What is a prep school?

Preparatory school. The word is doing real work rather than decorating: the school exists to get children into a senior independent school, and the exam at the end shapes the last two years of it in a way that has no equivalent in the state sector.

That is also why the finishing age varies. A prep aiming at 11 entry is running a different final year from one aiming at 13.

The traditional structure has three stages, though the boundaries vary by school.

A school that runs from 3 to 13 will usually describe itself as pre-prep and prep, or as a junior school if it is attached to a senior school. A school that takes children only from 7 or 8 is a prep in the older sense, and its Year 3 intake is a significant entry point.

The infant stage: Reception to Year 2, ages 4 to 7. It may be part of the prep school, a separate school under the same governors, or a standalone school that feeds several preps.

Pre-preps assess for entry informally, usually through a play session or a morning in class rather than a test. The distinction from the prep proper matters mostly for admissions: a child already in the pre-prep normally moves up without reassessment, so the four-year-old entry point is often the easier door.

A prep school is a type of private school, covering the primary years. In the UK "private" and "independent" mean the same thing, and everything true of independent schools generally is true of preps: fees, their own admissions, their own term dates, registration with the Department for Education and inspection against the independent school standards.

What makes a prep a prep is the age range and the exit, not a different legal status.

To a senior independent school, which is the point of the exercise. The two main routes:

• At 11, by the senior school's own entrance exam, typically sat in the

autumn or January of Year 6, with an interview and a reference from the prep. This is the usual route for girls' schools and most co-educational day schools, and it is why many preps now finish at 11.

• At 13, by Common Entrance or the senior school's own assessment, sat in

Year 8, usually preceded by a pre-test two years earlier. This is the traditional route to boarding schools and many boys' schools.

Some preps are attached to a senior school and offer an internal route through; some are independent of any senior school and send pupils to a spread of destinations. The school's leavers list, usually on its website, tells you which.

The set of exams taken for entry to many senior independent schools at 13. It is set by the Independent Schools Examinations Board, and three things about how it runs surprise people:

• The prep school enters the pupil and hosts the exam. Children sit the

papers at their own school, among their own year group, not at the senior school.

• The senior school marks it. Scripts are sent to the senior school on the

day of the examination, and it marks them and applies its own standard. There is no national pass mark, so the same script can clear one school and not another.

• There are three sessions a year, in November, January and May and June,

rather than one fixed national date.

Common Entrance at 13 is sat in Year 8, and its specifications shape the teaching across Years 7 and 8.

This is the part of the timetable that catches families out, because it runs years ahead of the entry it decides.

The ISEB Common Pre-Tests are four adaptive, multiple-choice, online tests covering maths, English comprehension and grammar, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. Because they adapt to the child's answers, no two children see the same questions, and results are age-standardised so a September-born child is not flattered against a July-born one.

A child normally sits them once, in Year 6 or Year 7, and the result is shared with the senior schools the family is applying to. Most commonly they are taken in Year 6 for entry at 11. Some highly selective senior schools use them earlier in the process for entry at 13, so a conditional offer can be made two years before the child arrives, with Common Entrance still to come. The testing window runs from the autumn term into the spring term.

The practical consequence for a family at a prep finishing at 13: the decision that matters most may be taken when your child is ten.

• Fees. Prep schools are independent schools and charge for each term. VAT

at the standard rate of 20 per cent has applied to fees since 1 January 2025.

• The year. Terms are shorter, half terms are longer, and there are exeats

at boarding preps. A prep's autumn half term is often a week and a half or two weeks, starting a week before the state schools' break.

• The day. Longer, with after-school games, clubs and prep, meaning

homework, supervised at school. Saturday school and Saturday fixtures exist at some.

• The curriculum. Not bound by the national curriculum. Languages from an

early age, classics at some, and a strong emphasis on sport, music and drama are typical.

• Class sizes. Usually smaller.
• The admin. Fixtures, matches, trips, concerts, uniform lists, exeat

dates, entrance-exam registrations and kit lists arrive from several directions at once, and the deadlines are real. Most preps publish a live calendar; many use a parent portal for fees and forms; almost all still send a great deal by email.

Directly to the school. There is no council application, no catchment and no national deadline, which is the biggest procedural difference from the state system and the one that most often costs a family a place.

Most preps run a registration list, an assessment day for the main entry points, at 4, 7 and sometimes 11, and rolling admissions where there is space. For the popular ones, registering a year or two ahead is normal. Sibling policies vary; ask rather than assume.

Yes, on the same basis as any other independent school in England. Preps belonging to one of the associations affiliated to the Independent Schools Council are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate; those outside those associations, which the Department for Education calls non-association independent schools, are inspected by Ofsted. Both measure the school against the same independent school standards.

The sector also has its own body, IAPS, formerly the Independent Association of Prep Schools. It is a heads' association rather than a regulator, with over 650 prep and junior schools in membership, and a school qualifies if the majority of its pupils are of prep age, meaning roughly 3 to 11 or 3 to 13. Membership is a reasonable signal of an established school; it is not an inspection outcome and should not be read as one.

From the school's own website. Preps set their own dates, the dates move year to year, and a prep attached to a senior school does not always run the same calendar as the senior school, so a date copied from the wrong page is a real risk.

Cyril publishes term dates pages for 65 independent schools, each built from that school's own published calendar. 56 of those take children from seven or younger and continue past 13, so they cover the prep years inside one school, which is where most prep-age children in the registry sit today. None of the 65 is yet a standalone prep, so if your child is at an independent prep that is not part of an all-through school, it is not there yet.

Either way the harder problem is not finding the dates once. It is that fixtures, exeats, kit lists and exam registrations arrive by email across a term from several different senders, and the deadlines are real. Cyril reads what the school sends and puts the dates where both parents can see them.