11+ in Barnet for 2027 Entry: Five Schools, Five Separate Tests

Barnet has 3 state grammar schools with their own 11+ tests: Queen Elizabeth's, Henrietta Barnett and St Michael's. Families also weigh two independent schools just outside the borough, Haberdashers' Boys and North London Collegiate. Between the five, that is 5 separate admissions processes and no shared paper: Queen Elizabeth's holds 2 multiple-choice papers, Henrietta Barnett runs 2 rounds, St Michael's holds 4 tests in a day, and deadlines span April to November.

Do Barnet Schools Share an 11+ Test?

No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding available in the borough. There is no Barnet consortium and no shared paper. Five schools, five tests, five registration forms. A family that registers once, believing they have registered for the area, will find their child sitting one test and locked out of the rest.

Look at what those descriptions ask of a child. Queen Elizabeth's is entirely multiple choice, so a boy never writes a sentence. Henrietta Barnett and St Michael's both test non-verbal reasoning, which Queen Elizabeth's does not touch. Henrietta Barnett's second round is Key Stage 2 English and Mathematics, a different exercise again from its own first round. A child prepared for one of these schools is, for at least one paper, unprepared for the next.

Only three of these five schools are actually inside the London Borough of Barnet: Queen Elizabeth's, Henrietta Barnett and St Michael's all appear under Barnet in the Department for Education's register of schools, and Henrietta Barnett's and St Michael's own admissions pages confirm they sit inside the borough's co-ordinated admissions system. The other two are independent schools many Barnet families also shortlist, but neither sits in the borough — Haberdashers' Boys is in Elstree, Hertfordshire, and North London Collegiate is in Edgware, in the London Borough of Harrow.

Our arithmetic on the four published admission numbers, rather than a figure any school states: 180 plus 120 plus 128 plus roughly 70 to 75 gives about 500 Year 7 places across four of the five schools. They are not interchangeable places. Each one is reached through a different test on a different timetable, and a family chasing all five is running five campaigns rather than one.

When Does Each School Close Registration?

Every one of these schools requires its own form, and every one of those forms closes on its own date. For September 2027 entry the five windows fell like this.

Our arithmetic on those dates rather than a claim any school makes: the borough's registration windows for a single year of entry span nearly 7 months, from mid-April to early November. The Henrietta Barnett form closes in July, before most families have started thinking about secondary transfer at all, and its Round One test is sat in the first week of September — before the Common Application Form has even been submitted.

Two of those rows contain a trap. Henrietta Barnett requires both the Local Authority CAF and its own Entrance Test Entry Form, and says an application is only considered if both are completed. And Haberdashers' Boys sets its bursary deadline for Thursday 19 November 2026, nearly two weeks after its Friday 6 November 2026 registration deadline, so a family that registers late loses both.

What Does Queen Elizabeth's Actually Publish?

More than most selective schools, and it is worth reading precisely because so much of what circulates about it is wrong.

The test is two multiple-choice papers, in English and Mathematics, sat in a single session. There is one round of testing, not two. No past papers are released. The school points only to sample materials and warns they may not reflect the format of its own exams.

The published figure is 225: candidates achieving a combined score of 225 or higher are deemed to have met the standard the Governors require to be eligible for consideration. That is an eligibility floor, not the score that secures a place. Above it, boys are ranked and 180 places filled in score order, so the winning score is higher than 225 and is not published in advance. Treating 225 as the target is the most common preparation error at this school.

On geography, Queen Elizabeth's is genuinely address-blind: it has no catchment, and distance is used only to separate two applicants who have scored exactly the same mark. That is unusual, and it is the reason boys travel to it from well outside Barnet.

For September 2027 entry, boys who registered sat the test on 16 or 17 September 2026, and the school gives 1 October 2026 as the provisional date for notifying parents of the results — both dates on its own published admissions timeline, which also gives 1 March 2027 as National Offer Day.

Why Henrietta Barnett Is Two Schools' Worth of Work

Henrietta Barnett runs the only two-round process in the borough, and the two rounds test different things. Round One was verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and English, set by a nationally recognised body and sat at the school on 2, 3 or 4 September 2026. The school is writing to all candidates with the Round One outcome by Monday 28 September 2026, and the top 300 are invited to sit Round Two — a 60-minute English paper and a 50-minute Maths paper — on Tuesday 6 October 2026.

A candidate may sit the entrance test for Year 7 admission once only. There is no second attempt and no resit, which makes the September date the single most important one in a Barnet family's calendar.

The geography position is the one most often reported wrongly. The school has no catchment area — any girl may apply and sit Round One wherever she lives. It also has a distance criterion: Criterion Three gives priority to candidates who live within 3 miles of the school when they apply to the Local Authority in October, and the qualification for it is simply having sat the Round Two test. Rank order comes after that. Both statements are true at the same time.

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What Do the Independent Schools Set?

Haberdashers' Boys' School, in Elstree, Hertfordshire, runs its own two-round assessment on a calendar that sits well after the state schools have finished testing. For 2027 entry the registration deadline is Friday 6 November 2026, the first round assessment falls on Friday 20 November 2026, and second round assessments run from Friday 8 to Friday 15 January 2027. Offers are emailed on Friday 12 February 2027, with an offer holder event on 25 February and an acceptance deadline of 9am on Wednesday 3 March 2027. Habs does not publish a single fixed admission number the way the state schools do, but says on its own admissions process page that it takes approximately 160 to 175 boys into Year 7 each year, of which 60 move up automatically from its own Prep School, leaving most of the remaining places open to external 11+ applicants.

Habs also offers something it describes as unique to its 11-plus entry point: a family can apply for 11+, joining in Year 7, or 11+ deferred, joining in Year 9. Both are decided in the same cycle, which means a family choosing the deferred route settles the question two years early and leaves the child at their current school in between.

North London Collegiate, in Edgware, in the London Borough of Harrow, reserves around 70 to 75 places for external applicants joining Year 7, alongside 45 or so girls moving up from its own Junior School, 40 places at 4+, 8 to 10 at 7+ and approximately 20 at 16+. Its Year 7 assessment is written English and Maths papers only, each 1 hour 15 minutes and sat on paper; the school states plainly that it does not use verbal or non-verbal reasoning tests. Some candidates are then called back for a 30-minute interview that includes further Maths and English questions. For September 2027 entry, registration opened on 1 May 2026 and closes at 4pm on 13 November 2026, with the entrance exam on Thursday 3 December 2026.

The practical point about the independent schools is timing. Their assessments fall across November, December and January — Haberdashers' Boys in November and January, North London Collegiate in December — after Henrietta Barnett has tested in September and October and after the Common Application Form has closed. A family running both a state and an independent application is therefore preparing across two distinct periods, not one, and the second one lands in the middle of the state offer wait.

Which Schools Is Your Child Actually Eligible For?

Before any preparation begins, the eligibility rules do most of the narrowing, and they narrow harder than families expect. Queen Elizabeth's and Haberdashers' Boys are for boys; Henrietta Barnett, St Michael's and North London Collegiate are for girls. So no child in Barnet is choosing between five schools — the most any one child faces is three.

St Michael's narrows further still. Its Year 7 criteria rank baptised Catholic girls from a practising Catholic family, and the school invites to its tests the girls who meet those criteria, noting that within living memory it has always been oversubscribed with them. A non-Catholic family is not realistically in that pool, and the evidence required — a Certificate of Baptism and a Certificate of Catholic Practice dated within three months of applying — cannot be assembled at the last minute.

What that leaves for most families is two schools, sometimes three. That is a manageable preparation plan. Trying to cover all five is not, and the calendar makes it impossible in any case: Henrietta Barnett tested in the first week of September, long before Haberdashers' Boys even opens for its own 6 November registration deadline.

Applying from abroad? Our guide to the Barnet 11+ for families living overseas covers Barnet Council’s link-address rule and where Queen Elizabeth’s School and Henrietta Barnett hold their tests.

Reviewed September 2026: every test format, admission number, threshold, criterion, registration date and school location on this page was checked against each school's own admissions pages, its own address confirmation and the Department for Education's register of schools. Schools move these dates between cycles, so confirm them with the school before you rely on them.

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