ISEB has been pleased to welcome many more schools to the Common Pre-Tests this year, with registrations continuing to rise. Some of this activity has arisen as a consequence of the pandemic, as more senior schools turn to this assessment as one part of their admission process, together with the Head’s Report, other test scores and any interviews or activities held on site.

There are several aspects which make the tests attractive to schools, parents and candidates. The Common Pre-Tests assess both potential (through verbal and non-verbal reasoning questions) and attainment in English and mathematics (where all questions relate to ground pupils will have covered in the National Curriculum up to the end of Year 5). The tests are designed in such a way that repeated practice will not continuously improve performance, although it is important for candidates’ confidence that they familiarise themselves with the nature of the tests and we provide a familiarisation test for this purpose.

Each candidate takes the Common Pre-Tests once, with the results being made available to senior schools to which he/she has applied: this minimises stress and anxiety for candidates and we encourage parents to recognise this significant advantage. Finally, the tests are both adaptive and standardised by age: candidates’ routes through the questions are adapted according to their answers and they can recover from early wrong answers to attain a score that matches their ability; and there is no incentive to take the tests more than once or later in the year.

Find out more about our Common Pre-Tests.