What the SEAG Transfer Test Actually Involves: A Headteacher's Guide
Updated: Sep 13
Most parents in Northern Ireland arrive at the SEAG Entrance Assessment with one question: what score does my child need?
I'll answer it honestly at the outset, because the honest answer shapes everything else. Nobody can tell you. Not me, not your child's primary school, and not SEAG. And the reason why is the single most useful thing a parent can understand about this process.
Start with the deadline
Before anything else: registration for the 2026 assessment closes at 11:59pm on Friday 18 September 2026. Parents register their own child directly at seagni.co.uk. Primary schools do not do it for you, and it does not happen automatically. If nobody registers your child, your child does not sit the test.
There is a £20 administration fee, and families with Free School Meals Entitlement are exempt. If you have been meaning to get to it, do that before you read the rest of this.
The dates worth putting in the calendar now:
18 September 2026, 11:59pm — registration closes. This is also the deadline for Access Arrangements applications.
9 October 2026 — Pupil Cards available to download and print.
14 November 2026 — Paper 1.
21 November 2026 — Paper 2.
23 January 2027 — Statements of Outcome released online.
25 January to 3 February 2027 — the window for requesting a re-mark. Nothing is accepted after it closes.
That last one catches families out. Results arrive on a Saturday, and the re-mark window opens two days later and shuts nine days after that. If you think you might want one, you will be deciding quickly and in the middle of the school preference process. Worth knowing in advance rather than discovering in January.
What the papers actually look like
The assessment is commissioned by SEAG and set and marked by GL Assessment, the same organisation behind selective tests in a number of English counties. That matters less than people claim — the format is specific to Northern Ireland — but it does mean the papers behave in predictable ways.
Each of the two papers lasts an hour and follows the same shape:
A short warm-up section of five English and five maths questions. These are not marked. They exist to settle nerves and let a child get used to the answer sheet.
An English (or Gaeilge) section of 28 questions.
A maths section of 28 questions.
Across both papers your child answers 56 English questions and 56 maths questions. In each subject, 44 are multiple choice and 12 are free response, where the child works out an answer and writes it in. No calculators.
The detail that catches children out every year is the answer sheet. Answers are recorded on a separate sheet, not on the paper itself, and each paper has its own sheet that cannot be used for the other. A child meeting that arrangement for the first time on 14 November will lose marks to administration rather than ability. This is the cheapest possible thing to prepare for and the most frequently neglected.
How the scoring works
Your child receives a Statement of Outcome in late January. It contains more than one number, and they do different jobs.
Standardised Age Score (SAS). English and maths are each given their own SAS, calculated across both papers. The standardisation adjusts for three things: how many questions your child got right, how difficult that year's papers proved to be, and your child's age in months at the time of sitting. Scores run from roughly 69 to 141, with 100 as the average.
The age adjustment is worth dwelling on. A child born in late June sits the same paper as a child born the previous July, eleven months older. The standardisation exists to stop that being unfair, and it means a raw mark tells you very little on its own.
Total Standardised Age Score (TSAS). The English and maths SAS added together.
Band. Where your child's TSAS places them relative to everyone else who sat the assessment that year.
Because the scores are standardised against the cohort, there is no fixed pass mark and no score that is "safe" in advance. The papers vary in difficulty from year to year, and the standardisation absorbs that.
The part most guides leave out
Here is why nobody can tell you what score your child needs.
SEAG produces the assessment and issues the outcomes. It has no role whatsoever in how schools use them. Each of the member schools sets its own admissions criteria, decided by its own Board of Governors, and published by that school. Some use the Total Standardised Age Score. Some use the band. Some use a combination. Some weight other criteria alongside the academic ones.
So the only reliable answer to "what does my child need for a particular school" is: read that school's published admissions criteria for Year 8 entry, this year's version, from the school itself. Not a forum, not last year's figures, and not a tutor's estimate — including mine.
I would go further. If you are looking at three or four schools, read all of their criteria properly before November, not after the results arrive in January. Families who do this find the results week far less frightening, because they already know what the numbers mean for them.
If your child is ill on the day
This happens, and it worries parents more than almost anything else.
A child who sits only one of the two papers still receives an outcome, marked with an "e" to show it is an estimate — for instance, a TSAS of 196e. What happens next depends entirely on the individual school, because each school decides how it treats an estimated outcome within its own criteria.
If this is a live concern for you, that is another reason to read the admissions criteria of your preferred schools in advance rather than in a panic.
Practice papers: use the official ones
SEAG and GL Assessment have produced two official practice papers, with answer sheets and a parents' guide containing the answer keys, in both English and Irish. They are free to download from the SEAG website, and they carry the GL Assessment logo on the front page.
No other company's papers are commissioned by SEAG or approved by GL, whatever the packaging suggests. Third-party materials can be perfectly good preparation, and plenty of them are — but they are not the real format, and only the official ones show you exactly what your child will face.
Start with the official papers. Use commercial ones for extra practice if you want them, not as your reference point.
What this means for preparation
Understanding the structure changes what is worth doing.
The warm-up section means the first ten questions are free of pressure — a child who knows that arrives calmer. The separate answer sheet means practising with the real sheet matters more than another set of questions. The 12 free-response questions in each subject are where careless errors cost most, because there is no option list to catch a misreading. And the age standardisation means a summer-born child is not at the disadvantage their parents usually fear.
If you would like to talk through where your child currently stands, or what a particular school's criteria actually mean for them, do get in touch.
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