7+ St Paul’s Boys’ Focus Group
Date: 18th October 2025 - 20th October 2025
Venue: Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Road, W2 5EU
Time: 10:00 - 15:00 Daily
Course Fee: £1350
This course has passed. Browse our other coursesCourse Introduction
This short focus group is designed to teach and assess all aspects of the St Paul’s Junior School 7+ entrance exam. It will follow the same format, and each section will be taught by subject specialists with several years of 7+ experience.
Course Schedule
- On Day I – students will begin by working on dictation, covering spelling strategies, and how to infer spelling and punctuation from auditory clues. In the second half of the session we will work on comprehension in St Paul’s format, using infographics, non-fiction texts and multiple-choice comprehension.
- On Day II – we will address core maths and reasoning rules. Vital topics such as time, fractions, money and geometry will be covered. There will also be a mental maths test, mirroring the assessment. In the afternoon, we will work on verbal and non-verbal reasoning, covering questions in the format and to the level of St Paul’s 7+ assessment.
- The third and final day of the course will feature an assessment in St Paul’s Junior School 7+ format. This assessment will be taken by Dr Tom Parkinson, who will guide students through each section and provide advice and reassurance, to enable the boys to feel fully confident and to perform to the best of their abilities when they face the real thing.
“We have accepted a place at St Paul’s next year. Thank you for all the help throughout last year. You saved us!”
— 8+ Parent
Group Leads
Dr Tom Parkinson
Tom is Winterwood’s co-founder and overseas the entrance exam cohort. Tom has been running educational groups for the past decade, and has created several bespoke learning games which he uses in his group classes. Tom has found that group courses really drive attainment – possible due to the nature of the groups, which are supportive and provide guidance and reassurance, and possible as gameplay is incorporated, which helps to mitigate stress and makes learning fun. Either way, it works!
Melissa Butcher
Melissa believes in the power of personalised instruction, tailoring her approach to each student’s distinct learning style and aspirations. She specialises in preparing students for the 7+, 8+ and 11+ English and Reasoning, as well as Interview preparation. She has in excess of 4,000 hours of tutoring experience and she has assisted student’s to secure places at highly competitive schools including St Pauls, Westminster, Godolphin and Latymer, Dulwich College, Alleyn’s, JAGS, Wetherby Pembridge, Bradfield
Dr John Mitchell
John is a highly dedicated tutor with experience in teaching the sciences, maths and specialises in reasoning and interview preparation. As a young and eager academic, he couples an enthusiastic style of teaching with wider discussion beyond the syllabus to help students develop the critical faculties necessary to study and succeed in the sciences. John has an outstanding success rate with tutoring students for Wellington, Dulwich College, Eton, Kings College, Winchester, Marlborough, St Paul’s and Westminster.
Our Cancellation Policy
If you cancel less than two weeks ahead of the start date of the course, the fee is non-refundable and non-transferable to another date or another student.
If you cancel outside of the two week course date, we will happily credit your account to attend a future course.
If you do not show up for a course, you are not eligible for a credit or refund.
Why we charge a cancellation fee
This is to cover the tutors’ reserved time to run a group course, to pay for their time spent pre-planning the class and relevant material, printing fees incurred and the loss of revenue to Winterwood as it is often too late to fill a cancelled space. More importantly, other students miss out on attending a group.