I don't know what the people looking at the essay questions are looking for exactly, but I presume it will be to look for people who match their person specification, what ever that is.
The numeracy is intermediate / higher level GCSE imo, but it's the very tight time limit which makes it so difficult.
No idea about negative marking, I doubt it though considering I guessed about a quarter of the questions cause I ran out of time and I still passed.