Quest Entrance Assessments: Format, Schools and Preparation

Quest is an entrance assessment platform built and administered by Quest Assessments Ltd, a UK education company, and used by grammar and independent schools as part of their own admissions process instead of as a single national exam. Schools and, in some areas, local authority consortia choose which sections a candidate sits, so the exact experience varies by institution even though the underlying platform and question style stay the same.

Because Quest is licensed separately to each school or consortium, parents preparing for it need to check what their specific target school has selected instead of assuming a fixed national format. This article sets out what is common across Quest assessments, where they differ, and what the provider itself publishes for families to prepare with.

What is the Quest entrance assessment and who provides it?

Quest Admissions is the entry-assessment product of Quest Assessments Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, which also runs a separate product called Quest Progress used by schools for internal attainment and progress tracking instead of admissions. The provider's admissions page lists the schools it works with, and is the place to check whether a particular school uses Quest.

Quest builds each assessment to order for the school or consortium that commissions it, describing its admissions tests as bespoke and, where a school wants its own branding, co-branded with that school's name. This means the Quest name covers a family of related tests instead of one uniform paper, and a family should treat any description of 'the Quest test' as a description of common practice instead of a guarantee of what their own target school has chosen.

Which schools use Quest, and at what entry points?

Quest is used by both independent schools and state grammar schools, though the two groups tend to use it in different ways. Independent schools generally use the online, computer-based version of Quest for their own entrance assessments, while some grammar school areas use Quest papers for a paper-based 11+.

On its admissions page, the provider names client schools including Lord Wandsworth College, Felsted, Rugby School, Dulwich College and Woldingham School, and states that its assessments cover candidates aged 7+ to 16+, spanning main entry rounds and in-year admissions. Tonbridge School's own co-branded Quest page confirms Quest is used for that school's 13+ entry in Year 7, its late entry route in Year 8, and its 14+ entrance route, showing that a single school can use Quest across several entry points instead of only at 11+.

Sixth-form (16+) use sits within the age range the provider states it serves, though families should confirm with an individual school whether Quest forms part of its sixth-form admissions process, since sixth-form entry at most schools tends to rely more heavily on GCSE results and school-set assessments.

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What format does the Quest assessment take?

The format depends on whether a school has chosen the online independent-school version or a paper-based consortium version, and both exist under the Quest name. City of London School's co-branded Quest page describes a computer-based assessment of six subjects over 105 minutes: English (30 minutes), verbal reasoning (10 minutes), maths (20 minutes), non-verbal reasoning (10 minutes), puzzles and problem solving (15 minutes) and creative comprehension (20 minutes), with maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning adjusting in difficulty according to the child's answers while the other three sections stay at a fixed difficulty.

By contrast, the Bexley Selection Test and the Slough Consortium 11+ Assessment, both run on Quest papers for their local grammar school consortia, are paper-based and use optical mark recognition answer sheets instead of an adaptive online format. The Bexley test, confirmed on the council's own page, comprises two timed multiple-choice papers of around 50 minutes each, covering verbal ability, numerical reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, sat in a single session at a test centre.

Where a school adds a creative writing task, as several independent schools do, that element is typically set, supervised and marked by the school itself instead of delivered or scored through the Quest platform.

How are Quest results used alongside interviews and reports?

Quest states that participating schools receive full candidate reports and comparative data across their applicant cohort, which the provider describes as supporting clear and informed admission decisions instead of generating an automatic pass or fail. For consortium tests such as Bexley's, the local authority's own page makes clear that achieving the required selective standard is necessary but not sufficient for a place, since offers depend on how a child's score ranks against other candidates once preferences are taken into account.

Independent schools that license Quest typically combine the assessment report with their own interview, school reference and, where relevant, a separately set creative writing or activity task, since Quest itself supplies data on a candidate instead of making the admissions decision. Families should ask their target school directly how much weight it places on the Quest result relative to these other elements, since Quest's own pages do not set a fixed formula that applies across every school.

How does Quest differ from the ISEB Common Pre-Test, CAT4, GL and CEM-style tests?

The ISEB Common Pre-Test, run by the Independent Schools Examination Board, is a shared assessment: a child sits it once, and results are released to every senior school the family has applied to, covering maths, English, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning online and adaptively. Quest works differently, since each school or consortium licenses its own version of the test, so a child applying to several Quest schools may need to sit a separate assessment for each one instead of a single shared sitting.

CAT4, published by GL Assessment, is described by GL as a reasoning test covering verbal, non-verbal, spatial and quantitative reasoning, and GL positions it primarily as a tool for internal benchmarking, progress tracking and identifying learning needs once a child has joined a school, instead of as an admissions test in its own right, though some schools do draw on it alongside their own entrance process.

GL Assessment's traditional 11+ papers, and the CEM-style tests once associated with Durham University, cover English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning chosen by the local authority or school, historically delivered on paper with difficulty that was fixed instead of adaptive; CEM's own commercial 11+ testing has since wound down, and most areas that used it have since moved to GL Assessment or, in some cases, to Quest. Quest's independent-school version sits closer to the ISEB Pre-Test in using online, adaptive delivery, while Quest's grammar school consortium papers, such as Bexley and Slough, follow the older paper-based, fixed-difficulty pattern more associated with GL.

How can a family prepare sensibly for a Quest assessment?

Quest publishes its own familiarisation materials directly to parents, and using these official resources instead of relying solely on third-party guesswork is the most reliable way to prepare. The provider's parent guidance page lists an interactive online familiarisation assessment, an assessment walkthrough guide, a vocabulary list for English and verbal reasoning, and recommended reading lists for Years 3 to 6.

For consortium tests, the provider adds test-specific familiarisation booklets; the Slough Consortium page, for example, offers four free familiarisation booklets covering each subject in the assessment, alongside a guidance document aimed at helping a child manage nerves and understand what to expect on the day. Quest also states that it partners with Atom Learning to give pupils eligible for pupil premium funding free access to the Atom Home platform once a school has verified their eligibility.

Because each school configures its own version of Quest, the most useful single step a family can take is to check that school's own admissions page or contact its admissions office to confirm which sections, timings and any additional tasks apply, instead of assuming a description written for one Quest school applies unchanged to another.

What should a family ask a school about its own use of Quest?

Because Quest is configured separately for every school, the most useful questions are ones only that school can answer, and asking them early avoids preparing for sections that are not actually used.

• Which sections does the school include, and which of those are adaptive instead of fixed-difficulty?
• Is the assessment taken online at home, online at the school or test centre, or on paper?
• Does the school add a separate creative writing task, interview or activity alongside the Quest result?
• How does the school weigh the Quest report against interviews, references and other parts of its process?
• Does the school provide its own familiarisation materials in addition to those Quest publishes directly to parents?

Official guidance

The rules and processes described here are drawn from the official pages below, which are the place to confirm the current position before making a decision.

• questassessments.com/
• questassessments.com/admissions
• questassessments.com/parent-guidance
• questassessments.com/independent-guidance
• questassessments.com/cobranded-independent-schools/tonbridge-school
• questassessments.com/cobranded-independent-schools/city-of-london-school
• questassessments.com/parent-guidance-consortium/the-slough-consortium-11-assessm
• questassessments.com/parent-guidance-consortium/bexley-selection-test
• bexley.gov.uk/services/schools-and-education/selection-tests/about-test
• iseb.co.uk/assessments/common-pre-tests/

Quest test sections and timings by school

The Quest test has no single national timetable, because each school or consortium chooses its own sections and minutes, although the co-branded pages on questassessments.com show a steady pattern: maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning adapt to the child's answers, whilst English, puzzles and problem solving and creative comprehension are fixed in difficulty.

The list below reflects the admissions round each school's page currently describes. Sections and minutes can change from one round to the next, so a family should check the school's own admissions page before every sitting.

• City of London School, 11+: computer-based, 105 minutes. English 30, verbal reasoning 10, maths 20, non-verbal reasoning 10, puzzles and problem solving 15, creative comprehension 20. Maths and both reasoning sections are adaptive.
• St Albans School, 11+ and 13+: computer-based, with the same six sections and 105 minutes as City of London School, and the same three adaptive sections.
• Gateways School, 11+ and 13+: computer-based, 70 minutes. English 30, verbal reasoning 10, maths 20, non-verbal reasoning 10. English is fixed; the other three adapt.
• The Stephen Perse Foundation, 11+ and 13+: computer-based, 35 minutes. Verbal reasoning 10, non-verbal reasoning 10, puzzles and problem solving 15. Only the two reasoning sections adapt.
• Trinity School, 10+, 11+ and 13+: computer-based, 70 minutes. English 20, verbal reasoning 10, maths 30, non-verbal reasoning 10, with English fixed. A separate 30-minute guided written paper is sat on the same day.
• Tonbridge School, 13+ entry in Year 7, late entry in Year 8 and 14+: 110 minutes. Maths 30, non-verbal reasoning 10, verbal reasoning 10 and English comprehension 30 on computer, then 30 minutes of English free-form writing on paper.
• Bexley Selection Test: two timed multiple-choice papers of about 50 minutes each, with a session of two and a half to three hours including instructions and a short break.

The Bexley Selection Test is covered in more detail in ourBexley grammar schools guide, including how offers follow from rank order.

Families in the Slough Consortium area can find the local admissions picture in ourSlough grammar schools guide.

Creative Comprehension, Problem Solving and written tasks

Creative Comprehension and Puzzles and Problem Solving are the two sections that distinguish the longer Quest papers from a standard verbal and numerical test. City of London School and St Albans School both set them, at 20 and 15 minutes respectively, and both pages state that these sections are fixed in difficulty, so they do not adjust to a child's answers.

Quest's co-branded pages describe the computer sections as largely multiple choice, needing no typing or keyboard skills. Written work sits in separate tasks: Tonbridge School sets 30 minutes of English free-form writing on paper, a discursive response that develops ideas from the comprehension passage, and Trinity School sets a 30-minute guided written paper asking for a personal written response to a set of prompts.

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