An extract from The Times, 5th December 2025
The exam is now gamed, turning children into bots and making them less intellectually curious. A new style admissions process could be the answer.
Charles Bonas, the founder of Bonas MacFarlane, a tutoring agency started in 1992, believes many independent schools have a similar issue with overly prescriptive entrance exams that exclude different thinkers.
“We are at risk of building a cohort of children who’ve got quite similar cognitive profiles, who can process really quickly, have good working memories and can concentrate at a given time. You’re closing the door to visual thinkers who come up with some of the most interesting ideas.”
He said that, in an ideal world, private school admissions teams would visit schools to meet pupils, see their class work and speak to their teachers.
At Wellington College, the prestigious £62,250-a-year boarding school in Berkshire, prospective pupils do take a reasoning test but they attend a team-building day as well so that teachers can observe how the pupils interact with others. They are also asked for a school report.
James Dahl, the headmaster at Wellington, said: “It’s a much more time-consuming process, but it means you’re not simply converting children to a number on a spreadsheet and ranking them from highest to lowest. You can have children who might come just below that artificial line on the spreadsheet who are just the most incredible young people, who are kind and resilient and whose personality really fits what you’re trying to do as a school.”
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