GL Assessment 11+ Exams: What Parents Need to Know

GL Assessment is a UK educational testing organisation, headquartered in Berkshire, that produces standardised assessments used across primary and secondary education, including the 11+ selective entrance tests used by many grammar schools and local authorities. It grew out of the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) testing arm and has been producing 11+ style papers for decades.

Unlike a single national exam, GL Assessment supplies test papers, marking, and standardisation services to individual local authorities and consortiums of grammar schools, who each choose their own combination of subjects, weighting, and pass criteria. This means two areas that both use GL Assessment can still have meaningfully different exams in terms of which subjects are tested and how heavily each one counts.

What stays consistent across GL Assessment tests is the underlying test design philosophy: questions are multiple choice or short-answer, machine-markable, and standardised against a large sample of children the same age, so that a raw score is converted into a standardised score that accounts for the child's exact age in months. This age standardisation is a genuinely important feature — a child born in August is not compared unfavourably to a child born the previous September, because both scores are adjusted relative to their age cohort.

GL Assessment 11+ papers typically draw from four subject areas: English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning, and Non-Verbal Reasoning, although not every local authority tests all four — some drop Non-Verbal Reasoning, and a few focus mainly on English and Maths with reasoning folded in.

English papers usually include a comprehension passage with questions on inference, vocabulary in context, and understanding of the text, plus separate questions on spelling, punctuation and grammar. Maths papers cover the standard Key Stage 2 curriculum — arithmetic, fractions, percentages, ratio, geometry, data handling and word problems — generally presented as a mix of straightforward calculation and multi-step reasoning questions.

Verbal Reasoning is the subject most families find unfamiliar, since it isn't taught as a discrete subject in primary school. GL's Verbal Reasoning papers use a bank of question types — codes, letter sequences, word connections, hidden words, and so on — that test logical and linguistic pattern recognition rather than curriculum knowledge. Non-Verbal Reasoning, where used, tests pattern and shape logic: rotations, reflections, sequences and odd-one-out with abstract shapes rather than words or numbers.

Most GL papers are still delivered on paper in exam halls, marked by machine (multiple choice, using a pencil-and-bubble answer sheet) though some areas have moved to on-screen testing in recent years. Timing is strict, usually somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes per paper, and children sit multiple papers, often across one or two exam sessions.

The other major format families encounter is CEM-style testing, historically associated with Durham University's CEM centre (which has since wound down its own 11+ testing service, with other organisations now producing broadly similar tests). Where GL Assessment separates subjects cleanly into their own labelled papers, CEM-style exams have traditionally mixed subjects within a single booklet and framed maths questions as numerical reasoning, with a heavier and more unpredictable vocabulary demand in verbal reasoning.

ISEB Common Pre-Tests, used by many independent schools, are different again: adaptive, computer-based, and not tied to a single local authority's specification.

Because GL's format is more standardised across the areas that use it, past papers and familiar question types are genuinely useful preparation — a child who has practised plenty of GL-style Verbal Reasoning codes and Non-Verbal Reasoning sequences will recognise the question formats on the day, which reduces exam-day surprise considerably.

GL Assessment is used, in whole or in part, by a number of the grammar school areas in England, including Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Medway, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Torbay, and Trafford, among others. Some London boroughs with grammar schools, such as Kingston, Redbridge and Barnet, also use GL Assessment or GL-based tests for at least part of their process, sometimes alongside a school-set element.

Because each authority or consortium sets its own specific combination of papers, weighting between subjects, and pass mark, it's worth checking directly with your target school or local authority for the exact structure that applies in your area rather than assuming it matches a neighbouring county. The core GL question types, however, transfer well between areas, so practice is rarely wasted even if your child ends up applying somewhere slightly different from originally planned.

Because GL papers are built from a recognisable bank of question types, familiarity is one of the biggest levers you have. Working through genuine GL-style Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning question types repeatedly, so your child recognises the format instantly rather than having to decode the instructions under time pressure, tends to produce a bigger score improvement than generic reasoning puzzles.

Timing discipline matters just as much as accuracy. GL papers move quickly, and children who are mathematically or verbally capable can still underperform if they run out of time on the later questions. Regular timed practice, building up gradually to full exam conditions, helps children pace themselves and learn when to skip a hard question and come back rather than getting stuck.

This is where a structured, adaptive approach helps. Skylark 11+ starts with a free diagnostic to identify which GL question types your child finds hardest, then builds a personalised practice plan — a full year-long plan for early starters or an 8-week emergency plan if you're preparing later than planned — with adaptive practice that keeps adjusting to your child's level, plus timed mock exams and downloadable worksheet PDFs for offline practice, all for £199 a year.