13+ entrance exams are used by private independent senior schools (confusingly often referred to as "public school" in the English vernacular!) as part of their assessment of prospective candidate for entry at age 13 (UK Year 9)

As with 11+ there is a huge variation in the processes used by individual schools. As always, it's best to check the latest arrangements with your school(s) of choice. Most should have the relevant information on their websites.

I have extensive experience tutoring students for 11+ with successful results. Students have gained entry to schools including Eton, Harrow, Westminster, KCS, Winchester, St Paul's, City of London, Hampton, Freemens, Whitgift, Trinity and Dulwich College.

Some schools will use the ISEB Common Entrance papers (CE) while others will set their own exams. These are often found at more prestigious schools and will be more demanding than the Common Entrance exams.

Pupils sit the Common Entrance examination at 13+ when they are in Year 8. There are three examination sessions each year, in November, January and May/June. Increasingly, exams are computerised.

The core subjects - English, Mathematics and Science - are compulsory. In addition, candidates can sit papers in a wide range of subjects chosen from French, Geography, German, Classical Greek, History, Latin, TPR and Spanish. The core subjects, most modern languages, Latin and Classical Greek are offered at more than one level. Weaker candidates are not expected to tackle papers beyond their ability.

Some schools may also set papers in verbal and non-verbal reasoning.

A list of schools which use the 13+ CE can be found here.

Common Entrance papers will be marked by the individual schools. The mark-schemes provided by ISEB are somewhat vague and marking practices tend to vary from school to school. Also the threshold score required for entry will vary from year to year according to demand! As such, the "pass mark" is rarely a useful indicator of the relative difficulty of gaining entrance to a given school.

 

Students need to be registered with their destination school between 1 and 4 years before intended entry.

Many schools use pre-testing to reduce the pool of prospective candidates. This will take place 2-3 years before intended entry. These tend to focus on verbal and non-verbal reasoning and logic.