The decision usually needs making in Year 4 or early Year 5, before anyone can tell you with confidence how a child will perform. Our admissions tutors assess where a child is currently working, then give a straight view on whether the route is realistic and what preparation would genuinely involve. Including when the honest answer is that it is not worth it.
For most families in England, the grammar school question is settled before it is asked. There are none nearby, so there is nothing to decide.
For everyone else it becomes one of the more consequential decisions of primary school, and it has to be made a long way in advance. By the time a child sits the test in Year 6, the families around them have often been preparing since Year 4.
What follows covers how the system actually works, why the results tables are more complicated than they look, and how to judge whether this route suits your child rather than simply whether they could pass.
A state-funded secondary school that selects its pupils on academic ability, tested at age eleven. There are no fees. Everything else about the system follows from those two facts.
Selection is otherwise prohibited in state schools. Grammar schools are an exception, permitted to continue because they already selected before the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. That legislation banned the opening of any new maintained grammar school and stopped existing schools from introducing selection. Existing grammars can expand, and some have, but the number is essentially fixed.
According to the House of Commons Library, England has 163 grammar schools educating around 176,000 pupils, which is roughly five per cent of state secondary pupils. The distribution is the important figure. Only around 35 local authorities have any grammar schools at all, and about 60 per cent of them sit in just eleven local authorities.
So the first question is not whether your child could pass. It is whether your area has grammar schools, and how many, because that changes the decision completely.
In a fully selective county the test is close to a default. In an area with two grammars and no tradition of sitting the exam, entering your child is a deliberate choice that will place them in a small, self-selected and often heavily prepared field.
Northern Ireland runs its own selective system with a further sixty or so grammar schools. Wales and Scotland have none.
This is where most articles on the subject become unhelpful, and where a parent deserves a straight answer.
Grammar schools post markedly better GCSE results than non-selective schools, and the gap is widest against non-selective schools in selective areas. The House of Commons Library reports exactly that, then adds the qualification that rarely travels with the headline: intakes differ so substantially, both in prior attainment and in background, that the headline comparisons are not measuring what they appear to measure.
A school that admits only children who scored in the top fraction of an ability test at ten will produce strong results at sixteen. That tells you about the intake as much as the teaching.
The same source notes that grammar school pupils are considerably less likely to have special educational needs or to be eligible for free school meals than pupils in non-selective schools.
None of this argues against grammar schools. It argues against choosing one on the strength of a league table, which is a different thing. The useful questions are about the environment, the pace and the fit, not the aggregate figures.
Capability and suitability are not the same question, and parents often only ask the first.
A child who enjoys academic work rather than merely coping with it, who is not knocked sideways by being average in a strong cohort, and who has the independence to manage a longer commute and a heavier homework load. Pace is the defining feature of these schools. For a child who was under-stretched at primary, that pace is often the whole point.
A child who was comfortably top of their primary class will, by definition, no longer be. Every pupil in the year group qualified on the same test. For some that is invigorating and for others it is a sustained blow to confidence that shows up in Year 8 rather than Year 7.
The commute deserves more weight than it usually gets. An hour each way in Year 7 costs sleep, evenings and the ability to stay behind for anything after school. It is a five-year commitment made on behalf of an eleven-year-old.
Where a child has an identified need, the pace and the cohort matter more still. That is a conversation worth having with the school directly rather than assuming, and our guide to finding the right SEN tutor in London covers how targeted support tends to work alongside a demanding timetable.
The sequence is fairly consistent across selective areas, even though the tests differ.
Registration for the test usually opens in the spring or early summer of Year 5 and closes over the summer, well before the exam itself. The test is sat in early autumn of Year 6, results follow in October, and the secondary application closes on 31 October. Offers arrive on National Offer Day the following March.
The order matters. You will know the test outcome before you complete the application, which is unusual and useful. Whether you name a grammar school on the form should be informed by that result rather than decided in advance. Our guide to preparing for the 11+ covers the preparation itself, and the 11+ exam boards differ enough by area to be worth understanding before you start.
Missing the registration deadline is the single most common way families lose the option entirely. It falls a full year before the child would start, and no school can accept a late entry.
Passing the test and getting a place are separate things, and the gap between them catches families out every year.
Each area sets its own qualifying score, and reaching it means your child is eligible rather than admitted. Where more qualified children apply than there are places, schools apply their ordinary oversubscription criteria: catchment, distance, siblings and sometimes priority for children eligible for pupil premium.
Super-selective schools work differently. They rank qualified candidates by score and admit from the top down, with distance used only to separate identical scores. In those schools a child living next door with a good score can lose out to one travelling from two counties away with a better one.
Check which model each school on your list uses before deciding where to apply. The two produce quite different odds for the same child.
There is nothing stopping you. Grammar schools in selective counties routinely admit children from neighbouring boroughs, and some receive a substantial share of applications from out of area.
The practical constraints are the ones to weigh. Out-of-catchment applicants sit lower in the criteria at schools that use distance, so the realistic targets are usually super-selectives. Test dates in different areas can clash, since most sit in a narrow autumn window. And the commute question returns with more force.
Grammar school places are free, which is the headline advantage over independent education. The preparation frequently is not.
In competitive areas a large share of candidates arrive having been tutored, sometimes for two years. That does not make tutoring compulsory, and plenty of children qualify without it, but it does shape the field a child is competing against. Weighed against independent school fees, the sums are not close. Our comparison of independent and state education sets out what the alternative actually costs.
The other cost is the one families underestimate. Two years of weekend preparation is a real imposition on a nine-year-old, and it is worth being honest with yourself about whose ambition is driving it.
A qualifying score is not a guarantee, and a place at a specific school is never certain. Both outcomes are common enough to plan for rather than react to.
Complete the application using all your preferences, including at least one school you would be content with, and join waiting lists for anything you are refused. Appeals exist and are worth understanding, though selective appeals carry an additional hurdle because you have to demonstrate academic ability despite the test result. Our guide to school appeals and what to do if your child misses out covers the process and the alternatives, including entry at thirteen and sixth form.
The grammar school question rewards being answered early, not because preparation needs to start in Year 3, but because the registration deadline arrives a year before anyone is thinking about secondary school.
Work out what exists near you, look at how each school admits rather than only how it performs, visit if you can, and be honest about whether the environment suits the child you actually have. That is a more useful basis for the decision than a set of results tables that were never comparing like with like.
Yes. Grammar schools are state-funded, so there are no tuition fees. The costs that arise are indirect, such as preparation for the entrance test and travel where the school is not local.
163, according to the House of Commons Library, educating around 176,000 pupils, or roughly five per cent of state secondary pupils. They are unevenly distributed: only around 35 local authorities have any, and about 60 per cent sit within just eleven authorities.
No. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 prohibited the opening of new maintained grammar schools and prevented existing schools from introducing academic selection. Existing grammars may expand, which is why the total has stayed broadly stable rather than fallen.
No. Reaching the qualifying score makes a child eligible. Where more qualified children apply than there are places, schools apply their usual oversubscription criteria such as catchment, distance and siblings. Super-selective schools instead rank by score and admit from the highest down.
Yes, and many families do. The practical limits are that out-of-catchment applicants rank lower at schools using distance criteria, test dates in different areas often fall in the same narrow window, and the commute becomes a five-year commitment.
On paper, considerably. The House of Commons Library notes that grammar schools achieve much stronger GCSE results on average, but also that intakes differ so much in prior attainment and background that headline comparisons are not measuring like with like. The results reflect who is admitted as well as how they are taught.
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