Ermysted's Grammar School 11+ Guide 2027

Ermysted's Grammar School is a selective, voluntary-aided boys' grammar school in Skipton, North Yorkshire, taking boys into Year 7 through a single entrance test set by Future Stories Community Enterprise (FSCE) — not GL Assessment, despite what several of the pages currently ranking for this search say. For September 2027 entry, registration opens 13 April 2026, the test itself falls on Saturday 26 September 2026, and the school's Published Admission Number is 128 — though Governors have already shown they are willing to admit well above that: they took 150 boys into the school for the current September 2026 intake. This guide sets out exactly what the test covers, the full application timeline, who gets priority when the school is oversubscribed, how the papers are marked, what happens if your son doesn't get an offer, and what Ofsted found when it last inspected.

Is Ermysted's 11+ Test Really "GL Assessment"?

Two of the five pages currently ranking for "Ermysted's Grammar School 11+" — Explore Learning and The Exam Coach — describe the entrance test as being provided by "GL Assessment" or the "GL exam board". This is incorrect. Ermysted's own 2026-27 Admissions Policy states plainly that the provider is Future Stories Community Enterprise Ltd (FSCE), and the school's own admissions page is explicit about what that means in practice: "Non-verbal reasoning is not included in our test and there is no creative writing element." That rules out two of the four components a GL-style test usually includes.

What the FSCE test actually contains is narrower and more specific than the GL format sold by most practice-paper sites. There are two papers, and both cover English and mathematics — they are not split into a "verbal reasoning and English" paper and a "maths and non-verbal reasoning" paper, as Explore Learning's own summary implies. Instead, one paper uses multiple-choice answers and the other uses short written answers, with both testing English and maths content drawn from the Key Stage 2 curriculum up to the end of Year 5. Each paper typically lasts 45–60 minutes, with a scheduled break in between.

The practical consequence is that GL-format non-verbal reasoning practice papers — which The Exam Coach and Exam Papers Plus both sell for Ermysted's preparation — are testing a skill that does not appear on this particular exam at all. Families preparing for Ermysted's specifically are better served focusing on English comprehension, written composition-style short answers, and mathematical reasoning, rather than buying a generic GL bundle built for a different kind of test.

Who Gets Priority When the School Is Oversubscribed

Living inside the catchment area does not mean automatic entry — every applicant, whether inside or outside catchment, must separately register for the entrance test. The catchment area only comes into play afterwards, when the school has more applicants meeting the required standard than it has places, and needs to decide who actually gets one.

Ermysted's own Admissions Policy defines the catchment area as the area served by the primary schools in Beamsley, Bradley, Burnsall, Carleton, Cracoe, Embsay, Gargrave, Grassington, Kettlewell, Kirkby-in-Malhamdale, Skipton, Thornton-in-Craven and Threshfield. When the school is oversubscribed by candidates who have reached the required standard, places go first to looked-after or previously looked-after children, second to applicants whose home address is inside that catchment area, and third to applicants outside it. Within both the catchment and out-of-catchment groups, further preference goes first to children registered for Pupil Premium, then to siblings of pupils already at the school, and finally to straight-line distance from the school gate.

If two applicants are tied on every criterion, including distance, the remaining place is allocated at random, with an independent witness present for the process. None of the five ranking pages sets out this full order — Atom Learning gets closest, listing the catchment parishes and the tie-break rule, but omits the Pupil Premium and sibling priority that sits ahead of plain proximity.

How Your Son's Score Becomes a Place

Ermysted's does not publish a fixed pass mark, and The Exam Coach's page correctly notes this — but none of the five ranking pages explain how the "required standard" is actually arrived at. Both papers are marked using Optical Mark Recognition, then statistically standardised so that each paper has the same average score of 100, adjusted for the age of the candidate on the day of the test. The two standardised scores are then added together to give a single overall score for each boy.

That overall score is compared against the "required standard" for admission — a bar that is not fixed in advance. It is determined each year by the Admissions Committee based on how that year's entire cohort actually performs in the test. Reaching the required standard is necessary but not sufficient: if more boys clear it than there are places, the oversubscription criteria above decide who is actually offered a place. In practice this means the effective difficulty of "passing" shifts slightly from year to year, depending on how strong the applicant pool is.

What Are the Key Dates for September 2027 Entry?

The table below sets out the full application timeline for boys sitting the entrance test in autumn 2026 for a Year 7 place starting in September 2027, taken directly from the school's own Admissions Policy and admissions pages.

The Supplementary Information Form is worth flagging on its own: it only needs completing by parents who believe their son qualifies for one of the priority categories above (looked-after status or Pupil Premium), but it is easy to miss because it falls three-and-a-half weeks after the Common Application Form deadline, rather than alongside it. Atom Learning's otherwise thorough dates list leaves this deadline out entirely.

128 on Paper, 150 Admitted This Year

Every state grammar school has a Published Admission Number, or PAN — the number of Year 7 places it commits to filling in a normal year. For Ermysted's, that figure is 128. Every one of the five pages ranking for this search quotes that number, and it is the figure quoted in the county's own co-ordinated admissions documents too.

What none of them mention is what happened for the cohort actually starting at the school this September. Ermysted's own Admissions Policy records that "Following a meeting of the governors on 3 March 2026, Governors decided to admit over PAN to 150 pupils in Year 7 for September 2026" — 22 places above the published figure. That decision was specific to the September 2026 intake, made after seeing how that year's applications and required-standard numbers worked out; it is not a guarantee that the school will do the same for the September 2027 cohort currently registering. But it is useful context for any family treating 128 as a hard ceiling: Governors have shown, this year, that they are willing to move well past it.

What Happens If Your Son Doesn't Get an Offer?

Not every family who wants a place at Ermysted's gets one on National Offer Day, and none of the five ranking pages explain what happens next. Two routes exist. First, a waiting list ranked according to the same published oversubscription criteria is maintained by the school until 31 December 2027, and any place that becomes available during that period — a family moving away, an offer declined elsewhere — is offered to the next eligible child on the list.

Second, parents have a statutory right of appeal against a decision not to offer a place. The appeal is heard by an Independent Admissions Appeals Panel, which sits separately from the school's own Admissions Committee, and the panel's decision is binding on both the school and the family. This is a formal, evidence-based process rather than an informal review, so families considering it should request the appeal form and read the panel's published timetable in good time rather than leaving it until the last moment.

Ofsted and What Ermysted's Is Actually Like

None of the five pages ranking for this search mention Ofsted at all — a striking omission for a full guide to the school. Ofsted's most recent inspection report, dated 28 September 2022, rated Ermysted's Good overall. Underneath that headline figure, the individual judgement areas tell a stronger story: Behaviour and attitudes, Personal development, Leadership and management, and Sixth form provision were all rated Outstanding, with only Quality of education rated Good rather than Outstanding.

Beyond the inspection, Ermysted's own site gives a sense of scale and character: the school was established circa 1492, making it one of the older grammar schools still operating in England, and currently has 835 pupils on roll across Years 7 to 13, with 59 enrichment activities running weekly. For families comparing Ermysted's against the other North and West Yorkshire grammar schools — including nearby The Crossley Heath School, which also uses the FSCE test — the Ofsted record and the school's longevity are both worth weighing alongside the raw places-and-dates comparison.

For families who want tailored support with English comprehension, written short-answer technique and mathematical reasoning for the FSCE format specifically, our 11+ tuition programmes are built around exactly what each target school's test contains, rather than a one-size-fits-all GL bundle.

Frequently Asked Questions About Ermysted's Grammar School 11+ Entry