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The Exam

The FSCE 11+ exam

Both papers, the exact curriculum boundary the questions come from, how age standardisation produces a qualifying score, and what all of it changes about preparation. We track this exam at every school already running it.

Children currently in Year 5 sit the test in September 2027 for entry in September 2028.

The format

The FSCE assessment is two papers, both covering English and mathematics, both age-weighted.

Paper 1

Multiple choice

English and maths, answered by selecting from options. Tests breadth of curriculum knowledge and accuracy under time pressure.

Paper 2

Short written answers

The same subjects, but the child writes a constrained answer rather than choosing one. A guess cannot be disguised, and method matters.

The papers reward different things. Paper 1 forgives a shaky method: a child who half-remembers a rule can still spot the right option. Paper 2 removes that cover. A written answer either shows a method or it does not, so the gap Paper 1 lets a child bluff through is the one Paper 2 exposes.

Age weighting applies to both, so a summer-born child is not penalised for sitting the same paper as someone nearly a year older.

Some FSCE schools also set a creative writing paper, usually marked only for candidates who have already qualified, making it a tie-break rather than a hurdle. Trafford has not said whether it will.

What is examined

The Consortium has said the test draws on the Key Stage 2 English and mathematics national curriculum programmes of study, up to the end of Year 5.

That boundary is the most useful line in the announcement, and most coverage skims past it. The test is sat at the very start of Year 6 and examines nothing from that year. Everything on it has already been taught. This is a test of what has been secured, not what can be crammed.

Which puts a definable body of content in scope:

English to end of Year 5

  • Reading comprehension: retrieval, inference, prediction
  • Author's use of language and intent
  • Word classes, clauses and sentence structure
  • Punctuation including commas, brackets, dashes and apostrophes
  • Tense, modal verbs and the passive voice
  • Prefixes, suffixes and spelling patterns
  • Vocabulary in context, synonyms and shades of meaning

Mathematics to end of Year 5

  • Place value to a million, negative numbers, rounding
  • Formal written methods for all four operations
  • Factors, multiples, primes, squares and cubes
  • Fractions, decimals and percentages, and converting between them
  • Perimeter, area, volume and unit conversion
  • Angles, properties of shape, reflection and translation
  • Line graphs and tables, and multi-step word problems

None of it is secret, and that is the point. Reasoning sat outside the curriculum entirely. Every domain above is documented, taught and testable, which makes readiness a measurable quantity rather than a guess.

How the score works

Raw marks become an age-standardised score, which adjusts for the age gap within a school year.

Each school then sets its own qualifying threshold against that standardised score. One test, one score, but the bar is not the same everywhere, and clearing it is only the first stage: places are then allocated by each school's own catchment and oversubscription rules. Those differ sharply, and they are set out on each school's page.

One consequence is worth planning around: a qualifying score is a position relative to other children, not a percentage. Under GL, Trafford thresholds sat in the mid 330s out of 400. Whether FSCE lands in the same range is unknown, so anyone quoting a target FSCE score for a Trafford school today is quoting a number that does not exist.

This format is not new, only new to Trafford

"The exam is changing" is not the same as "nobody knows what happens now". FSCE assessments already run at these schools:

Clitheroe Royal is closest to home and the clearest example of an FSCE round in practice. We cover it on our Clitheroe Royal page.

What good preparation looks like now

When the test was reasoning-based, practice papers did most of the work: those skills were not taught at school, so exposure to the format mattered most.

A curriculum test inverts that. The useful question is no longer "has my child seen enough papers?" but "which Key Stage 2 objectives are actually secure, and which only look secure?"

Only the second can be answered with evidence. A child can get fractions right for weeks while applying a memorised procedure that collapses when the wording changes. Practice papers reward that procedure. Paper 2 does not.

Our assessment maps a child against that curriculum objective by objective before any teaching starts, so sessions target measured gaps rather than ground the child already holds. The same small team runs every session, so nothing found in an assessment is lost by March.

This exam suits how we already work: a published curriculum, a documented format running at eleven schools, and an outcome decided by something measurable.

Find out which objectives are actually secure.

A free diagnostic assessment maps your child against the Key Stage 2 English and maths curriculum, so preparation for the new test starts from evidence.

Book a free assessment Or download the parent guide

The assessment is free. You get a written report showing exactly where your child stands, and you’re welcome to use it to work on things at home, whether or not you book tuition. See a sample report.

FSCE 11+ exam: common questions

What does FSCE stand for?
Future Stories Community Enterprise. It is a not-for-profit organisation connected to Reading School, and it builds entrance assessments for selective state schools. The Trafford Consortium named it as its new test provider in July 2026.
How many papers is the FSCE test?
Two. Paper 1 is multiple choice covering English and maths. Paper 2 covers the same subjects but asks for short written answers rather than choosing from options. Both are age-weighted, so a child's raw marks are adjusted for how old they are on the day.
Is there a creative writing paper?
Some schools using FSCE set one, and where they do it is normally marked only for candidates who have already cleared the qualifying score. Whether the Trafford Consortium will include one has not been announced. We will update this page if it is.
What content does the test cover?
The Key Stage 2 English and mathematics national curriculum, up to the end of Year 5. That is the Consortium's own wording. Nothing from Year 6 is examined, which matters because the test is sat at the start of Year 6, before most of that year has been taught.
Is there still verbal and non-verbal reasoning?
No. Both are removed from the Trafford test. This is the single biggest change for families who have been preparing with reasoning practice papers.
How is the score worked out?
Raw marks are converted into an age-standardised score, which adjusts for the fact that a child born in August sits the same paper as a child born the previous September. Each school then sets its own qualifying threshold against that standardised score, so the same result can clear the bar at one school and not another.
Are there official FSCE past papers?
FSCE provides familiarisation material rather than a large bank of past papers, and material specific to the Trafford version has not been released yet. What does exist is the format as it runs at the schools already using FSCE, which is the closest guide available. Check the publication date and the school a paper relates to before buying anything, since practice material written for the old GL reasoning test will not prepare a child for this one.
Is a curriculum test easier than a reasoning test?
Not easier, different. Reasoning rewards pattern recognition and practice at a format. A curriculum test rewards genuinely secure English and maths, and it exposes gaps that reasoning practice hides. A child who has been drilled on non-verbal reasoning but has shaky fractions is in a weaker position than they were before.

Exam format details on this page were last checked against the Consortium's and Clitheroe Royal's own published information on. The Consortium has confirmed the provider and the content but has not yet published full specimen material for the Trafford test.