Bexley Grammar School Sixth Form (16+) Entry

Bexley Grammar School's sixth form has just changed in a way its own website has not fully caught up with. The Year 12 students starting this September are BGS's first cohort in years to study A Levels rather than the International Baccalaureate: after nine years as the only fully-IB sixth form in South East London, the school announced on 4 December 2025 that it would drop the IBDP entirely, following the Government's decision to withdraw the additional funding state schools receive for large IB programmes. One final IB cohort — the Year 13 group who started under the old system — continues through to May 2027; every Year 12 place from this September onward is an A Level place. Entry itself is unchanged in mechanism: no test, no interview, purely GCSE-based, using a minimum 48-point score across a candidate's best 8 GCSEs plus grade floors in English and Maths and a subject-by-subject grade ladder. There are 280 total Year 12 places, with a minimum of 30 reserved for external applicants from other schools, and Bexley Grammar's sixth form provision was rated Outstanding by Ofsted at the school's most recent inspection. None of this — the qualification switch, the points formula, the place count, or the Ofsted rating — appears assembled together anywhere across the school's own scattered sixth form pages.

Is Bexley Grammar School's Sixth Form Still the IB, or A Levels Now?

No, not for anyone starting Year 12 this September. Bexley Grammar School (BGS) has been teaching the IB since 2003, and “building on 14 years of experience, became fully IB in 2017” — at which point, by the school's own description, it was the only fully-IB sixth form in South East London, offering nothing else. That changed on Thursday 4 December 2025, when the Headteacher announced that, in light of the Government's decision to remove the additional funding that state schools receive for delivering large programmes such as the IB, BGS would “not be in a position to offer the IB course of study from September 2026”. From this September, the IBDP is no longer offered as a programme of study at all.

The transition is staged rather than immediate. Students who were already partway through the IBDP — the Year 12 and Year 13 cohorts who started the course before this September — continue to study it “with full funding and support from the School” through to May 2027, when the last IB cohort finishes. Every new Year 12 student joining from this September is on the school's new A Level pathway instead: a core of 3 A Levels, with an AS, the Extended Project Qualification, or a 4th A Level where appropriate, alongside an elective enrichment course. The school held an Open Evening to showcase this new programme on Tuesday 27 January 2026, with booking opening on Tuesday 9 December 2025 — both now in the past, part of the cycle that has just filled this September's Year 12.

There is one honest gap worth stating plainly rather than glossing over. Because Bexley Grammar School has taught the IB exclusively since 2017, it has no recent A Level results of its own for a family to judge the new programme against — the school's own announcement reaches back to describe its A Level provision “as recently as 2018” as reassurance, which is itself an acknowledgement that the most recent A Level cohort finished roughly eight years before this one starts. That is not a criticism of the school: its sixth form provision was rated Outstanding by Ofsted, its teaching staff are, in the school's own words, “well-qualified and highly trained subject specialists, experienced in the provision of A Level curricula”, and the Ofsted rating and the school's wider academic record still stand. But a family choosing BGS for A Levels this year is choosing a genuinely new programme without a multi-year set of A Level results behind it, and that is a fact worth knowing rather than assuming.

What GCSE Grades Do You Need for Bexley Grammar Sixth Form Entry?

Because the new A Level programme only started this September, the entry requirements below are the criteria published for the new A Level intake, not a legacy IB standard. Bexley Grammar School's Admissions Policy sets two conditions that both apply together, not as alternatives:

On top of the points score and the English/Maths floor, every individual A Level subject carries its own separate GCSE grade requirement, and missing it rules out that specific subject even if the overall 48-point total is comfortably cleared:

Where a candidate wants to study a subject not offered at GCSE — Economics, Business Studies, Psychology or Theatre Studies, for example — the school decides the required grade itself, on a case-by-case basis, rather than publishing a fixed substitute figure. It is worth comparing this formula to how other selective schools set their own bar. Aylesbury Grammar School — a Buckinghamshire grammar rather than a Bexley one — uses the same points-score mechanism but a different total: “44 points from your best 8 GCSEs”, on an identical grade-equals-points scale. Bexley Grammar's 48-point bar is four points higher across the same 8-subject spread; the mechanism is the same shape, the bar itself is not. Beths Grammar School, by contrast — another of the grammar schools in the London Borough of Bexley, covered on our separate Beths Grammar School sixth form guide — does not use a points score at all, judging entry instead on a flat GCSE-count-and-average model. Three selective schools, three genuinely different formulas.

How Many Sixth Form Places Are There, and How Many Go to External Applicants?

This is the number a family outside Bexley Grammar School actually needs, and it sits buried in a single line of the admissions policy rather than stated in prose anywhere on the school's own sixth form pages. The total combined Year 12 admission number is 280 students. Within that total, a minimum of 30 places are guaranteed for external applicants — students who are not already at BGS for Years 7 to 11. No new admissions are normally accepted directly into Year 13, except in exceptional circumstances, which closes off sixth form entry as a route for a student wanting to join for their final year only.

The oversubscription process only applies to external applicants who have already met the academic entry requirements above; internal BGS students moving up from Year 11 are not competing against this ranking. Where external demand for the 30-plus places exceeds supply, Bexley Grammar School allocates places in a fixed order: Looked After Children or Previously Looked After Children first, then candidates ranked by their average GCSE points score across their best 8 subjects (including English and Maths) — the same 8-subject basis as the 48-point entry bar itself, just used here as a ranking rather than a pass/fail threshold. Where two or more external candidates tie on that ranked score, the tie-break is proximity: the shortest walking route by public highway and lit footpath from the candidate's home address to the school's official Governors-approved entrance. Families should be ready to provide proof of residency if this stage is reached, since the school states that an offer can be withdrawn if proof of residency is not met.

Is There a Test or Interview for Bexley Grammar Sixth Form Entry?

No. Bexley Grammar School's published Admissions Policy describes a process built entirely around GCSE grades, with no test, assessment or interview stage of any kind, for internal or external candidates. Conditional offers are made on predicted grades submitted during the application window, and admission itself is confirmed only once a candidate's actual GCSE results are published. Internal candidates already at BGS have their place in the sixth form confirmed automatically once results are known; external candidates are required to actively confirm their GCSE results and accept their place by the Friday following GCSE results day, or risk losing it.

If an external application is refused, the school's policy confirms a statutory right of appeal to an Independent School Appeal Panel, with the applicant notified in writing and given further details of the appeal procedure. Because an offer can be conditional on results not yet achieved at the point of application, this is functionally a two-stage process — a conditional offer, followed by a confirmation or refusal once results land — even though neither stage involves anything resembling an entrance exam.

How and When to Apply — and What's Not Yet Published for September 2027

For the September 2026 entry cycle that has just filled this year's Year 12, external applicants completed an online application form made available after an Information Evening normally held in November; for this cycle, that fell in November 2025, with the application deadline normally falling in early January of the year before entry. The Open Evening specifically showcasing the school's new A Level curriculum — announced in the same 4 December 2025 statement that ended the IB — was held on Tuesday 27 January 2026, with booking for that event opening on Tuesday 9 December 2025. All of these dates are now in the past; they describe how this September's intake was recruited, not what a family applying today should expect to book.

As of August 2026, Bexley Grammar School had not separately published Sixth Form Open Evening or application dates for September 2027 entry. The school's current Admissions Policy document is itself titled to span two cycles — “Admissions Policy Sixth Form 2025-2027” — on its Admissions Policies page, which states plainly that it covers “September 2025 and September 2026 and 2027 entry”, but the school has not published a distinct set of 2027-cycle dates alongside it. A family planning ahead for the following year should treat November as the likely window for the next Information Evening, based on the pattern of the last two cycles, but should check the school's own Year 12 Admissions page directly nearer the time rather than relying on a projected date. Saying so plainly is more useful to a parent than guessing a date that has not yet been confirmed.

What Does Ofsted Say About Bexley Grammar's Sixth Form?

Bexley Grammar School's most recent Ofsted inspection took place on 18 October 2022, with the report published on 25 November 2022. The overall outcome of that inspection was Outstanding, and — specifically relevant to this page — sixth form provision was rated Outstanding as its own separate sub-judgement, not simply inherited from the whole-school grade. That rating predates the IB-to-A-Level switch by around three years, so it reflects the school's IB-era sixth form rather than the new A Level programme directly; it is still the clearest independent, authoritative verdict on the quality of teaching, leadership and pastoral support in the sixth form that any publicly available source states, and it applies to the same staff and the same pastoral structure now delivering A Levels.

Where Is Bexley Grammar School, and Who Runs It?

Bexley Grammar School is on Danson Lane, Welling, with the postal address DA16 2BL — a postal address that gives the county as Kent, which regularly confuses parents researching admissions, since the local authority that actually administers the school's academic record is not Kent County Council. According to the Department for Education's official record for the school (URN 136369), the local authority is Bexley. The school is an academy converter, mixed throughout (co-educational for all year groups, not only in the sixth form), covering ages 11 to 18, with a selective admissions policy. The same DfE record gives a whole-school capacity of 1,357 against a current roll of 1,504 pupils, with 4% of pupils eligible for free school meals.

Bexley Grammar School sits alongside three other grammar schools in the London Borough of Bexley that share the borough's Year 7 entrance test, a subject our separate Beths Grammar School sixth form guide covers in depth, since Beths' own sixth form page is built around that same shared 11+ context. This page deliberately does not repeat that ground: everything above — the 48-point formula, the IB-to-A-Level switch, the 280 places, the Ofsted rating — is specific to Bexley Grammar School's own sixth form, not the wider borough admissions system. Families researching Bexley Grammar School's 11+ route for a younger child can find that covered on our separate Bexley Grammar School 11+ guide; families further along, looking at A Level or university preparation once a sixth form place is confirmed, may also find our A-Level tuition and Oxbridge admissions pages useful for the years beyond entry.

Frequently Asked Questions