Beths Grammar School Sixth Form (16+) Entry

Beths Grammar School's sixth form is co-educational, taking girls for the first time at Year 12 even though the school is boys-only from Year 7 to Year 11. Entry is decided purely on GCSE results — a minimum of seven full-course GCSEs at grades 9 to 5, an average of at least grade 6, and grade 5 in both English Language and Mathematics — with no entrance test and no interview. Online applications for September 2026 entry opened on 20 November 2025 and close at midnight on Saturday 31 January 2026, with 700 places available across Year 12 and Year 13 combined. This guide sets out the co-educational structure, the exact grade requirements, how the 16+ route differs from Beths' well-known 11+ Bexley Selection Test and its separate in-year admissions process, the open event dates, and the more-than-30-subject A-Level programme — the practical facts Beths' own sixth form pages publish only in scattered pieces across five separate URLs, none of which draws them together.

Is Beths Grammar School's Sixth Form Co-Educational?

Yes — and this is the detail a parent needs before anything else on this page makes sense. Beths Grammar School describes its own sixth form as a “diverse co-educational Sixth Form” on its admissions page, which is a genuine structural change partway through the school. Beths admits only boys into Year 7, via the Bexley Selection Test, and stays single-sex through to the end of Year 11. According to Wikipedia's summary of the school's structure, girls join Beths for the first time at Year 12, when the sixth form becomes mixed — a detail the school's own sixth form pages do not spell out in those words, though they do confirm plainly that the sixth form itself is co-educational.

That distinction is easy to miss. A search for “Beths Grammar School sixth form” sits alongside years of the school's boys'-grammar branding at 11+, and none of the school's own ranking pages states the boys-to-mixed transition and the co-educational sixth form together in one place — a reader has to piece it together from the admissions page's wording and separate background knowledge of the school. Any girl who meets the GCSE entry requirements below can apply for a Year 12 place on exactly the same basis as a boy already at the school, whether or not she attended a Bexley grammar school for Years 7-11.

This also means Beths' sixth form draws from two applicant pools that never overlap lower down the school: boys who have completed Year 11 at Beths itself, and external candidates — boys and girls alike — applying from other secondary schools. Beths does not publish a separate places figure for external versus internal candidates; its own admissions page states only a single combined capacity of 700 across Year 12 and Year 13, without breaking that down further. Where a school genuinely does not publish a figure, the honest answer is to say so rather than estimate one, and that is the case here.

What GCSE Grades Do You Need for Beths Sixth Form Entry?

Because there is no entrance test at 16+, the GCSE grade requirement is the actual gate that decides who is offered a place — the practical equivalent, for this route, of the pass mark on Beths' 11+ Bexley Selection Test. Beths' own sixth form admissions page sets out three separate conditions, and an applicant must meet all three together, not just one of them:

These are entry requirements rather than a points-scoring or ranking system. Beths' own page does not describe a further per-subject threshold for individual A-Level choices — for instance, a higher grade required to start A-Level Further Mathematics or a single science — so a candidate meeting the three general conditions above is eligible to apply for any of the more than 30 subjects covered in the programme section below, subject to space on that subject's timetable line. Beths also does not publish a separate interview or additional assessment stage for sixth form applicants beyond these grade conditions: its admissions page moves directly from the entry requirements to the online application process, and the only conditional step it describes is confirmation once GCSE results are published in August.

The 700-place capacity is shared between continuing Beths pupils moving up from Year 11 and external applicants joining for the first time, and the school's admissions page does not publish how that capacity splits between the two groups or how many external offers are made in a typical year — a genuine gap in what Beths itself publishes, not something this page can safely estimate on its behalf.

How Does 16+ Entry Differ from Beths' 11+ and In-Year Routes?

Beths Grammar School runs three structurally different admission routes, and it is easy to conflate them because all three eventually lead to the same building. A search for “Beths Grammar School sixth form” can just as easily surface pages about the school's well-known 11+ test, so it is worth stating plainly how the three routes differ — a comparison none of Beths' own pages draws in one place.

Year 7 entry (11+). Boys apply for one of 192 published Year 7 places by sitting the Bexley Selection Test, a shared exam dated every September and administered across all four Bexley grammar schools by Quest Assessments. Places are decided largely by test score: children in the top 180 age-standardised scores are placed in the highest priority group, and most of the remaining places are allocated by home-to-school distance. There is no catchment area.

In-year (mid-year) entry, Years 7-9. Beths also accepts applications outside the normal September Year 7 transfer point, for families moving into the area or missing the original test window. Beths' own mid-year admissions page confirms that a boy must still be “deemed selective in the Bexley Selection Tests” and that families apply using a Bexley In Year Application Form. Rather than one fixed date, sittings are hosted in rotation by each of the four Bexley grammar schools through the year: for the 2025-26 cycle, Bexley Grammar School hosted a sitting on 7th-8th October 2025, Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School on 16th and 19th January 2026, Beths itself on 21st-22nd April 2026, and Townley Grammar School on 6th-8th July 2026. Beths' own page does not name a separate test provider or format for this route beyond the Bexley Selection Tests standard, so this page does not either.

Sixth form entry (16+). This is where the route changes completely: there is no test and no interview. A candidate — boy or girl, from Beths or from any other secondary school — is assessed purely on GCSE results against the three conditions in the section above. The one sense in which sixth form entry still resembles the 11+ route is procedural, not academic: Beths' own appeals timetable treats “Post 16 Appeals” as a distinct category from Year 7 appeals, with wording tying the appeal deadline to whether “the offer of a place would have been conditional on exam results” — confirming that, unlike the 11+ route, a sixth form offer can genuinely hinge on GCSE results a candidate has not yet sat at the point of applying.

For families who have already been through the 11+ process with Beths, or who are researching it for a younger sibling, our companion pages cover that route directly: the school's Bexley Selection Test format, scoring and key dates are set out on our Beths Grammar School 11+ page and in our longer Beths 11+ guide. Neither of those pages covers the sixth form route in any depth — which is the gap this page fills.

How and When to Apply for September 2026 Entry

Once eligibility is established, the application itself is a fixed-deadline online process rather than anything requiring a visit or a paper form in the first instance. Applications for September 2026 entry opened on Thursday 20 November 2025 and close at midnight on Saturday 31 January 2026, submitted through the school's own Applicaa portal at beths.applicaa.com/2026. Beths' page does not describe an extension or a late-application route beyond this deadline, so families should treat 31 January as fixed in the same way the 11+ route treats its own registration cutoff.

If an application is unsuccessful, arrives too late, or a candidate narrowly misses the GCSE grade conditions in August, Beths' own page confirms that “applicants can apply to our waiting list on results day” — meaning the waiting-list route only opens once GCSE results are published, not before.

Because an offer itself can be conditional on GCSE results not yet achieved at the point of application, families should read any confirmation carefully once results are published. Beths' Post-16 appeals process, covered in the section above, explicitly distinguishes appeals against a conditional offer from appeals against an unconditional one, and the two run to different timescales.

Sixth Form Open Events: Dates and How to Book

Beths ran eight open event sessions for the 2025-26 sixth form admissions cycle, each lasting one hour and including a talk from the Head of Sixth Form.

Every session is ticketed, and — unusually among sixth form open events — Beths restricts attendance to “students in Year 11 only”, with one ticket per family covering “one student and one adult”. Families cannot attend without a booked ticket; the school's page is explicit that unbooked attendees “will be turned away”. Parking is not available on site: the school directs visitors to nearby NCP car parks and the Hall Place car park, a short walk away. Families unable to attend any of the eight sessions can access virtual open event material published on the school's website instead.

What Will You Study? A-Level Choices and the Sixth Form Programme

Grades and dates settle who can apply; this section covers what a successful applicant is actually signing up to study. Beths offers more than 30 A-Level subjects — among the broadest single-school offers in the area, in the school's own description — including Ancient History, Business Education, Economics, Engineering, Further Mathematics, Geology, Government and Politics, Law, Photography and Psychology, alongside the core subjects also studied at GCSE level.

All students take a minimum of three A-Levels and follow the school's Elective Enrichment Programme alongside them, which includes the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), Physical Education, Mentoring or Life Skills modules. Beths describes this as building “well-rounded students” through weekly enrichment activities that include community placements, voluntary work, subject mentoring, music, drama and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) — intended, in the school's own words, to develop skills such as teamwork, leadership, communication and confidence alongside the core subject teaching.

Sixth formers also benefit from a facility change that predates most current Year 12 applicants: a new, purpose-built Jubilee Sixth Form Centre opened in February 2025, replacing the previous sixth form space with dedicated study areas and its own food service, which the school describes as giving students “a taste of life at university and within the world of work” before they leave. For students planning ahead to the next step, our university tuition and Oxbridge admissions pages cover preparation beyond sixth form directly, and our A-Level tuition programmes support the subjects Beths sixth formers are already studying.

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