A weekly brief on the realities of London’s most selective schools.
Written by a team with a decade of experience inside London’s most competitive school systems, The Admissions Secretary offers honest insights and insider analysis into the 11+ admissions process at top London schools.
Who we are
We are a small core group of teachers, tutors and admissions staff, who have spent many years working within the admissions and academic departments of leading London schools. We have written and marked papers, sat in interview panels, and observed the decisions that affect your children each year.
Each week, we give you the information you need to understand your child’s 11 plus.
What you receive
A concise weekly briefing, with topics such as:
What leading preps are teaching this week - the exact syllabus!
Detail from last year’s exams - including the style and format of each paper, with example questions
Examples of writing from successful candidates - with markers’ notes and commentary
School-by-school admissions insights - from our network of those in the know
Which resources are worth buying - unsponsored and unbiased, for different schoolsPlus: guides, worksheets, question banks, annotated scripts, and occasional webinars.
PLUS: Guides, worksheets, question banks, annotated scripts, and occasional webinars.
What readers say
A note from the Head
After many years of admissions work, one becomes familiar with the patterns. The strongest candidates tend to reveal themselves quite plainly; the process is rarely as mysterious as it is made to appear. There is now a substantial cottage industry devoted to complicating the 11+, much of which bears little resemblance to the way decisions are made. In practice, the procedure remains straightforward: we read scripts, we meet children, and we discuss potential.
What you read here is simply an unvarnished account of how schools arrive at those decisions. This newsletter is our attempt to close the gap between perception and reality.