For about a decade, the first question any 11+ tutor asked was: "Is your area GL or CEM?" The answer determined everything — which books to buy, whether past papers existed at all, whether vocabulary or technique deserved more of your child's evening. Whole shelves of the practice-book market are still organised around that split.

The split no longer exists. CEM withdrew from the 11+ market, GL Assessment now sets the tests in almost every grammar area, and yet CEM's ghost is everywhere: in forum threads, in hand-me-down advice from parents whose children sat the test years ago, and on the covers of books still on sale today. If you are starting 11+ preparation now, you need to know what CEM was — not to prepare for it, but to recognise when the advice you are reading was written for an exam that no longer exists.

What the two-provider world was

GL Assessment (formerly NFER, the National Foundation for Educational Research's commercial arm) is the long-established provider of 11+ tests. Its approach has always been transparent in structure: separate papers for English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, drawn from a stable and well-documented bank of question types, with official familiarisation booklets so children know what the questions look like before the day.

CEM — the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, developed at Durham University and later acquired by Cambridge — entered the 11+ market with a deliberately different philosophy. A number of grammar areas had grown uneasy that their tests were too coachable: that places were going to the most drilled children rather than the most able. CEM's pitch was a "tutor-proof" test, and its design followed:

  • No published past papers and minimal familiarisation material, so there was nothing to drill from.
  • Mixed-format papers — short timed sections jumping between comprehension, numeracy and reasoning, rather than one subject per paper.
  • Heavy weighting on vocabulary — breadth of word knowledge, built over years of reading, is genuinely hard to cram.
  • Punishing time pressure, on the theory that speed under pressure reflects ability more than preparation.

Kent, most of Lincolnshire and many other areas stayed with GL. Buckinghamshire, Birmingham, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Shropshire and others used CEM at various points. Hence the eternal forum question: which one is your area?

What happened

Two things, in sequence.

First, the "tutor-proof" claim eroded. The tutoring industry adapted within a few years — if the test emphasised vocabulary and speed, tutors taught vocabulary and speed. Research and press coverage found little evidence that CEM areas had meaningfully weakened the link between coaching (or family income) and results. Meanwhile parents in CEM areas faced a genuinely unfair-feeling situation: an official test their children could not legitimately see examples of, alongside a grey market of unofficial guesswork materials.

Then, in 2022, CEM announced it was withdrawing from the 11+ admissions-testing market altogether, as its owner shifted the business towards digital assessment products. This was a business decision, not an educational verdict — but it ended the experiment. Area by area, the councils and school consortia that had used CEM ran procurement exercises and chose new suppliers. Almost all of them chose GL. Buckinghamshire had already moved to GL years earlier; Birmingham's grammar-school consortium, Gloucestershire, Berkshire and the rest followed as their CEM contracts ended.

The result is today's landscape: GL Assessment sets the tests in the overwhelming majority of grammar areas. The main exceptions are the consortia that write their own papers — Essex's CSSE most prominently — a small number of schools using their own or newer providers, and the independent sector, which often uses the ISEB Common Pre-Test. Your area's admissions pages will name its provider; that page, not a forum, is your source of truth.

Why you will still see CEM everywhere

Three reasons the name persists:

  1. Practice books have long shelf lives. Major publishers built parallel ranges — "GL" and "CEM" editions of the same book — and the CEM editions are still in shops, still on online marketplaces, and still being resold second-hand with confident recommendations attached.
  2. Forum advice fossilises. A parent whose child sat a CEM paper writes up their hard-won strategy; the thread ranks well in search results for years. The advice was good. It is now advice for a different exam.
  3. Some of CEM's DNA survives. GL did not stand still during the competition, and some regional tests blend material in ways that owe something to CEM's style — Buckinghamshire's two-paper format mixes verbal, mathematical and non-verbal material rather than running four neat subject papers. So a parent skimming a Bucks familiarisation booklet might reasonably think "this looks like what the CEM books describe". The provider is GL; the paper structure is the area's own.

What this means for preparation, practically

The disappearance of CEM changes preparation in your child's favour, in three concrete ways.

Past-style papers exist again. GL publishes familiarisation materials, and its question types are stable and well documented. Your child can walk into the test having seen the format of every question family on the paper. Use that: format familiarity is the cheapest confidence there is, and under the old CEM regime it was simply unavailable.

Question types can be learned systematically. GL verbal reasoning draws on a well-known bank of question types — we have broken down the families and how each is built — and non-verbal reasoning likewise. A child who has met each type calmly, once a week over a year, needs far less last-minute drilling.

But do not throw the CEM-era wisdom away wholesale. The two best pieces of CEM-flavoured advice remain true under GL, because they were always really about children rather than exams. Vocabulary breadth still pays — GL's synonym, antonym and analogy questions reward exactly the word-hoard that daily reading builds, and no half-term of flashcards substitutes for it. And time discipline still decides marks — GL papers are less frantic than CEM's were, but they are not generous, and a child who has never practised moving on from a stuck question will lose easy marks at the end of the paper chasing a hard one in the middle.

As for the CEM-branded books already on your shelf: the content is not poison. The vocabulary work, the comprehension passages, the mental-maths practice — all still perfectly good exercise. What no longer matches is the structure: the section timings, the format switching, the paper shape. Use them as a supplementary quarry if you like, but your child's timed practice — the practice that builds exam-day rhythm — should be on materials that match your area's actual test.

The one-sentence version

If you remember nothing else: check your target schools' admissions pages for the current provider and format, trust nothing dated before CEM's withdrawal, and treat "GL vs CEM" as a history question rather than a decision you need to make. The decision-making energy that parents used to spend on decoding the two-provider split is better spent on the things that still matter — the timeline, steady reading, and a calm Year 5.

FAQ

Is CEM still used for the 11+?

No. CEM announced its withdrawal from the 11+ market in 2022, and the areas that used its tests have since moved to other providers — almost all of them to GL Assessment. If a website or book describes your area as "a CEM area", that information is out of date.

What is the difference between GL and CEM 11+ tests?

GL tests use stable, published question types with official familiarisation materials, organised into separate subject papers. CEM deliberately did the opposite: mixed-format papers, no published past papers, and heavy emphasis on vocabulary and speed, with the aim of being harder to coach for.

Are CEM practice books still worth using?

Partly. The vocabulary lists, comprehension passages and maths content in CEM-branded books are still good practice material. But the paper structure and timing no longer match what your child will sit, so they should never be your child's main diet — use materials matched to your area's actual test for format and timing.

How do I find out which provider my area uses now?

Check the admissions pages of the grammar school or local authority directly — they name the test provider, the subjects and the format. Do not rely on forums or tutoring websites, which often still carry pre-withdrawal information.

Duke Harewood runs aitutors.me and has a daughter in Year 8.