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

Barnet holds 5 selective schools offering roughly 500 Year 7 places, and 5 entirely separate admissions processes. No two share a paper: Queen Elizabeth's sets 2 multiple-choice papers, Henrietta Barnett sets 2 rounds, St Michael's sets 4 tests in a day. Registration deadlines for the same year of entry 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.

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 nearly two weeks after its 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.

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 is 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. Round Two is English and Mathematics, on one day in early October 2026, and only the top 300 candidates from Round One are invited to it.

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, including on this page until today. 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.

What Do the Independent Schools Set?

Haberdashers' Boys' School 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 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 publishes approximately 70 to 75 places at 11+, alongside 40 at 4+, 8 to 10 at 7+ and approximately 20 at 16+. Its senior school assessment format is not set out on the page a family lands on first, so it is worth confirming directly with the school rather than assuming it matches any of the others in the borough.

The practical point about the independent schools is timing. Their assessments fall in November and January, 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 tests in the first week of September while Haberdashers' is still ten weeks from its registration deadline.

Reviewed August 2026: every test format, admission number, threshold, criterion and registration date on this page was checked against each school's own admissions pages and policy documents on 22 August 2026. Schools move these dates between cycles, so confirm them with the school before you rely on them.

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