Entrance to St Pauls/ Westminster / Eton

If your son is at a prep school the head will advise. If he is at a state school, I would say he needs to be in the top two or three in the class, across the board, to stand a chance.

Eton is not looking purely for academics and many boys fail to get in but get offers from Westminster and St Paul's. Eton are so oversubscribed that, on the whole, a child needs to be a very bright all-rounder.

Get your son to do some Bond Assessment papers for his age and see how well he does on them. If he aces them, he should have a good chance on public school pre-tests.

I agree with nokissymum that your current Headmaster is the best place to start, and now is quite a good time to have a discussion about next schools (in terms of your DS's age). We had a long meeting with our DS's Head, and he raised lots of points we would need to consider - eg how committed we were to full boarding, how far away the school is (for going to watch matches and plays etc), mixed or co-ed and many other factors that you may not have thought about yet.

It is also worth looking at the websites for the schools in question, there is quite a lot of info on there about the schools and their admissions processes.

I only know about entrance to Eton; you have to register your son before he is 10 1/2 (I think) and he will be called for assessment when he is around 11. Places are offered on the basis of their perfomance in the assessment, which is made up of a computer test, and interview with a Master and a report from the school. The places are conditional on passing CE with a good grade too.

I wish you luck in your search, and hope you find the best school for your DS!

For Eton, your first port of call would be your prep school. Headmasters are very good at advising on suitability of child to school. He or she would also be able to answer your second question on how critical a strong CE result is to enter said school.

In the meantime i'd look at your preferred school websites, most of them state quite clearly what the admissions criteria is. Don't forget some of these schools also rely quite heavily on performance at "pre test" stage (this is at least two years BEFORE common entrance.

In any case all 3 schools are pretty heavy on academics, and definitely 3 of the most selective schools. Confidence plays a bit part, as does general knowledge about current affairs etc.

Good luck.