Aylesbury Grammar School 11+ Tuition

About Aylesbury Grammar School

Aylesbury Grammar School (AGS) is a selective state grammar school for boys aged 11 to 18, on Walton Road in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. It was founded in 1598 following a bequest from Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, making it one of the oldest schools in the county, and it moved to its current Walton Road site in 1907. The school separated from what is now Aylesbury High School in 1959, becoming a single-sex boys' foundation. At its most recent inspection on 2 November 2022, Ofsted rated the school Outstanding across every category, including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and sixth form provision.

AGS admits 186 boys into Year 7 each year. Entry is entirely through the Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test (STT) — Aylesbury Grammar does not set or mark its own entrance exam. The STT is the single, shared assessment used by all 13 Buckinghamshire grammar schools, produced by GL Assessment and administered by Buckinghamshire Council. A boy who reaches the qualifying standard on the STT becomes eligible to apply to any Buckinghamshire grammar school he lists on his Common Application Form, Aylesbury Grammar included.

Because it shares a single county-wide test with every other Buckinghamshire grammar school, preparing for Aylesbury Grammar School means preparing thoroughly for the STT itself — there is no school-specific paper, essay or interview to prepare separately. This makes the test format, its scoring, and Aylesbury's own admissions criteria (which determine who receives an offer once boys have qualified) the two things families most need to understand.

How Does the Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test Work?

The STT is sat by every boy or girl in Buckinghamshire hoping to enter a grammar school in Year 7, so it is worth understanding as a system rather than as an Aylesbury-specific hurdle. Buckinghamshire Council's own published guidance confirms the test comprises two papers of approximately 60 minutes each, taken with a break between them, both entirely multiple-choice. A shorter practice test is sat two days before the main test so that boys know exactly what test day feels like.

The papers assess verbal ability, mathematics and non-verbal reasoning. Each component is converted into an age-standardised score — so a boy born in August is not disadvantaged relative to a boy born the previous September — and the components are then combined into the final Secondary Transfer Test Score (STTS) using a published weighting of 50% verbal ability, 25% mathematics and 25% non-verbal reasoning. In practical terms, verbal preparation — vocabulary, comprehension, technical English (grammar and punctuation questions), and verbal reasoning formats such as word codes and analogies — deserves the largest share of study time, though a boy cannot afford to neglect timed maths practice or non-verbal reasoning either, since together they still make up half the final score.

Buckinghamshire Council states that a standardised score of 121 or above is required to qualify, and that approximately 37% of children who sit the test county-wide reach this standard in a typical year. Crucially, the council is explicit that scoring above 121 does not carry extra weight in the admissions process itself — grammar schools do not use the raw STT score as an ongoing ranking tool once a boy has qualified. What determines whether a qualifying boy actually receives an offer from Aylesbury Grammar specifically is the school's own oversubscription criteria, covered below.

Aylesbury Grammar's Admissions Criteria and the Selection Review Panel

Because Aylesbury Grammar School is consistently oversubscribed with boys who reach the STT qualifying standard, the school's published admissions policy sets out a clear priority order for allocating its 186 places. After looked-after and previously looked-after children, priority goes to boys in the catchment area receiving Pupil Premium, then siblings of current AGS pupils, then siblings of current pupils at Aylesbury High School, siblings of former AGS pupils, children of permanent staff, boys with exceptional medical or social need, boys living in the catchment area, and finally all other qualifying boys. Where places are tied within a category, the tie-breaker is straight-line distance from home to the main entrance gate on Walton Road.

A detail that is easy to miss and that most 11+ guides do not mention is the school's Selection Review Panel. Aylesbury Grammar's determined 2027 admissions policy sets aside up to six places each year specifically for disadvantaged or looked-after boys who score between 115 and 120 — just below the standard 121 qualifying threshold — and are referred to this panel for individual review, ranked immediately below the main qualifying group. This is a genuine, published route into the school for boys who narrowly miss the standardised score but meet specific disadvantage criteria, and families in this position should read the full policy and contact the school's admissions team directly rather than assuming a sub-121 score rules their son out entirely.

Aylesbury Grammar also publishes its own catchment area map on the school website, cross-referenced against Buckinghamshire Council's postcode checker service. Buckinghamshire does not restrict which grammar school a qualifying child may apply to, so a boy can list Aylesbury Grammar on his Common Application Form regardless of where he lives — but once the school is oversubscribed, boys living inside the catchment area are prioritised well ahead of most boys living outside it, and distance to school becomes the final tie-breaker within each priority group. Families should check their address against the catchment map before deciding how highly to rank Aylesbury Grammar on their application.

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How Competitive Is Aylesbury Grammar School?

Aylesbury Grammar is one of the larger Buckinghamshire grammar schools by intake, with 186 Year 7 places, but it sits within an unusually concentrated cluster of selective schools in central Aylesbury: Aylesbury High School (girls, roughly 0.8 miles away) and Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School (mixed, roughly 0.3 miles away, effectively next door on Oxford Road) both draw from overlapping catchment areas and the same STT-qualified pool of local children. With around 37% of Buckinghamshire's STT candidates qualifying county-wide, and three grammar schools clustered in the same part of Aylesbury, demand for places at AGS from qualifying, in-catchment boys is consistently high.

Because catchment and distance — not raw STT score — decide who gets an offer once a boy has qualified, families should think about "how much above 121" less than they think about "am I inside the catchment, and if not, how strong does my son's overall position need to be." Out-of-catchment families whose sons qualify comfortably still secure places at AGS most years, but the practical safety margin is larger than for in-catchment families, and the school's Selection Review Panel route for scores between 115 and 120 is limited to a small number of places reserved for boys meeting specific disadvantage criteria, not a general fallback.

How Leading Tuition Prepares Boys for Aylesbury Grammar School

Leading Tuition's specialist 11+ tuition programme works with families across Aylesbury, Buckingham, Wendover, Haddenham and the wider Buckinghamshire area to prepare boys for the Secondary Transfer Test, with Aylesbury Grammar School as a common first-choice preference. Because every Bucks grammar school shares the same test, our programme prepares boys for the STT itself rather than for any single school, which means a well-structured programme keeps every Bucks grammar school option open, including neighbouring schools such as Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham.

We begin with a diagnostic assessment spanning all three STT skill areas: verbal ability, mathematics and non-verbal reasoning. Because the STT weighting is 50% verbal, our diagnostic pays particular attention to reading comprehension, vocabulary range, and technical English — the grammar and punctuation questions that many families overlook because they rarely appear in primary school assessments. From there we build a programme that reflects the real weighting of the test rather than spreading effort evenly across all three areas by default.

Verbal preparation covers comprehension technique, deliberate vocabulary building, technical English (identifying incorrect sentences, correct punctuation, clause and phrase types) and the standard GL Assessment verbal reasoning formats — word codes, analogies, letter sequences and word-group questions — taught explicitly rather than left to be absorbed by repetition. Mathematics preparation extends beyond Key Stage 2 recall into timed, multi-step problem solving: fractions, ratio, area and perimeter, and data interpretation, all practised under a clock so that pace becomes automatic well before test day. Non-verbal reasoning work trains the specific spatial and pattern-recognition formats the STT uses, since these are highly learnable once a boy has been shown the underlying logic of each question type.

As the September test date approaches, we shift towards full timed mock papers that replicate the real two-paper, 60-minutes-each STT structure, building stamina and composure alongside accuracy. We also advise families directly on the registration process, the catchment area, and how to rank preferences sensibly on the Common Application Form when a son is likely to sit tests or be eligible for more than one Buckinghamshire grammar school. Progress is reviewed after every session, with short diagnostics at the start of each lesson to catch any drift early and keep the programme focused on genuine gaps rather than repeating work a boy has already mastered.

Key Dates for Aylesbury Grammar 2027 Entry

• STT registration opens: 10:00am Friday 1 May 2026
• STT registration closes: 3:00pm Tuesday 2 June 2026
• Practice test: Tuesday 8 September 2026
• Secondary Transfer Test: Thursday 10 September 2026
• Results released: Thursday 9 October 2026
• Common Application Form deadline: Saturday 31 October 2026
• National Offer Day: 1 March 2027

Note: Boys at Buckinghamshire state-funded primary schools are registered automatically for the STT — parents who do not want their son to sit must actively withdraw him. Boys at independent schools or schools outside Buckinghamshire must register manually within the window above via Buckinghamshire Council.

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