A UK independent school glossary every parent eventually needs

This is the glossary we'd hand a friend who asked what any of it actually means. Each term gets the practical version, not the textbook one, and we link to deeper guides where they exist.

Admissions and entrance assessments

Common Entrance

Common Entrance (often shortened to CE) is the set of exams sat in May and June of Year 8, when children are 12 or 13. It covers English, maths, science, a modern language, and optional subjects including Latin, history, geography, and religious studies. The papers are set by ISEB but marked by the receiving senior school, which sets its own minimum grade threshold and weights different subjects differently. For when each route makes sense, see our 11+ vs 13+ entry guide.

One thing parents miss: 13+ entry (Year 9 start) via Common Entrance is statistically less competitive at the same schools than 11+ entry. The same school admits far more children at 13+ than at 11+, and the bar is different. If your child is borderline at 11+, the 13+ route is often the better path.

What it means for your child: at selective senior schools that operate the 13+ route, Common Entrance confirms the conditional offer issued after the ISEB Pre-Test in Year 6. The Pre-Test gates entry; Common Entrance secures the place. The pass-rate at most senior schools is high — the heavy filtering happens at pre-test in Year 6, not at Common Entrance in Year 8.

ISEB Pre-Test

The ISEB Common Pre-Test is a computer-adaptive assessment sat in October or November of Year 6, usually at the child's current prep school. It tests English, mathematics, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning, and adapts the difficulty as your child works through it: get a question right and the next is harder, get one wrong and the next is easier. Most selective 13+ senior schools use the result to issue conditional offers, which are then confirmed when your child passes Common Entrance in Year 8.

Test once, used at multiple schools. The ISEB Pre-Test is a pre-filtering funnel: schools share results, so your child sits the test once and the score is referenced by every school they've registered with through ISEB.

What it means for your child: this is the gating assessment for the 13+ route. It can't be rescheduled for individual pupils, so familiarity with the format matters as much as academic preparation. Mock pre-tests are available and worth doing — being thrown by the adaptive timing on the day is a common loss. The 11+ vs 13+ entry guide goes into how it sits alongside Common Entrance in practice.

UKiset

UKiset (UK Independent Schools' Entry Test) is an online adaptive assessment used by many UK boarding schools to evaluate international applicants. It tests English, mathematics, and reasoning, with results benchmarked against UK pupils so receiving schools can read your child's score against the cohort they'll be joining. It costs around £295 and results arrive within three working days. The test can be taken at registered centres in many countries, or online from home with proctoring.

What it actually does: UKiset lets a school compare a child schooled in the Indian curriculum, the IB, the American system, and the Singaporean system on the same scale. The receiving school reads everyone's score against UK pupils, so the comparison is meaningful regardless of where the child has come from. A note on terminology — "reasoning" is UK educational shorthand for verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, and quantitative reasoning. In many other systems these are called psychometric or aptitude tests. Same thing, different name.

What it means for your child: if you're applying from overseas, several boarding schools will ask for UKiset before they'll consider an application. Some schools accept their own assessments instead. A UKiset result is valid for two years, so a test taken in Year 5 can carry through to a 13+ application. The UK boarding schools parent guide covers how UKiset fits into the broader international application picture.

Taster day vs open day

Open days and taster days look similar from the outside, but they serve different purposes. An open day is the school's pitch to prospective parents — typically a tour, a head's talk, and a chance to see classrooms, sports facilities, and current pupils. The school is selling. A taster day is your child's day at the school: lessons attended, lunch with current pupils, sometimes a short written task. The school is assessing.

What it means for your child: open day is theirs to sell. Taster day is theirs to assess. Dress your child accordingly, and brief them that this counts. Some schools fold a taster day into the formal selection; others use it more loosely. Ask the admissions office which model the school uses before you go.

Qualifications and exams

Predicted grades

Predicted grades are a teacher's estimate of what your child will achieve in their public exams — GCSEs at the end of Year 11, A-levels at the end of Year 13. They're not the marks on the day. They're the school's best read on where your child is heading, based on classwork, mock papers, and progress through the syllabus.

What they mean for your child: schools start using them from Year 10 onwards for sixth-form planning, and from Year 12 for university applications. Predicted A-level grades are submitted by the school as part of the UCAS application, and universities make conditional offers against them ("AAB at A-level"). If the predicted grades are too low, your child won't be offered the courses they want; if they're set too high and the actual results miss them, the offer is at risk.

They're revised as the year goes on. Schools usually issue them at least once a year and update them after each round of mocks. Some schools predict ambitiously to push pupils; others predict conservatively to protect offer outcomes. Neither philosophy is wrong, but it's worth understanding which your child's school favours.

If you think a predicted grade looks low, it's reasonable to ask the subject teacher how it was derived and what it would take to move it. Most schools welcome the conversation.

If your child's actual results miss their predicted grades and they don't make their firm university offer, the insurance choice (a lower-grade safety offer) typically activates automatically. If both firm and insurance are missed, your child enters Clearing in August — a separate UCAS process for matching missed-offer applicants to remaining university places. Clearing fills fast in the first 48 hours; have a plan ready by results day, not after it.

Mocks

Mocks are internal exams set by each school. They're not national, they're not standardised, and the marks won't appear on any certificate your child receives. Each school sets its own papers, marks them, and decides when to run them.

What it means for your child: mocks feed predicted grades, which feed UCAS applications. The marks themselves don't follow your child anywhere, but the predicted-grade decision they support absolutely does. There are typically two main rounds (pre-GCSE in Year 11 and pre-A-level in Year 13), and most schools run them in November and February of the exam year. Some schools run only one round, others run three.

Parents sometimes ask whether mocks are compulsory. The honest answer: schools require their pupils to sit them, but that requirement is the school's, not the exam board's. Your child can't skip them and expect a sensible predicted grade.

GCSE

GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) are the national subject exams sat at the end of Year 11, when most children are 15 or 16, broadly the UK equivalent of the Indian class 10 ICSE/CBSE exams or the Singaporean O-levels, taken at a similar age. UK independent schools often offer the IGCSE (International GCSE) instead: same level, taken at the same age, slightly different syllabus often more familiar to families coming from international schools. Grades run from 9 (highest) to 1; the 9–1 system replaced the old A*–G grades in 2017. Some schools run a mix: IGCSE for English and maths, GCSE for sciences, or vice versa. Don't assume it's all one or all the other; ask which papers your child will sit in each subject.

What it means for your child: GCSE results don't lead to university directly. They're the foundation that lets a student move on to A-levels or the IB at age 16, which then lead to university applications. Most schools require minimum grades in specific subjects to study A-levels in those areas — typically a 6 or 7 in the subject your child wants to continue. The UK school years and forms guide maps GCSE years against the form-name system used by traditional independent schools.

A-level

A-levels are the subject exams sat at the end of Year 13 (the Upper Sixth), when most pupils are 17 or 18. Most students take three or four subjects across two years, having narrowed down from the broader GCSE base. Some schools also offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) as an alternative sixth-form qualification, but A-levels remain the dominant route at most UK independent schools. Subject choice typically locks in by the end of Year 11; switching after the first term of Year 12 is possible but disruptive.

What it means for your child: A-level grades are the currency of UK university admissions. They're graded A* to E (with U for ungraded), and university offers are typically set at three subject grades like AAB or A*AA. The UK school years and forms guide covers how Lower Sixth (Year 12) and Upper Sixth (Year 13) sit within the form system.

IB (International Baccalaureate)

The International Baccalaureate Diploma — usually just called the IB — is an alternative to A-levels at sixth form. It's offered by under 100 UK schools but disproportionately by independents, and it sits alongside A-levels at the same handful of senior schools. Pupils take six subjects rather than three or four, plus three additional components: Theory of Knowledge, an Extended Essay, and CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service).

What it means for your child: the IB is broader and more demanding in workload than A-levels; A-levels are deeper in fewer subjects. Universities accept both qualifications, sometimes with different point requirements. Top universities publish equivalent thresholds for each. Choice between IB and A-levels is typically made before sixth form starts, often during Year 11, and once made it's hard to switch.

If your shortlist includes any school offering IB, you need a one-paragraph view on it before sixth form open days. We're not going to tell you which is better — that's a child-and-family fit decision, not a categorical one.

For applicants currently in an overseas IB programme: there's no IB-to-IB transfer pathway at UK independent schools. You apply through the same 16+ route as everyone else, with the same entrance tests and grade requirements. The advantage isn't a separate door — it's that continuing IB at sixth form aligns more naturally with the curriculum your child has already been studying than switching to A-levels in the same window.

The three additional components are part of why the IB feels heavier than A-levels. Theory of Knowledge is a course on how knowledge is structured across disciplines, taught throughout the diploma. The Extended Essay is a 4,000-word independent research piece on a topic the student chooses. CAS — Creativity, Activity, Service — is roughly 150 hours of activities outside academic study, documented and reflected on. Universities read all three when they assess an IB applicant; they're not optional.

UCAS

UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) is the single national portal for UK undergraduate applications. Your child applies once through UCAS to up to five universities. Each application includes the school's predicted grades, a personal statement, and a teacher reference.

What it means for your child: the standard deadline is late January in the year of entry. For Oxford, Cambridge, and most medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses, the deadline is mid-October — three months earlier. Universities respond with offers, usually conditional on A-level results, and your child accepts a firm choice and an insurance choice in the spring. Once A-level results land in August, conditional offers convert to firm places — or the insurance choice activates if the firm offer is missed. International applications run on the same timetable but with extra steps: visa, qualifications equivalence, English-language proof at most universities.

Money and fees

Scholarship vs bursary

These two get confused constantly, and the confusion can cost families money.

A scholarship is a merit award: academic, music, sport, art, drama, or all-rounder. The school assesses your child against criteria specific to the scholarship; you don't have to disclose income. At most independent schools today, the financial value of a scholarship is modest — often a few thousand pounds off the fees, sometimes nothing at all. The recognition matters; the cheque doesn't make a real dent.

A bursary is need-based. The school looks at your household income, savings, outgoings, and other dependants, and works out how much support you need. Bursaries can cover anything from 10% to 100% of fees. They're means-tested every year, so the figure can change as your circumstances change.

The means-testing is thorough. Schools look at household income, savings, outgoings, second properties, the cars on your drive, the holidays you take. Reviews are annual; in most schools the award can only shrink year-on-year. The assumption is that your circumstances are improving. Some schools differ; check the wording.

What it means for your child: if fees are a stretch, the bursary is the lever. Many families assume they earn too much to qualify and never apply. Thresholds are higher than most expect — at many schools, household incomes well into the £80,000 to £100,000 range still qualify for a partial award. Some schools encourage scholarship candidates to apply for a bursary at the same time, which is how an academic award ends up paying the actual fees rather than just the recognition.

VAT on school fees

From 1 January 2025, UK independent school fees became liable for 20% VAT. The change applies to tuition, boarding, and any payments made in advance for future terms.

What it means for your child's fee bill: most parents didn't see the full 20% rise. Schools can recover some VAT on their own purchases — building works, supplies, services they buy in — and the typical pass-through to parents has been 14 to 20%. The sector-wide average landed around 14%; some schools passed through the full 20%. A school that charged £20,000 a year before VAT now charges roughly £22,800 to £24,000. Some schools absorbed more, some less; check what your school's bursar's office actually communicated, because the headline rate is not what most families pay.

Prepayments — paying for future years up front — used to be a tax-efficient option for some families. The rules now treat the future supply as the trigger for VAT regardless of when the cash was handed over, so prepayments made before January 2025 for fees that fell due after that date were caught. Specific cases vary; if your family used this approach, talk it through with a qualified adviser rather than relying on the school's general guidance.

Mid-year billing changes were the most disruptive: bills jumping in the middle of an academic year that families had already budgeted for. Most schools now plan annual fee letters around the new shape, but the first 18 months of the change have been bumpy.

Bursary thresholds shifted at some schools as a knock-on effect. A few schools widened their bursary eligibility criteria to keep effective fees roughly stable for borderline-affordability families; a few absorbed the impact entirely; most made no change to bursaries and let the headline rise pass through. If your family currently holds a bursary or applied for one in the last two years, it's worth asking the bursar's office whether the post-VAT calculation has been adjusted for your circumstances.

Term's notice

Term's notice is the contractual requirement to give a school one full term's written notice before withdrawing your child. Miss it, and you pay a full term's fees even if your child doesn't attend that term. The fee-in-lieu invoice usually lands after the child has already left — it's the single most common five-figure surprise in independent schooling.

What it means for your child: if you're considering moving schools, the notice deadline matters more than the move itself. The deadline is typically the end of the previous term, not the start of the term you want to leave. To take your child out at the end of summer term, you usually need to give written notice by the end of the previous half term — Easter holidays at the latest. To take them out at the start of January, you give notice before October half term.

Schools' wording differs. Some require the notice in writing to the head, sometimes by registered post or recorded delivery. Email may not count. The deposit you paid on entry doesn't offset the term's notice fee — they're separate obligations. The wording in your specific contract is what counts.

The honest version: open your parent contract right now and find the notice clause. It's somewhere near the back, usually in the financial schedule. Read it cold, before you might need it. The parents who get hit with a term's notice fee almost never had a school being unreasonable — they just hadn't read the clause carefully when they signed.

Notice can also work in reverse. Schools can give parents notice in specific circumstances — sustained non-payment, serious behaviour issues, irreconcilable safeguarding concerns. The contract usually sets out the school's grounds and the notice period it will give you, which may be shorter than the term's notice you owe them. If you're entering a difficult conversation with a school, the contract is the document to read first; it tells you both sides' rights before either of you starts negotiating.

The school year

Half term

Half term is the break in the middle of each UK school term. There are three terms per year — autumn, spring, summer — and each has its own half term. The dates rarely line up across schools.

What it means for your child: October half term is typically the longest, often a full week. Spring half term in February is usually a week. Summer half term in late May or early June is sometimes a long weekend, sometimes skipped entirely — varies by school. Boarding schools often run trips during half term that day pupils don't take part in.

Independent schools and state schools don't necessarily share half-term weeks. If you have siblings split across the two systems, your half-term weeks may not align — check both calendars before booking flights or family travel.

Exeats

Exeats are weekends when full boarders go home, to a guardian, or to a host family. Most boarding schools schedule three or four exeats per term, typically running from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening.

What it means for your child: exeats need planning. International families need flights or guardians arranged well in advance — exeat dates are usually published with the term calendar a year ahead. UK families need to coordinate pickup and drop-off, sometimes from the school direct, sometimes from a station the school runs a coach to. Younger boarders typically need a named adult to collect them.

A "closed exeat" weekend means boarders stay at school. The school plans trips, matches, or activities for that weekend, and the boarding houses run as usual. Closed exeats often sit early in the autumn term, before younger children are settled enough to travel home regularly.

The honest version: three or four weekends a term doesn't sound like much until you're booking flights for an overseas family. Plan early.

Parents evenings

Parents evenings are scheduled meetings with each subject teacher, usually 5-minute slots booked online in advance. Most schools run two or three a year — one in each main reporting cycle.

What it means for your child: bookings open and fill within hours, especially for the most-asked-for teachers. Book early. Bring a list of questions; don't waste the 5 minutes on small talk. If you have specific concerns — a flagging grade, a pastoral worry, a subject choice question — name them upfront and ask the teacher's view, not for general feedback.

Format varies. Some schools run face-to-face evenings, some hybrid, some fully remote. Remote works well for international parents but timezone alignment is the challenge — UK 6 to 9 in the evening is overnight in much of Asia and Australia. Some schools schedule international-friendly slots; ask the school office whether yours does.

If you can't attend a slot, ask the teacher to email a short summary instead. Most will. Don't let the calendar mismatch mean no contact at all.

School life and community

Form group / year group / tutor group

These three terms describe overlapping but distinct things, and parents new to the UK system often hit them mixed up.

Year group is the same age cohort — Year 7, Year 8, and so on. Every child starts in a single year group when they join the school and typically stays in it through to the end of their time there.

Form group is the smaller class within a year group, typically 15 to 25 pupils. A year group might be split into three or four form groups depending on intake size.

Tutor group is the same as form group at most schools, with a form tutor or tutor as the responsible adult. The tutor is your first point of contact for everything pastoral and academic, before anything escalates to the head of year or the head.

At smaller schools, form group and tutor group are identical. At larger ones they may differ. Check the school's structure if it matters.

House system

The house system is a cross-year sub-grouping. Each pupil is assigned to a house when they join the school, alongside pupils from other year groups. Houses are used for inter-house competitions, sports days, and sometimes pastoral support.

What it means for your child: house allocation matters more or less depending on the school's culture. At some schools, house identity is a strong part of school life — points, awards, weekly assemblies. At others, the house is little more than a Year 7 form-group tag.

At boarding schools, the house is also where the child lives — one of the most consequential allocations they'll experience at the school. The housemaster or housemistress is often resident in the boarding house and carries the bulk of pastoral responsibility for the boarders in their care. Day schools tend to use houses more lightly.

If you're touring a school, ask current pupils what their house actually does for them. The honest answer ranges from "everything" to "almost nothing".

Pre-prep

Pre-prep schools take children from age 4 to age 7 — Reception through Year 2. The age range sits before prep school, which runs from Year 3 onwards. Pre-prep can be a standalone school or a section within a larger school that includes a prep beyond it.

What it means for your child: parents registering for 4+ in London are typically registering for a pre-prep place. The handover age to the next stage differs at 7+, 8+, 11+, and 13+ depending on each school's structure — some pre-preps feed automatically into a paired prep school, others don't.

Some London pre-prep registration lists open when a child is just 12 to 18 months old. Not every pre-prep operates on that timeline, but it's common enough that 4+ planning often starts before a child is reliably walking. If you've recently moved to London or are considering it, look at registration cut-offs for your shortlisted pre-preps before anything else.

Note: "prep" on its own usually means supervised homework time, not preparatory school. Context tells you which. A teacher saying "prep is due Monday" means homework; a school saying "we feed into senior schools after prep" means the school stage.

Clubs and wraparound care

Clubs and wraparound care are what schools offer outside the classroom timetable to extend the day for working parents. Breakfast clubs typically open from 7:30am, after-school clubs run until 5:30 or 6pm, and many schools offer holiday clubs during half terms and longer breaks.

What it means for your child: provision varies enormously. Some schools include wraparound in the headline fee; some charge separately at £5 to £15 a session, payable termly. Holiday clubs are nearly always extra, sometimes through a third-party provider rather than the school itself. Activity clubs during the school day — chess, debate, drama, sport — vary the same way: some included, some extra, some by sign-up only.

If wraparound care matters to your working schedule, ask the admissions office for a clear breakdown of what's included and what costs extra.

Care and support

Pastoral care

Pastoral care is the school's emotional, behavioural, and wellbeing support — the everyday work of looking after children beyond the classroom. The structure varies, but most independent schools have at minimum: a form tutor for each form group, a head of year for the whole year cohort, a school counsellor available on referral, and a designated safeguarding lead with statutory responsibility.

What it means for your child: at a day school, the form tutor is the everyday point of contact and most pastoral matters route through them. The school counsellor is available for children who need it, usually by referral from the tutor or head of year. Bigger schools tend to have specialist pastoral roles (wellbeing officers, mental-health first-aiders, sometimes chaplains) that smaller schools fold into the tutor role.

At a boarding school, the housemaster or housemistress carries the pastoral responsibility for the boarders in their house, often living in the boarding house itself. Matron is also active in younger boarding houses, particularly for day-to-day care: handling uniform, looking after sick children, helping with homesickness. The pastoral structure in boarding is more comprehensive by necessity; the children are at school all the time.

The honest trade-off: bigger schools sometimes feel less personal but have more specialist resource. Smaller schools sometimes feel more pastoral but have fewer specialists. Some schools have a strong pastoral reputation; the only reliable test is to ask current parents — not what they tell you on the open day — what happened the last time their child needed real support.

SEND

SEND stands for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. The umbrella covers a wide range of conditions and learning differences — dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, autism spectrum, anxiety, processing differences, and more.

What it means for your child: provision varies enormously across UK independent schools. Some schools are known for their SEND support and attract families specifically for it; others have minimal in-house support and quietly expect families to arrange external tutoring. The headline fee is no guide to how strong the in-house provision is.

Two terms worth knowing. SENCO — Special Educational Needs Coordinator — is the school staff member with overall responsibility for SEND provision. Every school must have one; asking to meet them on a school visit tells you a lot. EHCP — Education, Health and Care Plan — is the formal local-authority assessment for children with significant needs. Independent schools don't have to follow EHCPs the way state schools do, but most schools with strong SEND provision choose to honour them.

Provision ranges from "we do nothing extra" to dedicated SEND departments with specialist teaching and one-to-one sessions in the timetable. Common forms of in-school support: extra time in exams (typically 25%), use of a laptop or scribe in lessons and exams, learning support sessions during the school day (sometimes one-to-one, sometimes small group), reduced homework workloads, and access arrangements for public exams that need to be applied for in advance through the exam board. Some schools include all of this in the headline fee; others charge for one-to-one specialist teaching as an extra, often £40–£80 per session.

Don't promise yourself outcomes; ask the school the right question. Try this on the visit: tell me about a child who came in with a profile like ours and left thriving — what did you do, what did the family do, and what didn't work? The honesty of the answer will tell you more than any tour or open-day talk.

How to use this glossary

Every preptimely timeline is anchored to one date — your child's date of birth — and works backwards from there. Many of the terms above correspond to specific years on that timeline; others (term's notice, exeats, VAT, SEND) cut across years and apply throughout your child's school life. If you've not yet generated a timeline, enter a date of birth on the home page and the dated ones will start to land in their proper place.