In a previous article, we explained that Bexley council has selected Quest Assessments as the exam board to assess the 11+ exams from 2026 onwards.
Naturally, many parents will be wondering if their existing 11+ preparation will be sufficient or if they need to do anything differently.
Does my child need to learn extra content?
As per Quest Assessments guidance:
“The Quest 11+ is designed to assess what children have covered in school up to the end of Year 5, so there’s no need for them to learn Year 6 topics or content beyond the primary curriculum.”
The content covered in CEM, GL and other syllabi cover more than Year 5 content. Therefore, if your child has been preparing using GL or CEM materials, there is no need to learn extra content. In fact, those pupils who are at an advanced stage of their preparations may already know more than they are required to know.
What skills will be assessed?
The skills that will be assessed are:
English (reading comprehension, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling)
Mathematics (problem-solving, arithmetic, reasoning)
Verbal reasoning (using language and logic to solve puzzles)
Non-verbal reasoning (working with shapes and patterns)
Hopefully the above subjects should seem familiar to parents and pupils. With the previous exam board, GL, the same subjects and skills were being assessed, but to a higher level.
I heard Quest Assessments specialise in online testing; will my child be tested online?
Good question. Even though Quest Assessments are strong in online testing, they will be using OMR (Optical Mark Recognition), just like how GL used OMR. For parents unfamiliar with OMR, this basically means your child will not write out answers — instead, they’ll draw a line through a box beside the answer they’ve chosen. In other words, it’ll be ‘multiple choice’ answering, as opposed to answering with words or numbers.
If parents, and more importantly, pupils, are unfamiliar with OMR, we would suggest it is a very important skill to get to grips with. We dedicated another article to it and you are welcome to download a free OMR/ multiple choice answer sheet to practise on.
What about timings?
The familiarisation materials suggest the timings will average between 45 seconds and a minute per question. In a 20 mark test, for example, 20 minutes were allocated from start to finish. And in another test, 50 minutes were allocated for a 75 minute test.
This isn’t significantly different from the previous exam board, and in fact, the Quest assessment may even be slightly more generous than GL on the timings, but only slightly.
Final thoughts
Up till now, it could be said that many factors made the Bexley 11 exam plus a difficult undertaking for young children. These includes the difficulty of the content (some topics can be considered secondary school level), the tight time limit in exams (often requiring pupils to complete a question every 30 seconds), and so on. Consequently, the vast majority of pupils fail the 11 plus exam because of the difficulty of it.
Now, with Quest Assessments, the level of work only goes up to Year 5. This, in theory, should mean the vast majority of pupils will to well. So does that mean your child has a better chance of passing?
Not really. When the work is easier, the pass mark must be higher. So what may happen is the pass mark may be set really high, which may mean pupils will be able to drop only a few marks and still pass; there probably won’t be too much room for error.
Remember, there are around 800 grammar school places in Bexley and the 11+ selection process exists to separate the more academically able from the less academically able. If everyone is able to pass, then there is no point in having a selection process. On the topic of grammar schools, parents who target Bexley grammar schools also tend to target Kent grammar schools (sometimes as a back-up option). The exam board in Kent is still GL so there is nothing new to worry about.
Looking for downloadable resources? head to our downloads page.
Grammar School Pathway 