What is Common Entrance? The 13+ and 11+ explained

In short. Common Entrance is a set of UK independent-school entrance exams, written by ISEB and marked by the schools themselves. It is taken at 11+ (for entry at eleven) or 13+ (for entry at thirteen), and it decides whether a place already offered is confirmed. Many schools now use the ISEB Common Pre-Test or their own assessment instead, so confirm what your school actually requires.

You are three time zones away, reading an admissions page at midnight, and it mentions something called Common Entrance. Then a second page, for a school you like just as much, does not mention it at all. It talks about a pre-test and an interview. Both schools are respectable. Both want your child. Neither explains the difference, because to them it is obvious.

It is not obvious. And the answer changes what you prepare your child for.

What is Common Entrance, exactly?

Common Entrance is the traditional entrance exam for UK independent senior schools. It is set by the Independent Schools Examinations Board, known as ISEB, which writes the papers to a national syllabus. The unusual part is the marking. ISEB writes the exam, but each senior school marks it and sets its own pass mark. So the same paper can clear the bar at one school and fall short at another. There is no single national pass.

This matters because it tells you what the exam is for. Common Entrance is rarely the moment a child is chosen. By the time they sit it, most will already hold a conditional offer, made a year or two earlier. The exam confirms the place. It is a gate on a road the family is already walking, not the start of the road.

When is it taken: 11+ or 13+?

There are two main stages, and the numbers refer to a child’s age at entry, not the year they sit the paper.

The 13+ is the older and more common route. A child sits it in Year 8, usually in the summer term, for entry into Year 9 at a senior boarding school at thirteen. This is the classic path from a prep school into a full boarding house. The 13+ has more papers and goes deeper, because the child is older.

The 11+ is for entry at eleven, into Year 7. A child sits it in Year 6. It is shorter and less demanding, and it feeds the schools that take pupils from age eleven rather than thirteen. Some schools admit at both eleven and thirteen. Others take a main intake at only one of the two.

Why it matters for your planning: the same school can have a completely different entry shape depending on the age you are aiming at. A place at eleven and a place at thirteen are two different competitions, with different papers, different timing, and often a different number of spaces.

What subjects are on the paper?

The 13+ Common Entrance is broad. A child is typically examined in English, mathematics and science, plus a modern language such as French, and often the humanities: history, geography and religious studies. Latin and Greek are available for schools that ask for them. Mathematics is usually split into levels so a school can set the paper at the right stretch. It is a wide test of a whole prep-school education, not a single-subject gate.

The 11+ Common Entrance is narrower, centred on English, mathematics and science, matched to what a child has met by the end of Year 6.

For an international family, one line of caution. The syllabus assumes an English prep-school curriculum, including subjects such as Latin or a particular science sequence that your child’s current school may not teach the same way. That gap is manageable, but only if you find it early. Ask the receiving school which papers your child will actually sit, then check them against what your child has covered.

How is it different from a scholarship exam?

Common Entrance and a scholarship exam are not the same test, and confusing them costs families time.

Common Entrance confirms an ordinary place. A scholarship exam competes for an award: an academic, music, sport, art or all-rounder award, usually carrying recognition and sometimes a fee reduction. Scholarship papers are harder, sat by fewer children, and marked to pick out the strongest rather than to clear a standard. A child can sit both: the scholarship paper to try for an award, and Common Entrance, or an equivalent, to secure the underlying place.

Why it matters: preparing a child for a scholarship is a different, heavier undertaking than preparing them to confirm a place they already hold. Do not aim at the harder target by accident, and do not assume your child must. Most boarders never sit a scholarship exam and lose nothing by it.

Why some schools have dropped it

Here is the part the two midnight admissions pages did not explain. The exam landscape has shifted, and Common Entrance is no longer the default everywhere.

Many senior schools now use the ISEB Common Pre-Test instead, or alongside. This is a set of online, adaptive, multiple-choice tests in English, maths and two reasoning papers, usually sat in Year 6 or Year 7, well before the old 13+ point. Because it is standardised and age-adjusted, it lets a school compare children from very different schools on one scale, and make its offers earlier. A number of schools have moved their real selection to this pre-test and now treat the later exam as a lighter formality, or have dropped the traditional Common Entrance altogether in favour of their own assessment day, interview and school report.

None of this makes a school better or worse. It is an administrative choice about how and when to select. But it changes what your child faces and when. A family expecting a broad written exam at thirteen can find the decisive test was actually an online reasoning paper at ten. The practical rule follows directly: do not assume. Confirm, per school, what this school requires for the age you are applying at.

Common Entrance at a glance

Question	11+	13+
Entry age	11 (into Year 7)	13 (into Year 9)
Sat in	Year 6	Year 8
Core subjects	English, maths, science	English, maths, science, a language, humanities; Latin/Greek if required
Who writes it	ISEB (national syllabus)	ISEB (national syllabus)
Who marks it and sets the pass	The individual senior school	The individual senior school
Purpose	Confirms a place usually offered earlier	Confirms a place usually offered earlier
Not the same as	A scholarship exam (a harder, competitive award paper)	A scholarship exam (a harder, competitive award paper)
Common alternatives now used	ISEB Common Pre-Test, school’s own assessment and interview	ISEB Common Pre-Test, school’s own assessment and interview

Treat this as a checklist for every school on your list. If you cannot fill in the last two rows for a given school from its own admissions office, you do not yet know how that school selects.

What sensible preparation looks like

Once you know which test your child faces, preparation is calmer than the online panic suggests. The aim is a child who is comfortable with the format and solid on the core material, not a child drilled hollow.

Start with the syllabus the receiving school names, and close any real gaps, most often a subject an international curriculum covered differently. Get the child used to the format, especially the timed, adaptive style of a pre-test, so the mechanics do not surprise them on the day. Keep the reading wide, because English and reasoning reward a child who reads for pleasure more than one who grinds past papers. Then stop. A child who arrives able to sit still, think clearly and enjoy the odd hard question is better placed than one who arrives sick of the whole thing.

A tutor can help with a specific gap or an unfamiliar format. A tutor cannot supply the thing the exam is standing in front of, which is a child ready for the school and a school that fits the child.

The exam is a gate. It is not the point. Get your child to the right school, in the right house, at the right age, and the paper in the middle is a morning to be got through, not the thing the whole decision turns on.