Common Entrance is the most substantial set of exams most children will have sat by thirteen — and the most misunderstood part of it is who marks it. Parents tend to picture a national exam with a national pass mark, something like a junior GCSE. It is not that. Common Entrance is written centrally, by the Independent Schools Examinations Board (ISEB), but marked by the senior school your child is going to, against a threshold that school sets for itself. Once you grasp that one structural fact, most of what puzzles families about CE — why thresholds differ, why "what's the pass mark?" has no single answer, why a near-miss is handled with a phone call rather than a rejection letter — falls into place.

This article is the practical anatomy: which subjects, what the papers look like, how levels work, and what marking-by-destination means for your child.

What CE is, structurally

Three facts define Common Entrance at 13+:

  1. Written centrally. ISEB publishes the syllabuses and sets the papers, so prep schools across the country teach to a common framework and their pupils sit common papers. This is the "common" in Common Entrance, and it is the reason a prep school in Yorkshire and one in Surrey can both prepare children for the same senior school.
  2. Sat in Year 8. The main sitting is in the summer term, in the final weeks of prep school. Earlier sittings exist in the school year and are used for some schools' arrangements; the summer sitting is the one most families mean when they say "CE".
  3. Marked by the receiving school. Scripts go to the senior school that holds the child's offer. That school marks them and judges them against its own expectations.

By this point in the process, most candidates already hold a conditional offer made off the pre-test in Year 6 or 7 — the 13+ landscape piece explains that sequence. CE is the condition being met, not a fresh round of selection.

The core: English, mathematics, science

Every CE candidate sits the core.

English

Two papers, dividing the subject the way it divides naturally:

  • Reading / comprehension — passages (typically one literary, one non-fiction or poetry) with questions moving from retrieval through inference up to questions about how the writer achieves effects. The upper questions reward a child who can quote briefly and comment on the quotation, not just find the answer in the text.
  • Writing / composition — a choice of tasks across kinds of writing: narrative, descriptive, argumentative, personal. Marked for content and organisation as well as technical accuracy. Length matters less than shape; a controlled page and a half beats four rambling sides.

Mathematics

Mathematics comes as calculator and non-calculator papers, and — the part that matters for planning — at more than one level, so that the paper a child sits matches their attainment. There is also an additional, harder paper available for the strongest mathematicians, often taken by those heading for scholarship or academically selective destinations. The content spans number, algebra, geometry, ratio and proportion, and data — recognisably the same territory as KS3 maths, examined with CE's own emphases. (What CE maths assumes, and where children's gaps usually are, gets its own article.)

Which level a child is entered for is a decision the prep school makes, in conversation with the family and with an eye on the destination school's expectations. It is worth asking about early in Year 8 rather than discovering the answer on an exam timetable.

Science

Science covers biology, chemistry and physics, and is likewise offered at more than one level — broadly, a combined route and a route with the three sciences examined separately in greater depth. The style rewards a child who can reason about an experiment — variables, fair testing, reading a graph — as well as recall content. The three-science structure is unpacked in how CE science works.

Beyond the core: humanities and languages

Past the core, CE offers a spread of subjects. The usual suspects:

  • History — evidence-based questions on sources plus an essay from studied topics.
  • Geography — physical and human geography, map skills (the Ordnance Survey extract is a fixture), and questions drawing on studied themes and places.
  • Theology, Philosophy and Religion (TPR) — the subject formerly known in prep schools as Divinity or RS: textual questions and reflective essay work.
  • French — the most common modern language, examined across listening, speaking, reading and writing.
  • Latin — still widely taught in prep schools, with levels accommodating different starting points. (Who takes Latin and what the papers ask is covered in the languages article.)
  • Other languages — ISEB provides for other modern languages and for Greek; availability in practice depends on what the prep school teaches.

Which of these a child sits is a matter of what their prep school timetables and what the senior school wants to see — commonly the core plus a handful of others rather than the full menu. A child at a prep school will simply carry their school's curriculum into the exam room. A family coming from outside the prep system should ask the senior school early which papers, at which levels, it actually requires: the answer is often shorter than the full list.

How the marking works — and what a 'pass' means

Here is the mechanism in sequence:

  1. Your child sits the papers at their own school.
  2. The scripts are sent to the senior school holding their offer.
  3. Teachers there mark them — often the same departments that will teach your child in September.
  4. The school judges the results against its own threshold, which it will usually have stated when it made the conditional offer.

Three consequences follow.

There is no national pass mark. A percentage that comfortably clears the bar at one school might fall short at a more selective one. When another parent tells you "you need 60% for CE", they are quoting their school's arrangement, not a rule.

The marking is also a first look. Because the receiving school's own staff mark the scripts, CE doubles as an early academic portrait of the incoming year: which sets to place children in, who will need stretching, who will need support in a particular subject. Even where the pass threshold is comfortably cleared, the papers are read with September in mind.

Failure is rare, and handled humanly. The system's selection happened at the pre-test; prep schools enter children at levels they can manage; so a child sitting CE with an offer in hand very seldom loses the place. Where results do fall short of the stated threshold, the near-universal first step is a conversation between the senior school and the prep school — context, reports, the shape of the year — rather than an automatic withdrawal. This is not a guarantee, and families should take the stated condition seriously; it is simply the observed temperature of the system.

How prep schools use CE — and how to prepare without drama

For prep schools that follow the ISEB syllabuses, CE is less an exam appended to Year 8 than the framework Years 7 and 8 are taught within. The preparation, done properly, is therefore mostly invisible: it is the ordinary teaching, with past papers and revision structured into the final terms.

What a family can usefully add, especially in the last two terms:

  • Revision that finds gaps rather than re-reads notes. The CE core is broad; the marks lost are usually in the two or three topics per subject that never quite settled. Working from wrong answers — a mock, a past paper, an exercise — is the efficient way in.
  • Fluency under time. CE papers are sat against the clock, and a child who knows the content but works slowly leaves marks unclaimed at the end of the paper.
  • Calm. A Year 8 child with an offer in hand does not need a household treating June like a tribunal. The exams deserve respect, not fear.

This is also the shape of what our tutors do for CE families, so we will say it briefly and specifically: the seven subject tutors teach KS3 maths, English and the three sciences plus history and geography — the same ground as the CE core and main humanities — a child can bring a marked paper's wrong questions to paper review, where the tutor works a similar problem with them rather than handing over answers, and the family dashboard counts down to the exam date they have set. What we do not offer for CE: Latin or French tutoring, or anything that predicts a result.

FAQ

What subjects are in Common Entrance at 13+?

A core of English, mathematics and science, plus a range of further subjects — typically history, geography, theology/philosophy/religion, French and Latin, with other languages available. Which papers a child sits depends on what their school teaches and what the receiving senior school asks for.

Who marks Common Entrance papers?

The receiving senior school. ISEB writes the papers centrally, but each senior school marks its own candidates' scripts and sets its own pass threshold — which is why there is no single national 'CE pass mark'.

Are there different levels in Common Entrance?

Yes, in the core subjects. Mathematics and science are offered at more than one level, and the strongest mathematicians can sit an additional harder paper. The prep school advises which level fits the child and the destination school.

When is Common Entrance sat?

The main sitting is in the summer term of Year 8, shortly before the end of prep school. ISEB also runs earlier sittings in the school year, used by some schools and for some entry arrangements.

What happens if a child fails Common Entrance?

It is rare, because selection happened earlier at the pre-test stage, and prep schools enter children for levels they can manage. Where a child misses a school's threshold, what follows is usually a conversation between the schools — a close miss is often looked at in the round rather than mechanically.