Quest Assessment Preparation Timeline Year 4 Year 5: A Term-by-Term Parent Guide (2026–27)

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5. Quest Assessment Preparation Timeline: Year 4 and Year 5

Most Quest Assessment advice online tells parents to "start early" without saying what that actually means term by term. This guide is different: it lays out a concrete, term-by-term Quest preparation plan spanning Year 4 through Year 5, with a suggested weekly time for each term, the registration and test dates that named schools have published for September 2027 entry (independent day schools, the four Bexley grammar schools and the London 11+ Consortium), and the specific reasons the adaptive online Quest format changes how a timeline should be built compared with a standard paper-based 11+ plan. If your child is targeting Forest School, The Perse, a London 11+ Consortium school or one of the Bexley grammars, this is the planning layer that sits underneath the section-by-section guides.

For a breakdown of what each Quest section tests, see our Quest Assessment Part 1 guide and our Quest Assessment Part 2 guide. Which sections your child sits, and how they are split into parts, depends on the school: Quest's grammar-school guidance says "Every school will use different papers and follow different structures for their assessments." and its independent-school guidance says "Your child's assessment is unique to the school they're applying to." This page focuses purely on when to do what — the planning and pacing layer, not the content of each section.

Why Does Quest Assessment Need a Different Timeline From a Standard 11+ Plan?

A general 11 plus preparation timeline (see our 11 Plus Preparation Timeline: Year 4 to Year 6 for GL Assessment and CEM-style grammar school tests) is built around fixed-difficulty paper exams where every child sees the same questions. Quest Assessment is different in three ways that change the shape of a sensible timeline. First, in the online versions the Maths, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning sections are adaptive: the London 11+ Consortium says "the questions will be tailored to their performance". Second, the content is tied to the primary curriculum: the Consortium says its Maths questions "are based on the National Curriculum for Year 5" and "we do not test anything on the Year 6 curriculum", Forest School assesses attainment in Part 1 against "the taught English and Maths curriculum (up to the end of Year 5)", and the Bexley Selection Test's numerical reasoning has "content not exceeding what children are expected to learn by the end of Year 5". For the Consortium, Bexley and Forest's Part 1, a child sitting the test in Year 6 is therefore being assessed on material they should have covered by the end of the Year 5 summer term — not material taught in Year 6. Third, registration and test dates are set by each school, by the Consortium or, for Bexley, by the local authority, rather than by one national body, so the timeline has to flex around the different school-type patterns in the table below rather than one fixed national date.

For the Consortium, Bexley and Forest's Part 1, these factors mean the Year 5 summer term is when the curriculum the tests draw on should have been covered. They do not mean intensive preparation: of its Non-Verbal and Verbal Reasoning sections, the Consortium says "We do not, however, recommend intense preparation as any gains quickly become very marginal."

When Should You Start Preparing for Quest Assessment: Year 4 or Year 5?

Start with what the assessments' own guidance says. The London 11+ Consortium tells parents that "your daughter does not need special tuition or intensive practice for this assessment"; Forest School says its candidates "will not need any special tuition or intensive practice"; and The Perse says of its computer-based Part 1 that "No formal preparation is expected beyond viewing the familiarisation materials". Our own suggestion, which is not a school requirement, is a gradual start. Year 4 is not too early for light, low-pressure exposure, particularly to Non-Verbal Reasoning, which is not part of the National Curriculum programmes of study and whose questions, the Consortium says, "can seem strange to candidates who have never seen those sorts of questions before". But Year 4 should stay exploratory: think of Year 4 as the familiarisation phase and Year 5 as the phase for short, regular sessions.

The Consortium describes the groundwork as "skills that your daughter will be developing in school anyway": its English section "does not require any recall of grammar", and "candidates who read widely will be well prepared for this section". That is why the Year 4 plan below puts reading first.

What Should Year 4 Quest Preparation Look Like, Term by Term?

Autumn term (September–December): No formal Quest-style practice. The core activity at this stage is daily independent reading — 20 to 30 minutes across fiction and non-fiction — which builds the vocabulary range and comprehension stamina that the English section and the word-based Verbal Reasoning questions both depend on later.

Spring term (January–April): Introduce Non-Verbal Reasoning informally, through puzzle books and pattern-spotting games rather than timed sections. Treating it as a game at this age builds comfort without creating pressure. This is also a good point to note, informally, which Maths topics (fractions, angles, data handling, ratio) are appearing in your child's schoolwork ahead of or behind the pace Quest schools will eventually expect.

Summer term (May–July): Light, weekly 30–45 minute sessions combining VR word puzzles, NVR pattern work and mental Maths games. Everything at this stage should be framed as play, not preparation for a test. The goal for the whole of Year 4 is familiarity and enjoyment, not performance — Quest's guidance for Bexley families says "Short, regular learning is more effective than long sessions."

What Should Year 5 Quest Preparation Look Like, Term by Term?

Year 5 is where a light routine can become regular. The table below sets out our suggested focus, weekly time and practice type for each term of Year 4 and Year 5, plus the six-week summer holiday before Year 6, as a planning guide rather than a school requirement — the quickest reference on this page if you want the whole plan at a glance.

Concretely, that means: Autumn term of Year 5 (September–December) — a weekly routine of one or two short sessions covering Maths topics through Year 5 level, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning question types one at a time, and English comprehension, spelling and grammar, alongside wide reading. Spring term (January–April) — work through the familiarisation materials for each target school at a relaxed pace: the Consortium says "We recommend that all candidates look at the familiarisation materials", and Quest's Bexley guidance advises "Work through the familiarisation booklets at a relaxed pace." Summer term (May–July) — review any gaps in Year 5 Maths and English so that your child heads into the summer holidays before Year 6 with the Year 5 curriculum secure.

How Much Practice a Week Is Reasonable in Year 4 and Year 5?

As a rough guide, drawn from the table above: Year 4 autumn term needs no formal hours beyond daily reading; Year 4 spring and summer terms, roughly 30–45 minutes once or twice a week, entirely game-based; Year 5 autumn term, 1 to 1.5 hours a week across one or two sessions; and from Year 5 spring term onwards, short, regular sessions rather than a fixed target of hours. These are Leading Tuition's own planning figures for families who choose to practise.

When Do Registration Windows and Test Dates Fall for Each School?

Registration and test-date timing varies meaningfully by school, because each school, the London 11+ Consortium and Bexley's local authority sets its own calendar. The table shows the dates published for September 2027 entry, which is the current Year 6; they move from year to year, so use them as the pattern rather than a promise.

Because exact dates are confirmed independently by each school and can shift from year to year, always verify the current registration window and test date directly with each target school's admissions office before finalising your preparation timeline — treat the dates above as planning guidance, not a substitute for checking the school's own admissions page.

How Does the Timeline Differ for Bexley, Independent Day Schools and the London 11+ Consortium?

The four Bexley grammar schools — Bexley Grammar School, Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, Townley Grammar School and Beths Grammar School — use a single test for admission, and Quest Assessments is the provider. It is taken on paper rather than online: the test "consists of two separate booklets", each lasting approximately 50 minutes, and Quest describes them as "two non-adaptive paper assessments". Because there is no adaptive section, Bexley-focused families do not need online pacing drills, and can use the familiarisation booklets Quest provides, which let a child practise filling in an OMR answer sheet. The test is "taken at the beginning of Year 6": for the September 2026 test (September 2027 entry), online registration ran from 1 March to midnight on 31 March 2026 and the test centres sat the test between 7 and 10 September 2026, so for Bexley families the Year 5 summer holiday leads straight into the test. See our Quest Assessment vs ISEB Common Pre-Test comparison for how the paper-based and adaptive formats differ in more depth.

Independent day schools publish their own dates. For September 2027 entry, Forest School, Trinity School and The Perse close registration between 16 October and 1 December 2026 and hold their assessments from 11 December 2026 to 16 January 2027, so the whole of the Year 5 summer term and the start of Year 6 come first. Each of the three sets written work as well as a computer-based test: a 30-minute written English paper at Forest, written papers at Trinity and a 40-minute creative writing task at The Perse.

The London 11+ Consortium runs one assessment for its 13 member schools. For September 2027 entry, applications to any Consortium school close on Friday 6 November 2026 and each candidate sits the assessment once, on one of Friday 27 November, Tuesday 1 December or Thursday 3 December 2026, in the autumn term of Year 6. It is "100 minutes in total" and online, taken at the candidate's current school where possible and otherwise at a Consortium school. Its six components run in a fixed order: 20 minutes of Maths, 10 of Non-Verbal Reasoning, 20 of English and 10 of Verbal Reasoning, then a break of up to 30 minutes, then 15 minutes of Problem Solving and 25 minutes of Creative Comprehension. "There is no extended writing required." Creative Comprehension asks candidates to "use information from a variety of different sources", and the Consortium points families to its familiarisation materials. See our Quest Assessment Part 2 guide for more on Creative Comprehension.

What Should the Six-Week Summer Before Year 6 Look Like?

The summer holiday between Year 5 and Year 6 comes just before the Bexley Selection Test, which is taken at the beginning of Year 6 (7 to 10 September in 2026). The independent schools and the Consortium in the table above assess between 27 November and 16 January, so the first three months of Year 6 come first.

A sensible approach: two short sessions a week (not daily drilling), continued daily reading throughout, and each target school's familiarisation test taken at a relaxed pace.

It is also worth planning past the test itself before the summer ends. Year 6 carries a second assessment season that has nothing to do with admissions: the Standards and Testing Agency has set the 2027 KS2 SATs week for 10–13 May 2027 (for the current Year 6), months after secondary places are allocated on National Offer Day. Our guide to managing Year 6 SATs and the 11 Plus in the same year puts both calendars on one September-to-July timeline, including how to split revision time once the autumn tests are behind you.

What if Your Child Starts Later Than This Timeline Suggests?

If your child is starting later than this timeline suggests — for example, beginning only in the autumn of Year 6 — the guidance is the same as for an earlier start. Quest's guidance describes the best preparation as "a strong grounding in what your child is already learning at school", combined with wide reading. For families also preparing for the ISEB Common Pre-Test for 13+ entry, much of the Year 5–6 groundwork — particularly adaptive-format pacing and NVR — can be usefully integrated across both tests; see our Quest Assessment Part 1 guide for more on the overlap. For guidance on the score your child should be aiming for at each stage, see our Quest Assessment scoring guide.

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