Bryanston School Sixth Form 2027: Entry and Fees

Bryanston School is an independent boarding and day school at Blandford Forum in Dorset whose Sixth Form admits between 20 and 30 new pupils a year across three routes: A Level, the IB Diploma and OCR Cambridge Technical diplomas. Entry requires 40 or more GCSE points, a CAT4 test and an interview. Boarding fees for 2026/27 are £19,750 a term including VAT; day places are £16,195 or £13,555.

What “40 or more GCSE points” actually requires

Bryanston states its academic threshold as a points total rather than a grade profile. Its Sixth Form Entry page says candidates sit a CAT4 and that “pupils are expected to achieve 40 or more GCSE points”. The school does not publish the conversion table, so here is the arithmetic on the reformed 9–1 scale, where a grade 9 scores nine points and a grade 4 scores four.

Source: threshold from Bryanston’s Sixth Form Entry FAQ; the averages are arithmetic on the published figure, not school guidance.

Two things follow from that table, and neither is on the school’s own pages. The first is that 40 points is a low bar in isolation — a candidate averaging a grade four across ten subjects clears it. The second is that the school does not say how many subjects are counted, whether a best-eight rule applies, or whether a grade 4 in English and maths is compulsory. Those are the questions to put to the Admissions Team, because the answer changes whether a borderline candidate is inside or outside the threshold.

The bar that actually decides a Sixth Form timetable is the second one. Bryanston says that “most heads of department recommend at least a grade 7 at GCSE for subjects relevant to sixth form study”. Put plainly: 40 points gets a pupil into the school, and grade sevens get them onto the courses they came for. A candidate sitting on grade fives in maths and the sciences may well be admitted and still find the A Level science set closed to them. Applicants from outside the UK carry a third requirement, IELTS 6.0 or equivalent, alongside an EAL English test at assessment.

Twenty to thirty places, decided in one November round

Most independent schools publish nothing at all about sixth form intake size. Bryanston answers it directly, inside a collapsed FAQ on its Sixth Form Entry page: “Numbers vary each year, but we usually admit between 20 and 30 students.”

That number reframes the application. This is not a rolling intake with places trickling out across the year. Everything is settled in a single round: applications close in October, three Test and Interview Days run in November, and the first offers go out at the beginning of December. The school is explicit that later offers are possible but conditional on spaces remaining, and it directs anyone who has missed the round to contact Admissions rather than apply cold.

There is a second consequence worth stating, because it separates Bryanston sharply from the state grammar sixth forms a family may be considering alongside it. Offers are made in December of Year 11, well before any GCSE is sat. The decision therefore rests on the CAT4 result, the interview and the current school’s reference — not on results a candidate has already banked. A grammar school sixth form that admits on actual August grades is testing a different thing entirely.

The assessment is a cognitive test and an interview, not a subject paper

Bryanston’s standard Sixth Form route has four components, and the school names each of them:

• GL Assessment’s CAT4. A cognitive ability test rather than a curriculum paper. There is no syllabus to revise; what preparation can do is remove the format from the equation so a candidate is not meeting the question types for the first time under timed conditions.
• Interviews with academic staff. The school describes these as interviews, plural, with its academic team.
• A reference from the current school. Requested as part of the process.
• A Scholarship Assessment Day for scholarship candidates only, described as assessment “through tests, exams and observation”, with interviews by a range of staff.

International applicants follow the same CAT4 route with an EAL English online test added, and the school states that the whole sequence can be conducted online or in person. That matters for a family weighing an overseas application against a UK-based one: there is no requirement to fly in for the assessment.

Three published deadlines, and only one of them is live

Bryanston publishes its Sixth Form application deadline in three places, and the three do not agree. This is not a quibble: the page that ranks second on Google for the school’s own sixth form still shows a cycle that closed in 2025, while the live date sits on a page ranking seventh.

Source: bryanston.co.uk, Sixth Form Entry, Bursaries and How to Apply pages, all read on 16 August 2026.

The two closed dates differ by eighteen days for what is described on both pages as the same intake. There is no way to tell from the outside which was operative. The safe reading for a future cycle is to work to the earlier of any two dates the school publishes and to confirm it by telephone before relying on it — particularly for a scholarship application, where the assessment day is fixed and a late registration cannot be accommodated.

The September 2027 cycle is the one a family can act on, and its timetable is published in full on the How to Apply page:

Source: bryanston.co.uk How to Apply, Sixth Form section, read 16 August 2026.

Fees for 2026/27, every figure inclusive of VAT

Independent school fees in the UK now carry VAT, and schools differ in whether the number they advertise is stated before or after it. Bryanston states its position explicitly: the figures below are termly and, in the school’s own words, “inclusive of VAT”. Any figure found elsewhere on a VAT-exclusive basis is not comparable with these, and the difference is large enough to reverse which of two schools looks cheaper.

Source: bryanston.co.uk School Fees, Senior School fees, 2026/27 academic year. Termly figures are the school’s; annual figures are three terms at the published rate.

The two day rates are worth reading carefully, because the distinction is unusual and the gap between them is £2,640 a term. “Day, with bed” buys a day pupil a bed in a boarding house, which is what makes the £74.53 additional-night rate usable; “day, no bed” does not. A family within driving distance of Blandford Forum who expects occasional overnight stays is choosing between the two rather than between day and boarding.

The costs that fall before the first term begins are published separately:

Source: bryanston.co.uk School Fees, Sixth form application fees & deposit.

The school contradicts itself here too. Its fees page gives the acceptance deposit as £2,200 with £1,000 refunded against the first term; its Sixth Form Entry page gives £2000 with no split. The fees page carries the current 2026/27 figures and is the better-maintained of the two, so budget on £2,200 and confirm. For a non-UK-resident family taking a boarding place, the sum falling due at acceptance is the £300 fee, the £2,200 deposit and a full term at £19,750.

What a scholarship is worth here, and why the bursary matters more

Bryanston caps scholarship value at a level many families will find lower than expected. Its Scholarships and Bursaries page states that “awards range in value from honorary up to a maximum of 10% of the fees” and that a pupil may apply for a maximum of two. Against boarding at £59,250 a year, ten per cent is £5,925; an honorary award is worth nothing in cash and confers recognition only. The school does not say whether two awards can together exceed the ten per cent ceiling, which is a question for Admissions rather than something to assume.

Five categories are offered at Sixth Form entry: Academic, Music, Sport, Art and Performing Arts. The Sixth Form Entry page names the sport award “Udall (Sport)” where the scholarships page calls it simply Sport. Two procedural points are easy to miss. A scholarship is only open to candidates who have already gone through Year 12 admissions, so it is a second application rather than an alternative route in. And applications for September 2027 entry open in September 2026, assessed in the week beginning 16 November 2026.

The honest conclusion is that a scholarship is recognition, not a funding solution. A ten per cent remission does not change the affordability of a £59,250 boarding place. Bursaries are the instrument that does: they are means-tested on household earnings, the value of assets and cost-of-living expenses, assessed by a third-party organisation, reviewed annually, and the school says they are “more commonly awarded in support of, and supplementary to” a scholarship, though they can stand alone. Bryanston runs a separate bursary route for military families. If fees are the obstacle, the bursary form is the document that matters.

A Level, IB or CTEC — three routes, not two

This is the fact that most changes who this page is for. Bryanston’s Sixth Form is not an A Level-only sixth form with an IB option bolted on; it runs three qualification routes, and the third one is vocational.

• A Level. The conventional route, with the school’s enrichment programme running alongside it.
• IB Diploma. Pupils take six subjects including their own language and maths, with coursework contributing to the final grade in every subject. The school notes the Diploma is taught in 150 countries.
• CTEC. A pupil takes one A Level alongside an OCR Cambridge Technical Level 3 Diploma. Two are currently offered: Business, specialising in Marketing, and Sport and Physical Activity, specialising in Sports Coaching. Each diploma is worth the equivalent of two A Levels in UCAS tariff points, and both are assessed by a mix of modular examinations and coursework.

One caution on the school’s own wording: the How to Apply page describes the offer as “the IB and CTEC Level 2”, while the dedicated CTEC page names Level 3 diplomas. Level 3 is the sixth-form level and is the one consistent with the UCAS tariff claim, so the How to Apply reference appears to be an error rather than a second qualification.

The CTEC route also resolves the tension in the entry requirements described at the top of this page. A candidate who clears 40 GCSE points comfortably but cannot reach grade 7 in three traditional academic subjects is not shut out; they are the candidate the CTEC and A Level combination exists for. Families weighing the Diploma against three A Levels may find our comparison of the IB and A Levels useful before the interview, since the choice of route is discussed there.

The Bryanston Method, and why the interview tests independence

The structural feature Bryanston is known for is a tutorial system rather than a house system. Every pupil is assigned a personal tutor from the academic staff before arrival, and that tutor meets each tutee one-to-one every week for the whole of their time at the school. In the Sixth Form the school describes that relationship as central to university, apprenticeship and employment applications.

Alongside it sits the arrangement the school calls Correction Periods, or CPs: one-to-one discussions with individual subject teachers. Bryanston states that by the Sixth Form, pupils spend as much time outside the classroom as inside it — in CPs, in assignment periods doing their own research, and in prep time in the boarding houses. Progress is tracked on an online weekly assessment chart the pupils themselves use.

That has a direct bearing on the interview. A timetable which hands a sixteen-year-old that much unsupervised time only works for a pupil who can use it, and the interview is where the school finds out whether a candidate can. A pupil arriving from a heavily timetabled school should expect to be asked, in some form, how they work when nobody is checking. It is a more useful question to prepare than a list of favourite books.

Offer-holders get to test the arrangement before committing. In the final week of the summer term the school runs a five-day Sixth Form Induction Week in which new pupils live in the boarding house, meet their tutor, sit in on their subjects and get to know the year group.

What the results published on 13 August 2026 show

Bryanston published its A Level outcomes on results day, 13 August 2026. Of the leaving cohort, 86 per cent secured a university place of their choice and 77 per cent their first choice, with 66 per cent of all A Level grades awarded at A*–B. The IB cohort, whose results came earlier in the summer, averaged 33.2 points against a global mean of 30.88. Between this year’s leavers and the previous year’s post-results applicants, 123 university applications were submitted.

Destinations secured include Oxford, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Durham, LSE, Exeter, Bristol, Falmouth and The Courtauld Institute of Art, alongside overseas places and degree apprenticeships. The pattern is consistent with the previous year: in 2025, 95 per cent of applicants secured a place at one of their top choices, 87 per cent at their firm choice, from applications to 14 countries.

Read against the entry requirements, those figures are coherent rather than remarkable, and that is the point. A sixth form that admits at 40 GCSE points and runs three qualification routes is not producing the grade distribution of a super-selective school, and it does not claim to. Two-thirds of grades at A*–B, an IB average comfortably above the global mean, and a spread of destinations from Oxford to The Courtauld to degree apprenticeships describes a school that takes a wide intake and places it well. That is the offer, and a family should judge it as that rather than against a league-table position.

How Bryanston sits against the alternatives

Two comparisons come up repeatedly for families looking at this school. The first is 13+ against 16+. Bryanston’s main entry point is Year 9, and a family already considering the school at that stage is weighing a different assessment and a different timetable; our guide to Bryanston at 13+ covers that route, and the broader independent school 13+ process sets it in context. Entering at Sixth Form means joining an established year group of pupils who have had the tutorial system since Year 9, which is precisely what the five-day induction week is designed to soften.

The second is boarding against a selective day sixth form. At £59,250 a year for boarding, this is a decision about a way of living as much as a set of qualifications — the CPs, the assignment periods and the prep time in the houses are one system, not three separate things. Families comparing options across the sector will find the other schools we cover on our 16+ sixth form entry hub, and the fee basis is the first thing to check on each: the number is only comparable if VAT is treated the same way on both sides.

The school’s own pages remain the authority for every figure here. The Bryanston How to Apply page carries the live September 2027 timetable, and it is the page to check before acting on any date, not the higher-ranking Sixth Form Entry page.

Frequently asked questions