How to prepare for the Notre Dame School 11+

Exam format not yet verified. We have not confirmed this school's exam board or paper format from an official source. Where this guide describes the test, treat it as a working assumption and check the school's admissions page before relying on it.

The exam at a glance

Notre Dame School’s Year 7 entrance process is for girls applying to join the Senior School, with Year 7 described by the school as its main point of entry. For 2028 entry, our working assumption, not yet verified with the school, is that candidates sit the school’s own entrance assessment, using a GL-style format covering Maths, English, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning.

The test is computer-based and timed. That matters for preparation: children need more than secure subject knowledge. They also need confidence reading from a screen, moving steadily through short questions and making sensible decisions if a question feels tricky.

In practical terms, parents should expect an assessment that samples a broad range of skills rather than one narrow paper. A balanced preparation plan works best, with all four areas practised regularly.

Board/format: school’s own paper, using a GL-style mix
Subjects: Maths, English, Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning
Delivery: computer-based
Style: timed assessment, so speed and accuracy both matter
Main entry point: Year 7

The school also runs scholarship assessments alongside the Year 7 process. If your daughter is already in Notre Dame Junior School, the school says internal candidates usually progress to the Senior School subject to assessment of progress over Years 4 and 5, with formal offers made at the end of Year 5. Those pupils do not normally sit the entrance exam unless they are applying for an Academic Scholarship.

Because the assessment is completed on screen, it is sensible to include some computer-based practice in the months before the exam. Paper practice still helps for core skills, but children should not meet timed on-screen multiple-choice or short-answer work for the first time on the day itself.

Registration and key dates

For Notre Dame, registration is handled by the school through its admissions process rather than through a local authority grammar-school testing system. The school’s Year 7 admissions page sets out the procedure for joining at 11+.

For the current published cycle available at the time of writing, the school states that registration for September 2027 entry is now open. ElevenReady’s directory (not yet verified with the school) also confirms a non-refundable £150 registration fee.

For families aiming at September 2028 entry, the school had not yet published the full 2027 autumn testing timetable for that cohort on the pages reviewed. So the safest approach is to use the most recent published pattern as a guide and then check the school’s admissions page regularly.

Step	What to expect
Register with the school	Done via Notre Dame’s admissions process; a registration fee applies.
Registration opening	For 2027 entry, the school says registration is “Now Open”. For 2028 entry, opening dates were not yet fully published on the pages reviewed, so check the school page regularly and sign up for alerts.
Registration deadline	recorded in our directory (not yet verified with the school) for the current cycle as 2 November 2026.
Exam date	recorded in our directory (not yet verified with the school) as typically 20 November 2026 for the current cycle pattern.
Scholarship applications	recorded in our directory (not yet verified with the school) as opening on 1 September 2026 for the current cycle.
Scholarship assessments	recorded in our directory (not yet verified with the school) as taking place in the week commencing 23 November 2026.
Results/offers	The school’s current information says January 2027 for Year 7 and scholarship offers.

If your daughter is applying in the 2027 autumn for 2028 entry, expect the process to follow a similar shape: registration usually live by the autumn term, assessment in late autumn, and offers in January. Treat that as typical timing only until the school publishes the 2028-entry dates.

It is also worth noting the wider admissions calendar items the school has publicised for the present cycle, including a Senior School Discovery Day, open events in October, an offer-holder event at the end of January, and a welcome event later in the school year. These are helpful milestones for families comparing schools and planning visits.

Useful Notre Dame resources:

Who can apply: catchment and admissions

Notre Dame School is an independent girls’ school, so this is not a grammar-school catchment system run by a local authority. On the evidence reviewed, the school does not publish a state-school style catchment map or distance cut-off for Year 7 entry.

What the school does make clear is that Year 7 is the main entry point to the Senior School. External applicants apply through the school’s admissions procedure and sit the entrance assessment.

For families already in the junior part of the school, the position is different. the information in our directory (not yet verified with the school) states that internal Notre Dame candidates progress to Senior School subject to assessment of progress over Years 4 and 5. Formal offers are made at the end of Year 5, and those pupils do not need to sit the entrance exam unless they are applying for an Academic Scholarship.

The school also charges a £150 non-refundable registration fee for the admissions process.

We did not find an official published figure on the pages reviewed for:

the number of Year 7 places available to external candidates
the number of applications typically received
any published score threshold or pass mark
any distance or postcode priority area

If these details matter for your decision, check the Year 7 admissions page directly and ask the admissions team. Independent schools often make decisions using the whole admissions process rather than a single published cut-off score.

A month-by-month preparation plan

For a child sitting the exam in autumn of Year 6, the most effective preparation is steady and calm rather than intense. Below is a realistic plan working back through Year 5 and into Year 6. It assumes a broadly able child who is new to this style of testing.

January to March of Year 5

Keep preparation light: around 1 to 1.5 hours a week split over short sessions.
Focus on reading fluency, secure arithmetic, spelling, vocabulary and puzzle-type thinking.
Begin gentle familiarisation with verbal and non-verbal reasoning so the formats do not feel strange later.
If your child is not used to working on a computer for tests, start with brief on-screen tasks.

April to June of Year 5

Increase to 1.5 to 2 hours a week.
Build topic knowledge in Maths and English rather than rushing into lots of full papers.
For verbal reasoning, work on instructions, code-style tasks, letter patterns, vocabulary and careful checking.
For non-verbal reasoning, practise spotting visual rules and describing patterns aloud before answering.
Start short timed bursts: for example, 8 to 12 minutes on one skill at a time.

Summer holidays before Year 6

Aim for 2 to 3 hours a week, spread across several shorter sessions.
This is a good time to balance all four subjects.
Introduce mixed practice so your child learns to switch between question styles.
Do a small amount of timed on-screen work each week.
Keep one or two days completely free from 11+ work to avoid fatigue.

September of Year 6

Move to 3 to 4 hours a week if your child is coping well.
Now is the time to begin more regular timed sections and the first full-length practice papers.
Review mistakes carefully: was the issue knowledge, rushing, screen navigation, or misunderstanding the instructions?
Keep a simple error log so weak areas are revisited rather than forgotten.

October of Year 6

Stay at 3 to 4 hours a week, with one full paper or equivalent timed session most weeks.
Practise pacing. Children often lose marks by lingering too long on one question.
Continue reading high-quality fiction and nonfiction; this quietly strengthens English and verbal reasoning.
If applying for scholarship as well, check the school’s separate timetable and demands early.

November of Year 6, just before the exam

Taper slightly in the final week.
Use brief confidence-building revision rather than cramming.
Repeat familiar formats, mental maths, vocabulary review and a little on-screen practice.
Prioritise sleep, routine and calm.

Children do not all need the same volume of preparation. A bright child who reads widely and is secure in Key Stage 2 maths may need less than a child who is meeting verbal and non-verbal reasoning for the first time. Consistency matters more than very long sessions.

Subject by subject: what to practise

Maths

For Notre Dame’s GL-style assessment, maths preparation should centre on secure Key Stage 2 knowledge used quickly and accurately. Practise number facts, the four operations, place value, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio basics, simple algebraic thinking, measures, time, perimeter, area and data handling. Include multi-step problems, because timed tests often reward children who can decide efficiently what a question is really asking.

Good practice means mixing straightforward arithmetic with reasoning. Encourage your child to estimate before answering, spot when an answer seems unreasonable and move on if a question is taking too long.

English

English preparation should include both comprehension and core literacy. Build reading stamina with varied texts: fiction, narrative nonfiction, biography, travel writing and age-appropriate articles. Practise retrieving information, inferring meaning, explaining word choice and understanding tone.

Alongside reading, keep working on spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary. Because this is a timed computer-based assessment, children should be used to reading carefully on screen and selecting answers without losing concentration.

Verbal Reasoning

Verbal reasoning usually tests how well a child can work with language patterns, letter sequences, codes, classifications, analogies and instructions under time pressure. It is less about school-taught content and more about method, precision and vocabulary.

The best approach is to learn one question type at a time, then return to mixed practice once confidence improves. Encourage your child to underline or repeat the instruction in their own words before answering. Many mistakes come from misunderstanding what the question wants, not from a lack of ability.

Non-Verbal Reasoning

Non-verbal reasoning focuses on shapes, patterns, sequences, rotations, reflections and visual relationships. Children often improve fastest when they learn to describe what they can see before choosing an answer: for example, what has changed in shape, position, shading or number.

Practise common pattern families repeatedly, then mix them so your child has to identify the rule quickly. Since the Notre Dame assessment is on screen, include some digital visual-reasoning practice as well, so looking closely at diagrams on a monitor feels normal.

Practice papers and mock exams

Practice papers are most useful when they are used as a learning tool rather than as a score-chasing exercise. Start untimed when your child is meeting a new question type, then add short timed sections, and only later move to full papers.

A simple routine works well:

Learn the question type.
Do a short set untimed.
Repeat with a time limit.
Review every error.
Revisit the same skill a few days later.

For Notre Dame, make sure at least some practice is completed on screen. Children who are perfectly capable on paper can lose time if they are not comfortable reading from a monitor, clicking answers accurately and keeping calm in a timed digital format.

Mock exams can also help, especially in the early autumn of Year 6. They are useful not because they predict an exact outcome, but because they show whether your child can manage timing, focus and recovery after a difficult section. One or two is usually enough for most children.

Use these free resources:

When reviewing a paper, look beyond the raw mark. Ask:

Were errors caused by knowledge gaps or by rushing?
Did your child understand the instructions?
Were some sections much slower on screen than on paper?
Is there a pattern, such as weak vocabulary or careless arithmetic?

That kind of review leads to much better progress than simply sitting more and more papers.

On the day

Keep the day simple. The aim is for your daughter to arrive settled, fed, hydrated and with no sense of last-minute panic.

Check the school’s joining instructions in advance and leave plenty of travel time.
Have a normal breakfast with slow-release energy rather than a sugary treat.
Avoid doing a full paper that morning. A few easy warm-up questions are plenty.
Remind your child that timed tests are designed to feel brisk. It is normal not to feel that every question was perfect.
Encourage her to keep moving if stuck and to return mentally to the next question rather than dwelling on one difficult item.

For a computer-based test, it helps to remind children of a few practical habits: read the whole instruction, click carefully, watch the timer without obsessing over it, and keep posture relaxed so concentration lasts.

After the exam, try not to conduct a detailed post-mortem in the car home. Most children remember the hardest questions most vividly, which can give a misleading impression of how the paper went. A calm, ordinary rest of the day is usually best.

After the exam: results, allocation and appeals

For the current published cycle, Notre Dame indicates that Year 7 and scholarship offers are made in January 2027. For families applying for 2028 entry, expect a similar pattern unless the school publishes a change.

As an independent school, Notre Dame’s process is different from state secondary allocation on National Offer Day. Families receive the school’s decision directly from Notre Dame and then decide whether to accept the place by the school’s stated deadline. the information in our directory (not yet verified with the school) for the current cycle gives an offer and scholarship acceptance deadline in March 2027.

The school also publicises an offer-holder event, which can help children picture themselves there before final decisions are made.

We did not find a published Notre Dame page setting out a formal appeals process in the same way a state school would. Independent schools may have review or complaints procedures, but they do not operate the same statutory school-admission appeal system used by maintained schools and academies. If your daughter is unsuccessful and you want feedback, the sensible step is to contact the admissions team politely and ask whether any further information can be shared and whether a waiting list operates.

If your child is applying to several schools, keep careful note of each school’s separate acceptance deadlines and deposit requirements, as these often differ in the independent sector.

What has changed recently

From the official and reputable sources reviewed, the clearest current updates are procedural rather than structural. For the present admissions cycle, the school has publicised that registration is open for September 2027 entry, with scholarship applications opening on 1 September 2026, scholarship assessments in the week commencing 23 November 2026, and Year 7 and scholarship offers in January 2027.

We did not find an officially announced recent change to the Year 7 entrance board, catchment rules, or published place numbers on the pages reviewed. For 2028 entry, use the school’s admissions page as the first reference point in case the school updates format or dates during 2027.

Frequently asked questions

Does Notre Dame School use GL Assessment for 11+?

For 2028 entry, our working assumption, not yet verified with the school, is that Notre Dame uses the school’s own paper in a GL-style format across Maths, English, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning.

Is the Notre Dame 11+ done on paper or on computer?

It is computer-based for 2028 entry, so children should practise working accurately and briskly on screen, not only on paper.

Do internal Notre Dame pupils sit the Year 7 entrance exam?

Usually no. Internal Notre Dame candidates progress subject to assessment of progress over Years 4 and 5, and do not need to sit the entrance exam unless applying for an Academic Scholarship.

What is the registration fee for Notre Dame Year 7 entry?

The school charges a £150 non-refundable registration fee.

Does Notre Dame have a catchment area for Year 7 entry?

We did not find a published state-style catchment or distance rule on the pages reviewed. As an independent school, admissions are handled directly by the school.

When are Notre Dame Year 7 offers made?

For the current published cycle, the school indicates that Year 7 offers are made in January. Check the admissions page for the exact date for your daughter’s year of entry.

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Sources

Notre Dame School – Year 7 (11+) admissions procedure: Year 7 is the main entry point to the Senior School; applications are handled by the school through its admissions process; registration for September 2027 entry is now open; the page covers Year 7 admissions and scholarship process/timing generally.
Notre Dame School website: Notre Dame School is an independent girls’ school in Cobham, Surrey; the school has Senior School and ND6/Sixth Form information.
Notre Dame School – Open Events: The school publicises open events and discovery events in the admissions cycle.

Preparing for other schools in Surrey

Written by ElevenReady from the school's published information and reviewed by a person before publishing. Last reviewed 4 October 2026. Exam arrangements change. Check the school's admissions page for the current year.