entrance to London schools at 7

[kbd]

We are moving to London from Germany at the end of next year, and it has been suggested to us that we have our son apply to prep schools that begin at age 7 since the other schools will be full. Most of these prep schools have entrance exams, which we are not prepared for as he is in a Montessori environment in a German/English school. Are there good workbooks or other materials that we can obtain in order to prepare him for these tests?

Schools will have their own tests. You could always ask them for a sample paper - some will give these out, others won't. Failing anything from the schools, there are many Key Stage 1 publications that you can buy.

By all means go down the prep school route but do bear in mind that the restriction that class sizes must be no more than 30 only applies up to the end of Year 2, so you may well find that there are spaces in state primary schools for Year 3 upwards, and the school can no longer use a "sorry we can't take more than 30" argument if you were to apply to your local primary school. Also families do move (and this is often the age where some families have moved out of state into private). So I would challenge the assumption that there would be no spaces at good state schools.

If you are looking at going into Year 3 in January then you will have missed the boat for the 7+. However there are a number of schools which will assess your ds be having him participate in class for a day, which may be a less stressful affair all round. If you want an idea of the 7+ then Habs have some specimen papers on their site here. Bond papers and exercises are worth looking at too, from Amazon. But if he is in Montessori currently then it may be a jump to trying to attempt an exam (for example the dcs prep school expects boys to know there times tiables up to 12 by the end of Year 2), so I would look at schools which are less super-selective and look at whether the child will fit in the school rather than for evidence that they have already mastered certain aspects.

Thanks LadyMuck. I looked at the Habs test and wow! The math test is more of a reading test than a maths test. My son is currently at the top of the class where he is and is learning his times tables (he's now 5 3/4), but I'm not sure he could do the money/time/ following directions part of these tests, as that is not what they stress here. For entrance to these schools do they look at where a child is coming from and other experiences (like learning languages), or is entrance to a place like Latymer Prep, or the like, really dependent almost solely on the tests? Do people get tutors to prepare for these?

If you are looking at a super selective prep (and Latymer is the other side of London, so I'm not personally familiar with it, but I suspect it is in that league), then it will usually depend mostly ont he exam plus interview. Because some of these schools are very over subscribed then they don't always have to take background into account, but obviously you can always enquire of the admissions officer. There are plenty of prep schools who would take your son's background into account. But somewhere like Latymer isn't typically the first alternative for someone who is worried about not getting a place at a good state school. It has a fairly academic reputation.

In terms of tutoring I know that a number of people sitting for the Highgate exam were tutored, but equally I know some weren't and still got in. In terms of the content of the papers my understanding is that they only test what is covered on the KS1 curriculum, though admittedly in a fairly problem solving manner which may be unfamiliar to some.