Lancaster Girls Grammar School 11 Plus Tutor

Lancaster Girls' Grammar School admits its Year 7 girls through the Future Stories Community Enterprise (FSCE) entrance test: two papers, Adventure (multiple choice) and Beacon (short written answers), each typically 45–60 minutes, in English and Maths only. The school states that "no specific preparation is necessary", and FSCE says it has authorised no past papers. Leading Tuition's expert 11+ tutors therefore teach Year 5 curriculum depth and answer-sheet fluency for those two papers, and do not run pattern drills.

What does LGGS itself say about preparing, and what does that leave a tutor to do?

The school's Year 7 admissions page explains why it adopted the test. It draws only on the parts of the Key Stage 2 curriculum taught up to the end of Year 5, and the school says that design aims to remove any need for tutoring. Its advice to families is a list of habits rather than tasks: attend and engage at primary school, read widely and deeply, practise maths fluency through everyday examples, talk through ideas at home, keep to calmness over pressure, and trust that the knowledge needed is already there.

The FSCE FAQ for prospective parents is written for four schools together: Lancaster Girls' Grammar School, Skipton Girls' High School, Clitheroe Royal Grammar School and Ermysted's Grammar School. Asked whether a child should have a tutor, it answers No, and adds that children can prepare, but not through tutoring. The children's guide goes further and says there are no extra facts or tips that a tutor can help a child remember. A tutor who promised to hand a girl the pattern of this test would be promising something FSCE says nobody can know, because it says the content, type and style of questions vary each year.

That is the starting point for what we do, and it is narrower than most 11+ tuition. Three jobs remain, and none of them depends on predicting a paper.

Year 5 curriculum depth. FSCE describes the test as applying knowledge to new situations rather than recalling it. A girl whose long multiplication, fractions or grammar terms are thin at the end of Year 5 will meet that gap in an unfamiliar setting, where a half-learned method fails first. Our tutors teach that content again, properly, until she can use it without a prompt. It is the same content her school teaches; the difference is how far it is taken.

Answer-sheet fluency. The two papers use different answer mechanics, and FSCE says the sheets are scanned. Where the oval goes, how to amend, one number or letter to a box and capital letters for letter answers are habits that can be rehearsed on the official sheets.

Working from a recording. FSCE says every instruction, before, during and after each part, comes by voice recording: when to open the booklet, which page to turn to, how to answer, an example question, the time allowed and when to start. We practise working to spoken instructions so the format is already familiar when the recording starts.

What we do not offer is just as specific: no target score (the pass mark is set after the sitting, as the section near the end explains), no practice papers presented as FSCE's own, and no prediction of a result. Dates, catchment and the oversubscription criteria sit in our Lancaster Girls' Grammar School 11+ guide; this page stays with preparation. Girls who later want sixth form entry will find a separate page for LGGS Year 12 entry.

How does the Adventure multiple-choice paper work, and what does a session do with it?

LGGS's determined admission policy for September 2027 entry describes the test as two standardised tests sat on the same day, each comprising English and Mathematics. The school's admissions page says the test combines multiple-choice and written-response questions. FSCE's children's familiarisation guide, which the school links from its Year 7 admissions page, names the two papers: Adventure carries the multiple-choice English and Maths questions and Beacon carries the short written ones. FSCE's consortium FAQ says each paper typically lasts 45–60 minutes, that the two can be sat in either order, and that a break may be scheduled between them.

On Adventure the mechanics are these. Each question has one correct answer, shown on a separate answer sheet where the child shows her answer by shading one oval fully; the guide says "Please do NOT use a horizontal or vertical line". To change an answer she crosses through the wrong oval and shades the right one. Marks are not lost for wrong answers, so the guide's advice is to put something down for every question and return to unsure ones if time remains within the section. FSCE says answer sheets are scanned and marked automatically, and that people check inconsistencies, amended answers and questionable responses, so a change should be made exactly the way the guide shows.

The sample guide gives a sense of the question styles, and it is a sample only. Its multiple-choice English runs to 15 questions in three sections: a short factual passage with four questions, including a word-in-context item and an inference item built from numbered statements; ten questions asking which of five words means the same as a given word; and one question asking which of four drafts suits a story for a four-year-old. FSCE states that none of the practice questions will be on the real test, that they are not indicative of the content tested, and that a child could meet either format or both.

A session on Adventure therefore works at three levels:

• Reading unseen passages and saying why each wrong option is wrong, which is the habit that makes inference questions answerable.
• Building vocabulary from the child's own reading, since the sample's synonym questions test word meaning directly and its passage includes a word-in-context item; FSCE says it is not testing memory.
• Rehearsing the sheet in black pen, shading and amending exactly as the guide shows, in timed blocks so the spoken warning that time is nearly up is not new.

What does the Beacon paper reward when only the final answer earns the mark?

LGGS's page confirms the test includes written-response questions, and the FSCE guide calls this paper Beacon. A child writes her answer directly into boxes on her answer sheet: one number in each box for numerical answers, and one letter in each box, in capitals and written clearly, for letter answers. To change an answer she crosses it out and writes the correct one above the box.

For maths, the booklet leaves space for working out, but the guide states plainly that no marks are given for working. Calculators are not permitted at the sitting, and FSCE's maths list refers to written and mental methods. The consequence is easy to under-rate: a sound method with a slipped digit earns nothing, and a correct figure written in the wrong place earns nothing either.

The sample guide's short written section is again a sample only. Its eight English questions each give a sentence with a word whose letters are partly missing, to be completed so the sentence makes sense. Its seven maths questions are set in everyday contexts: working out change from a purchase, finding an angle, giving a finishing time on the 24-hour clock, subtracting decimals, reading a table of temperatures for the largest change, choosing the cheapest combination of tickets, and finding the area of the grass in a garden plan. FSCE adds that the difficulty of the real questions will differ.

Our Beacon sessions separate two habits that children often blur. The first is working: setting out the method in the booklet so she can check it, and estimating before computing. The second is transcription: reading the question again for the unit or format it asks for, such as a 24-hour time or an answer in square metres, then writing one figure per box. On the English side the session work is spelling in context and legible capitals, because a letter that could be read two ways is a letter that can be marked wrong.

Which 15 English skills does FSCE list, and how does a session group them?

FSCE's guide for parents, linked from the school's admissions page, lists the sorts of English skills FSCE says it tests. We count 15 statements. The guide also says the type of questions and the content change from year to year, so the list describes skills, not a fixed set of questions. Grouped by what a tutor actually does with them, they fall into five.

One detail shapes the first sessions. The national curriculum sets out English for Years 5 and 6 as a single programme of study, and its list for those years includes modal verbs and relative clauses. LGGS says the test stops at the end of Year 5. How much of FSCE's list a particular girl has met therefore depends on how her primary school sequenced the two years, which is why a gap check against the five groups is the sensible first step, and why the first session is a structured diagnostic.

How does FSCE's maths list map onto the Year 5 programme of study?

LGGS says the test draws only on Key Stage 2 content taught up to the end of Year 5. FSCE's parent guide, linked from the school's admissions page, gives seven statements for maths. We checked each against the Department for Education's mathematics programme of study for Year 5 and found a counterpart to all seven. Several of the FSCE statements reuse the programme of study's wording; the statistics statement on line graphs, tables and timetables and the angle statement on acute, obtuse and reflex angles are two examples. That is what Year 5 curriculum depth means in practice, and it is the reason our maths sessions use no content from beyond Year 5.

FSCE's parent guide ends its maths section with approaches rather than topics: work backwards from the answer, break a complex problem into smaller steps, think of more than one route. Because the real questions apply Year 5 content in new settings, those approaches are what we practise on unfamiliar problems, always without a calculator.

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What goes into the room at the sitting, and what is the one-attempt rule?

For the 2027-entry cycle, LGGS held the test on Saturday 26 September 2026, and its admissions page says a child may take it only once. The admission policy states the same limit as one sitting in the academic year. With one attempt, no paper to rehearse and a recording that runs the room, the practical preparation is rehearsing the room itself, and FSCE's children's guide sets out the rules in detail.

A child may bring two black pens (black biros or ballpoints; Frixion pens are permitted), a small bottle of water in clear plastic, tissues without opaque packaging, a small snack that contains no nuts, and glasses if she wears them. She may not bring pencils, dictionaries, rulers, protractors, scrap paper or study notes, stopwatches, calculators (calculator watches included), mobile phones unless switched off and handed in, digital watches or other wrist-worn devices. Clocks are displayed in each test room, and breaks come between papers where appropriate.

The supervisors in the room cannot read any of the words for her or say whether an answer is right. If she thinks she has the wrong paper or feels unwell, the route is to raise a hand. These are small points, and they are the ones a child who has never sat a formal test in a strange room is most likely to be thrown by. A useful rehearsal is a run through the sequence in black pen at a desk: sheet check, listen, shade or write, amend, move on.

Why can no tutor quote a target score when LGGS sets the pass mark after the sitting?

The determined 2027 admission policy is specific about how results are used. The policy's Pass Mark paragraph, which sits under section 6.9, says results are standardised, combined and placed in rank order, and that the pass mark is determined from the cohort's performance each year, so a higher-performing cohort may lead to a higher pass mark and a lower-performing one to a lower mark. Section 6.10 says the Admission Committee meets to set it once all applicants have completed the test. Section 6.8 of the policy adds that children do not need to complete any prior preparation ahead of the test.

The consequence is plain. The number a girl needs does not exist until the cohort has sat the papers, so no tutor can honestly quote one in advance, and we do not. Our recommendation is to organise preparation around FSCE's two skill lists instead, with each skill secure, shaky or not yet taught. Progress is tracked every session, and the first session is a structured diagnostic. Results, offers and the oversubscription criteria that follow the pass mark are set out in the guide linked earlier.

LGGS also describes free preparation of its own, and a family should know about it before choosing anything else. On its 11+ Familiarisation page the school says it works with Atom Learning to give students eligible for Pupil Premium free online learning and 11+ exam preparation. Eligibility means free school meals at any point in the last six years, and access follows verification of Pupil Premium status by the child's primary school. The page adds that Service Premium pupils, looked-after and previously looked-after children, children adopted from care, pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, and pupils identified as vulnerable, including young carers, can ask the school for log-in details. For families outside those groups it points to a free trial on Atom's own website. If your daughter qualifies, that is the school's own route and the natural first step; our tuition is for families who want a tutor working through her gaps, whether alongside it or on its own.

Families comparing schools in this group can also read our pages for Clitheroe Royal Grammar School and Ermysted's Grammar School, and the Yorkshire grammar schools page that covers Skipton Girls' High School. The same FSCE FAQ covers all four, but each school sets its own sitting, policy and pass mark.

Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026.

Reviewed October 2026: checked against Lancaster Girls' Grammar School's Year 7 admissions and 11+ Familiarisation pages, its determined 2027 admission policy, the FSCE familiarisation guides and consortium FAQ hosted by the school, and the Department for Education's national curriculum programmes of study.

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