7+ Preparation in London: What Selective Schools Look For

A 7+ assessment is not really a maths-and-English exam with an interview bolted on. Selective London prep schools use it to find a bright, curious child who can think aloud, listen properly, and hold their nerve in a room full of strangers. The written papers matter, but composure and curiosity carry just as much weight — which is why a preparation plan built purely around drilling past papers tends to fall short.

Families sit the 7+ for Year 3 entry, usually in the autumn or spring of their child's Year 2 year, when the child is six or seven years old. The schools it feeds — St Paul's Juniors, Westminster Under School, Latymer Prep, King's College School Wimbledon, Dulwich College and others — are among the most sought-after in the country, and every one of them has far more capable applicants than places. That scarcity is the backdrop every London parent is navigating, and it explains why so many turn to a tutor for help.

What actually gets assessed

Format varies from school to school, but most 7+ assessments share a common skeleton: a written English task, a written maths task, and some element of reasoning. Alongside the papers, almost every school also runs an interview, a small-group exercise, or a taster morning — often across more than one visit, so a child is watched on different days rather than judged from a single sitting.

English assessment leans on the same reading and writing habits that matter later, including at 11+ English tuition a few years down the line. Children typically face a comprehension passage plus a short piece of independent writing — a story, or a description built from a picture or opening line. What assessors want to see is a child who has understood what they read, answers in proper sentences, and can produce a few imaginative, reasonably punctuated paragraphs without an adult hovering nearby. Handwriting and basic spelling both still count at this stage.

Maths papers stay within what a strong Year 2 pupil should know: place value, addition and subtraction, simple multiplication and division, money, time, shape, and everyday word problems. The children who stand out are not the ones who have raced ahead into Year 4 material — they are the ones who are accurate and confident with age-appropriate content, and who have learned to read a question properly before diving in.

Where reasoning appears, it is testing raw pattern-spotting rather than anything taught in class. Some schools set verbal reasoning (word and letter puzzles), others set non-verbal reasoning (shapes and sequences), and a fair number simply weave light reasoning into the English and maths papers instead of setting it as a separate test.

Why the 7+ isn't a smaller version of the 11+

It's worth being explicit about one structural difference, because it changes how you should prepare. Much of the state grammar-school 11+ market runs on a standardised test set by an external board — GL Assessment or CEM, for instance — so families can practise against a known, shared format. The 7+ almost never works that way. Each school writes and marks its own papers and designs its own interview process, so there is no common national format to rehearse against. A workbook pitched at "the 7+" in general will only ever get a family part of the way; the real preparation has to be shaped around the specific schools on the list.

What the schools are actually judging

This is the piece parents most often underestimate, and it's where good preparation earns its keep. A written paper only shows what a child already knows on that particular morning. The interview and group task are trying to measure something else entirely: potential, curiosity, and how a child engages and learns. A school admitting at 7+ is committing to teach that child for years, so it is weighing trajectory, not just a single score.

In the room, staff notice the child who listens properly to a question and answers the one that was actually asked. They notice the child who has a go when stuck instead of freezing. They notice a child who is genuinely interested in something — a book, a hobby, a "why does that work" question — and can talk about it with some warmth. They notice how a child shares and cooperates in a group task. None of that comes from drilling; it comes from wide reading, real conversation at home, and enough calm practice that the assessment room doesn't feel completely alien.

So the honest answer to "how should we prepare?" has two parts: build genuine ability across the papers, and deliberately build the composure and curiosity the interview is designed to surface. A child who has only ever been drilled on paper often stumbles the moment an adult asks them to explain their thinking out loud.

Treat the schools as individuals, not a category

London's 7+ schools are not interchangeable, and it's worth saying that plainly. They write their own papers, weight the interview differently against the written work, and prize slightly different qualities. Some lean harder on reasoning; some care most about the quality of a child's writing and conversation; some run a longer, more playful group observation. A plan built for "the 7+" in the abstract is weaker than one built around the two or three schools your child is actually sitting.

Before settling on a plan, get the current admissions detail straight from each school's own registrar or website — format, dates and registration deadlines shift year on year, and the school's own material is the only reliable source. Many London prep schools open 7+ registration roughly a year ahead of the assessment itself, so starting to look in Year 1 is not premature. It's also worth checking each school's own admissions page for how it weighs sibling links or feeder pre-prep relationships alongside the assessment — this can shift how competitive a given place actually is for your child. Once you know the mix a school uses, you can shape practice around it — exactly the kind of school-by-school knowledge a good London tutor holds, and hard to replicate from a generic workbook.

A calm, realistic run-up

Good 7+ preparation is a marathon at an easy pace, not a sprint to the finish. For most families, a year of light, steady work through Year 2 achieves more than a frantic few weeks beforehand. Here is a workable shape.

Reading comes first. A child who reads widely, and who is read to daily, builds a bigger vocabulary, sharper comprehension and more to say at interview than any volume of exam drilling can match. Treat it as the foundation, not something squeezed in afterwards.

Add short, regular practice on top. Ten to twenty focused minutes on maths or English, a few times a week, kept calm and upbeat, beats a long exhausting weekend session every time. Rotate what you cover — comprehension one day, arithmetic fluency the next, a bit of creative writing at the weekend.

Bring in timed conditions late, and gently. Familiarity with the shape of a paper matters — reading the whole question, checking work, not giving up partway through — but full mock conditions belong in the final couple of months, not the opening ones. The aim is a child who knows what to expect, not one who has grown tired of the whole process.

Practise talking about their thinking. Ask your child to walk you through how they reached an answer. Discuss the book they're reading over dinner. Rehearse the basic courtesies of an interview — listening, looking up, replying in full sentences. It costs nothing, it pays off more than almost anything else, and most families do far too little of it.

Finding a 7+ tutor you can actually trust

For most parents, the maths isn't the hard part — working out which tutor deserves your trust with a young child and a high-stakes assessment is. Anyone can write themselves a glowing profile and claim a string of offers from top schools. Making the claim is easy; checking whether it's true is the actual problem. Our piece on what a tutoring credibility score actually measures goes into this in more depth, and the same logic holds at 7+.

This is precisely the gap Tutorwise was built to close. A tutor's standing on the platform isn't a bio they wrote themselves or a rating anyone could inflate — it's a credibility score computed from real, checkable signals, so what a parent is trusting has actually been earned rather than merely asserted. The score draws on six things: the tutoring a tutor has genuinely delivered and the outcomes tied to it; their credentials and qualifications; their standing and network on the platform; trust signals, including a verified DBS check and confirmed identity; their digital track record; and their measured impact. A tutor who has been through the checks and has a real history on the platform scores differently from one who has simply written the right words.

The trust bucket carries particular weight for anyone hiring a 7+ tutor. A verified DBS check and confirmed identity are rewarded directly, and no tutor can even hold a score until they've passed identity verification or completed onboarding. Practically, that means the basics a parent actually cares about — is this person who they claim to be, have they been background-checked — are visible up front rather than something you have to chase by email. Compare that with an ordinary directory listing, where a five-star average tells you nothing about whether anyone has been checked at all.

Picture two profiles side by side. One reads well and claims a "95% success rate" with no way to verify it. The other, on Tutorwise, shows a computed credibility score built from a verified DBS check, confirmed identity, a qualification actually on file, and reviews from parents who genuinely booked sessions. That's not a choice between two equally plausible stories — it's a choice between an unverifiable claim and something you can check for yourself. In practice, that means you can search for 7+ specialists with London experience, then compare candidates on a credibility score reflecting real checks, real qualifications and delivered results, alongside reviews from families who actually used them.

Give your child the best possible chance, calmly

The children who do best at 7+ are rarely the ones who were pushed hardest. They tend to be the ones whose families started early, kept the process light, built genuine reading and conversation into everyday life, and chose help they could actually trust. Hot-housing isn't the answer — a worry many parents carry, and one we address directly in should I have coached my child for the 11+?. What a child needs is to feel ready and confident, comfortable thinking aloud, and to have calm adults around them through the process.

If you're looking for expert help you can actually verify, you can find a checked 7+ tutor with London experience on Tutorwise, compare them on credibility you can see for yourself, and book with some confidence.

Frequently asked questions

When should we start preparing for the 7+? A gentle year through Year 2 works well for most children — light, regular practice layered on top of daily reading. Starting much earlier risks tiring a young child out before it matters; leaving it to the final weeks rarely gives enough time to build real confidence. The assessment itself usually falls in the autumn or spring of Year 2, and many schools open registration around a year ahead, so it's worth planning backwards from your chosen schools' own dates.

Do we need a tutor, or can we manage this at home? Plenty of families do prepare successfully without one, particularly confident readers with engaged parents. A good tutor contributes three things that are genuinely hard to replicate yourself: an honest, expert read on where a child actually stands, school-specific knowledge of the format each London school uses, and structured practice that keeps momentum without turning the household into an exam factory. If you do bring one in, choose on verified credentials and a real track record — the same checklist that applies when parents find an 11+ tutor and decide what to look for.

What are London selective schools actually looking for at 7+? Solid attainment in English, maths and reasoning on the written papers, and — just as important — curiosity, composure and clear thinking in the interview or group activity. Because they're choosing children they will teach for years, schools are weighing potential and a genuine love of learning as much as a polished performance on the day.

How can I tell whether a 7+ tutor is actually trustworthy? Look past a self-written profile to what has genuinely been verified. On Tutorwise, every tutor carries a credibility score built from real signals — a verified DBS check, confirmed identity, qualifications, delivered outcomes and genuine reviews — and nobody can hold a score without passing identity verification first. That lets you compare tutors on evidence you can actually see, rather than claims anyone could type.

How does the 7+ differ from the 11+? The 7+ is for Year 3 entry at age six or seven, and leans heavily on the interview and how a young child engages, alongside age-appropriate English and maths. It's also almost always a bespoke paper set by the individual school, rather than a standardised external test. The 11+ is for Year 7 entry at age ten or eleven, often does use a standardised board format, covers more advanced content, and generally weights the written papers more heavily. Preparation for the two looks quite different as a result — the 7+ rewards early reading, conversation and composure far more than heavy drilling.