Entrance Assessment “assesses knowledge and understanding in English (or Gaeilge) and Mathematics,” and that it “is based entirely upon the content and syllabus of the statutory Northern Ireland Curriculum for Language and Literacy and statutory Northern Ireland Curriculum for Mathematics and Numeracy at Key Stage 2.” There is no verbal or non-verbal reasoning component in the SEAG test, and the maths content is tied explicitly to the NI Curriculum a child is already being taught in school, rather than to reasoning-style questions that sit outside it.
For a family moving between regions, or simply checking what a specific council actually tests, this matters more than any general ‘11+ format’ guide can capture: a child drilled exclusively on verbal and non-verbal reasoning would be over-prepared for reasoning and under-prepared for the CSSE or SEAG maths papers themselves, which test mathematical content directly rather than abstract pattern recognition.
Our 11+ maths tutors prepare for the paper actually being sat.
Whether a child's target school uses GL Assessment, the ISEB Pre-Tests, Quest Assessments, or tests maths on its own alongside English only, our tutors identify the specific format first and build a maths programme around it — not a generic 11+ course.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppFor the country's largest 11+ provider, the answer is no — if anything, it stops short of it. GL Assessment's own admissions page states plainly that its tests assess “areas taught up to the end of Year 5 (P6 in Northern Ireland),” not the whole of Key Stage 2 and not anything a Year 6 class has yet to cover. The same page confirms the test format: delivered on paper, with multiple-choice questions, and a stated duration of “30 minutes upwards” across the subjects it covers, including maths.
That single fact changes how a family should think about preparation. A child does not need to have mastered Year 6 topics to sit a GL maths paper well — content taught in the final year of primary school, after most GL tests are sat, is out of scope by GL's own description. What the Year 5 ceiling does not remove is the need for speed: a fixed, multiple-choice paper rewards a child who can work through familiar question types quickly and accurately, which is a different skill from simply knowing the content. Our 11+ times tables fluency guide covers exactly that speed-and-accuracy gap.
The Year 5 ceiling is specific to GL Assessment. It says nothing about the ISEB Pre-Tests, Cambridge's Select Insight products, Quest Assessments or any school-set paper, each of which sets its own scope — which is precisely why checking the actual provider a target school uses matters more than reading a single general ‘11+ maths content’ list.
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Cambridge University Press & Assessment's own entrance-assessments page describes its current grammar-school-facing product, Cambridge Select Insight: Mid-Year Transfer, as “designed explicitly as a late-transfer test for Grammar schools and is suitable for entry into years 8, 9 and 10” (checked 7 September 2026). That is a test for pupils transferring into an existing grammar school place partway through secondary school — not a Year 7 or 11+ entry test.
The same page states that Cambridge “does not provide any commercially available practice materials (including practice or past papers)” for any of its current products, “nor endorse any other commercially available resources or tuition services.” Families searching for official CEM-style practice materials in today's market will not find any published by Cambridge itself, whatever a paper seller's marketing might imply.
The CEM brand many parents remember from 11+ entry was withdrawn from that market in 2023; the format itself, and which authorities used it historically, is covered in full in our CEM 11+ format guide.
Some schools do not use GL Assessment, ISEB, Cambridge or Quest at all — they commission a bespoke paper from a provider built specifically for grammar schools. FSCE describes itself on its own site as providing “bespoke and accessible 11+ and In-Year tests, written by Grammar Schools, for Grammar Schools.”
Reading School in Berkshire is one such example. Its own Key Dates for Entry to Year 7 2027 page sets the FSCE test for Day and Boarding applicants on Thursday 16 July 2026, and states directly: “there are no commercially available practice test papers for the FSCE Ltd tests.” That single sentence matters more than it might first appear: unlike GL Assessment or ISEB, where practice-style materials are widely available from third-party publishers even where the provider itself does not endorse them, an FSCE-set paper has no equivalent commercial ecosystem built around it at all.
For families targeting a school that sets its own paper, preparation has to focus on underlying maths skills, timed exam technique and unfamiliar question formats generally, rather than on drilling a specific provider's past papers — because in FSCE's case, no such past papers exist to drill. Our Year 7 maths entrance exam guide covers how to prepare for a school-set paper when no official practice materials exist.
Targeting a school with no official practice papers?
Our specialist 11+ maths tutors prepare children for FSCE-written and other bespoke school-set papers by building exam technique and timed practice from first principles, without relying on past papers that simply do not exist for that test.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppEvery example on this page shows the same pattern: the provider, and therefore the shape of the maths component, is set by the individual school, consortium or local authority — not by a single national exam. GL Assessment, the ISEB Pre-Tests, Cambridge Select Insight, Quest Assessments, CSSE, SEAG and FSCE-written papers can all sit within a few miles of each other, and a school can switch between them from one admissions cycle to the next, as Warwickshire and the Slough Consortium both have.
The most reliable check is always the target school's or council's own admissions page, read fresh for the specific cycle a child is applying in — never an older sibling's experience, a tutoring company's general ‘11+ format’ page, or a paper seller's product description. For the wider mechanics that sit behind whichever provider a school actually uses — the standardised scoring system, regional pass marks, and how GL and Cambridge's format compares more broadly — our 11+ tuition page sets out the full comparison, worked scoring example and preparation timeline in one place. Our 11+ maths topics checklist covers what to actually revise once the format is confirmed.
No. While GL Assessment is used widely — Buckinghamshire's Secondary Transfer Test and Pate's Grammar School among them — plenty of areas use something else entirely. The Slough Consortium of Grammar Schools has contracted Quest Assessments for its 11+ examination held in September 2027, and Essex's CSSE consortium sets its own English and Mathematics tests with no outside provider at all. The only way to know which provider a specific school or council uses is to check that school's or council's own admissions page directly, for the cycle a child is actually applying in.
Yes. ISEB's own site describes the Pre-Tests as “a series of four online, adaptive and shared entrance assessments,” meaning a single maths result is shared with every senior school an applicant registers with, rather than each school setting its own separate maths paper. Maths is one of the four standalone sections, sat and scored independently of English, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. A family preparing for the ISEB maths section is therefore preparing for one assessment, not a different paper for every school on the list.
No. Cambridge University Press & Assessment states plainly that it does “not provide any commercially available practice materials (including practice or past papers)” for any current product, and FSCE-set tests such as the one Reading School uses have “no commercially available practice test papers” either. GL Assessment and the ISEB Pre-Tests are different: official familiarisation materials exist, and a wider market of third-party practice books has grown up around both, even though neither provider directly endorses specific commercial resources.
GL Assessment's own admissions page states that its tests assess “areas taught up to the end of Year 5 (P6 in Northern Ireland)” rather than the full Key Stage 2 curriculum a child will have covered by the end of Year 6. Because most GL 11+ papers are sat early in Year 6, before that year's content has been taught, testing only what a child has definitely covered by the end of Year 5 keeps the maths content fair across an entire cohort — even though it means the paper does not test everything a child eventually learns at primary school.
No. Buckinghamshire's Secondary Transfer Test spreads maths across two combined papers rather than giving it a paper of its own, and Pate's Grammar School combines maths with non-verbal reasoning in one paper and verbal reasoning in the other. The ISEB Pre-Tests take the opposite approach, with maths as one of four entirely standalone sections. Essex's CSSE tests and Northern Ireland's SEAG Entrance Assessment go further still, testing only English and Mathematics with no reasoning paper of any kind. The format depends entirely on which provider a school uses.
Prepare for the format the school has actually confirmed for that specific admissions cycle, not the one an older sibling sat. Warwickshire County Council moved its grammar-school applicants from CEM to GL Assessment for 2023 entry, and the Slough Consortium of Grammar Schools is moving from GL Assessment to Quest Assessments for its 11+ examination held in September 2027 — both announced directly on the relevant council's or consortium's own admissions page rather than through third-party sources. Checking that page fresh, every cycle, is the only reliable approach.
Our specialist 11+ maths tutors start by identifying the exact format a child will face — GL Assessment's fixed multiple-choice paper, the ISEB Pre-Tests' adaptive maths section, a combined Quest paper, or a bespoke school-set test such as FSCE's — and build a preparation programme around that specific format rather than a generic 11+ maths course. We are rated 4.8 out of 5 from 58 reviews on Trustpilot. Book a free consultation to discuss a plan built around your child's actual target school and test provider.
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