In the 1970s and early 1980s there was increasing dissatisfaction with the procedures for admission to Cambridge University both within the University and outside. Many found the application for admission to be a complex and forbidding process. Furthermore, the reliance by Cambridge on the ‘seventh-term’ CCE (Cambridge Colleges’ Examination) was potentially divisive: in the early 1970s it was noted that the proportion of schools offering candidates to Cambridge and able to run useful programmes of post A Level work (in the seventh term) was decreasing and thus the retention of such examinations might lead to recruitment from an ever-narrowing range of schools. In addition, the practice adopted in the 1960s of a fourth-term CCE was considered to be educationally disruptive for the final year of a sixth-form course, and problematic, especially for those pupils who suffered the blow to morale of failure just months before sitting their A Level examinations.

In March 1984 Cambridge Tutorial Representatives established a Working Party on Admissions to consider "the feasibility of a sixth term examination for admission". It was felt that the main basis for academic judgements should be examinations taken at the end of a candidate’s school career, thus moving Cambridge further into line with the procedures used by nearly all other universities. However, to provide the necessary discrimination between candidates, nearly all of whom would achieve high A Level grades, it was felt that a new form of admissions examination should be introduced which would be more demanding than A Level. Following publication of the Report on ‘Sixth Term Examination for Admission to Cambridge’, UCLES and OCSEB agreed to collaborate in developing an examination based on the report’s proposals.

The Sixth Term Examination Paper (STEP) was sat by candidates at their school during the term in which they took their A Levels. Each candidate sat a maximum of two three-hour papers from a wide range of subjects. Its purpose was to provide information in addition to that obtained from A Levels.

The CCE was held for the last time in November 1985 and the first STEP was sat in 1987. The shared administration of STEP between UCLES and OCSEB became the sole responsibility of OCSEB in 1990. A survey amongst Cambridge Colleges in 1993 revealed that whereas STEP Mathematics was used by the vast majority of Colleges and was considered essential there was considerably less support for other subjects. A programme of rationalisation began with STEP examinations for Italian, Russian, Spanish, Religious Studies and Geology being withdrawn in 1994, followed by Greek, Latin, Geography and Music in 1995. From 2003 onwards Mathematics became the only STEP examination in use. Its purpose was to help select very academically able students for courses which were usually oversubscribed.