11+ or 13+: what's more competitive?

[79abbot]

My DS is at an independent prep in SW London. In Year 6, he'll have to sit his 11+. I am thinking of moving him to an all-boys school, which I think would suit him better but it goes up to 13+. Which system is more competitive? Common entrance or 11+ to get into independent London / Surrey day schools?

In London, it's competitive for all entry points. You just need to choose your kind of stress.

11+ and some 13+ are competitive exams, CE isn't but you need to compete (by pre-test at 11+ for London's CE schools, plus interview). But once a CE offer that prep Head thinks achievable has been secured it becomes a lot less stressful.

11+ can be worse, especially for co-eds, girls (mainly) transfer then, and those leaving preps which go to 11 tend to prefer to transfer to secondary (though some - especially those intending to board at a 13+ school - may switch to a prep for the final two years). Candidates from state schools tend to come in at 11+ too.

It can reduce stress if you can say 'doesn't matter if you don't pass any, you can stay at prep to 13'. There are fewer places available ar 13+ (competitive) but also fewer candidates, so the ratios don't seem so frightening (for parents!) but of course no further standard entry point until sixth form if it goes wrong.

Anothernewt. While I agree with pretty much everything you have said, it would be very stressful to stay on at a prep school to 13 without having secured a secondary school place via the 11+ pretext. This happened to quite a few boys at my son’s well regarded prep school in SW London, and those parents were massively stressed. Their sons also struggled because everyone else spoke about the schools they were heading to.

Some of them ended up sitting CE exams without a place or ended up boarding reluctantly.

I agree with you, jeanne

I've known it happen too, and you just have to get in with it. The families I know personally to whom it happened all got 13+ offers they were happy with, and only one of those was weekly boarding a bit further out.

Those who actually chose 13+ as preferred transfer point, with top choice school having competitive exam, had to think carefully about how they arranged their fallbacks.

OP has all this in front of her - I was trying to downplay just how weird and stressful the transfer years can be.

It depends. Many schools have their main intake at 11 with relatively fewer places awarded at 13. The flip side is that at 11 you are competing against private and state pupils whereas at 13 it will be mainly from prep schools. Some schools like Epsom have added a year 7 entry but main school intake is still at 13. CE is rapidly becoming redundant in the selection process at 13+, with most using pretests at year 6/7 to make offers or setting their own papers for deferred entry. A local prep school has recently dropped CE syllabus for year 7 & 8 as a result.

On the other hand Lizs, Prep schools that want to send their boys to the likes of Eton, Harrow etc will have to be guided by what these senior schools do or else they will no longer be in a position to send boys there.

I agree that CE is becoming redundant. The top schools pre-test at 11 and make their offers then. Children in schools which don't do CE can still receive offers.

In the past, kids doing CE didn't sit exams in Yr6. They went for interviews etc and had Heads reports sent through and an offer was made based on the CE results. CE was the exam that counted, although it has always been rare to hear of people not meeting their CE offer and no-one fails.

The thing is that many schools have become more competitive. CE isn't a competitive exam and it is in this sense that it is becoming redundant. Schools still using CE are mostly making offers based on pre-tests at 11+ - so actually, whether you intend to start at 11 or 13, the key exams will be in Yr6. For children who pass, the offer often says 'CE will be used for setting purposes' - CE really doesn't count for much and actually often isn't even used for setting - it is just a way to keep prep school yr 7 and 8s focused for their final 2 years - and much of Yr 8 is spent on revision, not learning new stuff.

Schools that still offer a traditional 13+ without pre-testing (not so many now, or those that do also often the pre-test option) are seeing candidates in Yr 6 or 7 and giving CE offers - but the problem is, that because they have often offered lots of places at possibly 11+ and probably for 13+, but to pre-testers in Yr 6, thee are often actually few places left to be offered to those not pre-testing.

Things have shifted a lot in the last 5-7 years. More and more schools have an 11+ intake and more and more of those that take in at 13 too or only 13 aren't purely taking in via CE, but using their own competitive exams....and it is those exams, not CE that really determines who gets the place.

In the end, chose your leaving point of 11 or 13, but accept that the preparing for entrance exams probably can't be delayed and it will be Yr5 and 6 when your child will probably need to be preparing for those competitive exams which will come fairly early in Yr 6.

If you look at lots of traditional public schools, ones that only take at 13, you'll see how many are pre-testing and how little significance CE actually has in the entry process these days.

"and an offer was made based on the CE results"

That wasn't really quite how it ever worked. You would get the offer based on whatever the secondary required - which before the rise of the pre-test would be reference, interview and visit. Offers would be made and CE taken to confirm. CE papers would be marked by the school for which the entrant already held a conditional offer. The same as today, only pre-test is now also in the mix of things which are considered when deciding who to make conditional (or waiting list) offers to.

Yes, there are some schools which have multiple entrance points including 11+, and/or competitive 13+. And yes, preps now have to be geared up to prepare pupils expecting transfer at 13 for significant external exams in year 6 or 7. But good preps don't do that much exam prep - perhaps nothing more than having tests and exams as a regular part of school life, and a bit of VR/NVR paper familiarisation. They rely instead on their core standards.

Yes I agree, that candidates held or hold a conditional offer and CE is used to confirm it - it is pretty unheard of for someone to not get in at CE exams point, after they've had that conditional offer.

And yes I agree that in the past, the Heads ref and interview was enough for the conditional offer. But as things got more competitive, schools wanted to see for themselves if candidates were really as good as their Head suggested and as if an interview suggested - hence moving to their own earlier exams - now pre-tests and even pre-pre tests - these weed many candidates out these days - it's that part that will be stressful and need preparation, not CE because CE is just a formality....that's what I mean by it becoming redundant, and used to give focus for Yr 7 and 8 in Preps. Schools that are moving away from it which still have big numbers to 13+ are looking at a slightly less content heavy and fact based curriculum, to one more about content and skills - that they feel is a better preparation for starting GCSEs than cramming huge amounts of content that CE requires. Are Secondaries open to this move away from CE? I couldn't comment on the whole country or all schools, but those that I know of have been happy with the idea - they have approved the curriculum of the Preps that have moved away, plus they still get to pre-test and interview candidates, which secures their students and income streams earlier than when people interviewed a bit later, plus they don't have to mark CE, which was never a satisfying experience for those marking it, nor really relevant in deciding whether those with conditional offers actually came or not.

I'm interested in the idea that good Preps don't really do entrance exam specific preparation apart from the odd bit of VR ar/VR Ar and rely on their overall good standards - on one hand, I think it's the line they give to people applying at a young age so it sounds low stress, but parents expect preparation and schools often do LOADS of it. It would be nice to think it was all slotted into normal lessons and no-one even knew it was happening, but it's not like that most of the time, especially as entry has become more competitive. And then there's the thriving tutoring industry too - very common for parents to have tutoring top ups and as it becomes more common, more feel obliged to have it so they don't feel disadvantaged. And of course schools say they don't recommend tutoring and it's not necessary, but they know and everyone knows it's widespread. Sometimes Preps take the glory of getting children into certain schools, when actually much has been done by a tutor. Either way, it's all well before the CE exams.

coming back to the original question, I know of schools which offer 2 routes to 13+ entrance - the pretext at 11 (encouraged) and also an exam very early in Yr8. As more people are pre testing, schools don't have so many places left to offer in Yr8 (why wait to offer to an unknown audience, if you have good candidates at 11 who will commit with a hefty deposit) so actually, at that point,mint is more competitive, despite there only being Prep school candidates and not loads of them, because many have pre-tested - more competitive on a a places per application basis. Plus, those not pre-testing spend Yr7 feeling a bit worried that others have got their places already and there might not be many left.

I think we are in an interim period regarding school admissions. CE is still out there and widely used, but ore-testing is growing and decisions by parents and schools are being made earlier - whether you go for 11+ or 13+, really you're going to have to take the tests and prepare for them, at the same time - people often think going to a 13+ Prep and going for a 13+ entry senior school will mean they can delay all that preparation (and that's been a big appeal for lots, especially with slightly immature boys) but the reality is that most of it is happening earlier, and that's likely to become more and more widespread. The actual 11+ and 13+ pre-test exams are often exactly the same if schools offer both, and where schools offer both, they will look at the quality of the 11+ and 13+ pre testers in one pile.....and if there are enough good 11+ people, it's understandable that schools might offer to more of them, securing an extra 2 years of fees. I know this is a different issue for schools that only have 13+ entry, but we are seeing more introduce an 11+ too. Both this and CE becoming less relevant are current trends.

Ok, I'm going to come at this from a different angle, having gone through both systems with very different boys.

I agree with ChocolateWombat that CE is pretty much irrelevant, as pretty much all boys will reach the required CE scores to confirm their conditional offer. BUT in our experience 13+ and 11+ have been very different in terms of the competition for the initial places in Year 6.

In short: 11+ allows you to bypass CE, giving the child a more relaxed time in Yrs 7-8, provided that they're ready to progress to secondary school at the end of Yr6.

13+ on the other hand gives you the security of still being at prep school - a big fish in a small pond - for another 2 years, before moving on to senior school, potentially much further away.

For our DS1, 13+ was obviously the right choice. Highly academic, he had a choice of top schools after the Yr 6 pre-tests. He decided to sit the scholarship exams rather than CE, and this was hugely stimulating. He had a great time as a Senior in his prep school and loved being in the "scholarship class".

DS2, a couple of years younger, was a totally different case. We felt that he was more mature and ready to move to secondary school for Year 7. He was also fed up with exams and mock tests, and we were worried about how to motivate him for CE. So he sat 11+ rather than 13+ pre-tests.

In terms of competition, there is no comparison in our experience: 11+ was BRUTAL compared to 13+. This may be partly due to the fact that DS2 sat 11+ three years after DS1 did his pre-tests and it's clearly getting harder year by year. All the schools told us that numbers recenly increased dramatically. One went from 600 candidates to 1,000 in just one year.

BUT we heard from other parents in DS2's year who attempted a mix of 11+ and 13+ exams, and who reported that the 11+ experience was depressingly anonymous, with candidates, with parents queuing for huge distances before the exams, whereas at 13+ they were still treated like individuals, just like we experienced with DS1.

I appreciate that this is still very subjective, especially as our DS1 was scholarship material and so was invited to sit 13+ exams in a very exclusive environment. But nevertheless, our DS2 (who is somewhere in the 2nd quarter of children by CAT scores, according to his school) found the South West London 11+ process absolutely gruelling.

Now that DS2 has secured an 11+ place for September, I'm delighted that we chose this route for him and he won't have to sit Common Entrance. Knowing how stressful this past term was for him and for us, I'd probably choose 13+ next time as his school friends who are similar ability all got places at 13+ for schools that rejected or waitlisted him at 11+.