What the school's own September 2026 policy actually requires, ranks and changed for external Year 12 applicants.
Book a Free ConsultationKing Edward VI Five Ways School is a co-educational selective grammar school in Bartley Green, Birmingham, that expects around 20 external Year 12 places for September 2026 entry against a minimum of six GCSEs at grade 6 or above, including English and Mathematics. Unlike several sibling King Edward VI schools, Five Ways decides sixth form places on actual GCSE results uploaded on results day, not on predicted grades submitted months earlier.
Five Ways' own external application procedure tells new applicants plainly: "Students do not need to upload their predictive grades, as actual grades will be uploaded onto the Results Portal, on our web page www.kefw.org between 05.00hrs and 10.30hrs on 20th August 2026." Once results are in, the school offers successful students a telephone meeting on 20th or 21st August 2026, and induction follows in the autumn term.
That single design choice changes what a preparation programme should actually target. At a school running on predicted grades, part of the work is managing the gap between a teacher's prediction and the eventual result. Five Ways removes that variable entirely: there is one fixed target, the real Year 11 examinations, sat under normal conditions and marked in the usual way. A student either clears the published gates on the day or does not, and no negotiation over a predicted grade can substitute for it.
Registration itself happens well before that point. The Open Evening for students new to Five Ways ran on 5 November 2025 from 18.00hrs to 20.00hrs, and the online interest form stayed live from 6 November 2025 until 23.59hrs on 9 January 2026. Registering only flags interest — it is not an application with predicted grades attached, and nothing submitted in November or January is used to judge the eventual application.
The general floor is identical under both the September 2026 and the proposed September 2027 determined policies: a minimum of six GCSE passes at grade 6 or above, including English and Mathematics, for internal and external candidates alike. That floor is necessary but not sufficient. A separate, subject-specific gate applies before a place on any individual A Level is confirmed, and it is a full grade higher than most families assume for the hardest subject on the list.
| Requirement | September 2026 policy | September 2027 policy |
|---|---|---|
| External Year 12 admission number | Expected to be 20 | Expected to be 20 |
| General GCSE floor | Six GCSEs at grade 6+, inc. English & Maths | Six GCSEs at grade 6+, inc. English & Maths |
| Subject-specific A-Level gate | Grade 7 GCSE in that subject | Grade 7 GCSE in that subject |
| Further Mathematics gate | Grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics | Grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics |
Offers remain conditional even where every grade is met. Five Ways' policy states that "offers of places are conditional on the capacity of the chosen courses" and that satisfying the grade criteria "will not guarantee an offer if the subject is over-subscribed." A family should treat the grade floor as a starting point for eligibility, not a guarantee of a timetable.
Aiming for Further Maths at Five Ways? That single subject needs a grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics, one grade above the general grade 7 gate every other subject uses. We build Year 11 programmes around whichever specific GCSE grades a student's intended A Levels actually require, not a generic revision plan.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppClearing the grade floor puts a family into a queue, not straight into a place. Once external demand exceeds the roughly 20 places available, Five Ways' own determined policy ranks applicants through four categories, in this exact order, under both the September 2026 and the proposed September 2027 policies:
| Priority | Category | Ranked by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Looked After / Previously Looked After children | Distance from the school |
| 2 | Named feeder schools: King Edward VI Balaam Wood Academy and King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls | No further ranking needed within this category's scale of applicants |
| 3 | Pupil Premium (capped at 25% of external places) | Distance from the school |
| 4 | All other external applicants | Highest average GCSE point score, then distance |
Category 2 is the detail most families miss, because it ranks two entire schools' worth of applicants above Pupil Premium and above every academically-ranked external candidate in category 4. Both named schools are worth knowing exactly what they are. King Edward VI Balaam Wood Academy (URN 147440) and King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls (URN 148684) are both non-selective academies within the same King Edward VI Academy Trust Birmingham, and both teach only up to Year 11 — the Department for Education's own register gives both an age range of 11 to 16. Neither runs a sixth form of its own, so a Year 11 leaver from either school who wants to stay within the King Edward VI family for sixth form has nowhere else in the Trust to go except a school like Five Ways that will take them, and Five Ways' own policy rewards that route with second priority overall.
A family outside both feeder schools and outside the Pupil Premium and Looked After categories is competing entirely in category 4, on the highest average point score across all GCSE subjects taken. That is a different, and generally harder, test than simply clearing the six-GCSE grade 6 floor: it rewards a strong, broad set of results across every subject sat, not just the six subjects needed for the minimum bar.
Not on the headline numbers. Reading the September 2026 and the proposed September 2027 determined policies side by side, the external admission number (20), the six-GCSE grade 6 floor, the grade 7 subject gate and the grade 8 Further Mathematics gate are worded identically in both documents. A sibling King Edward VI school, Camp Hill Boys, tightened three separate sixth form thresholds between its 2026 and 2027 policies in the same period; Five Ways did not follow that pattern on any grade.
Two procedural clauses did appear in the 2027 policy that are simply absent from the 2026 sixth form section. The first is a standalone Pupil Premium evidence rule specific to sixth form applicants, requiring parents to "submit evidence of Pupil Premium eligibility when requested during the application process" — the 2026 sixth form section says nothing about evidence at all. The second is an entirely new "Withdrawal of subjects" clause: the school now reserves the right to withdraw a subject "due to insufficient numbers which make it unviable to deliver the course," requiring an affected candidate to choose an alternative subject that has space available. Neither clause changes the grade bar itself, but both change what a family should prepare for procedurally — proof of eligibility on request, and a fallback subject choice in case a low-uptake option is pulled.
My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.
We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.
I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.
Five Ways' own history page makes a specific claim: "In September 2003, the School completed the move towards full co-education, making it the only mixed, non fee paying Grammar School in the West Midlands." That claim is precise rather than casual, and the precision matters when comparing Five Ways against a sibling school. It rests on being mixed at every year group, not on merely admitting some girls or boys at some point in a child's school career.
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School, for comparison, is not single-sex throughout and it is not mixed throughout either — it runs an age-banded structure. Handsworth's own September 2025 determined admission policy states plainly that the school "is an Academy for boys aged 11-18 years and girls aged 16-18 years", and separately that it "welcomes applications from boys and girls at age 16 years for entry into the Sixth Form." Boys enter at 11; girls only from sixth form, where the King Edward VI Foundation's own page states roughly a quarter of the cohort is female. The Department for Education's register lists Handsworth's official name as "King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys" (URN 143562) with its Year 7 gender of entry recorded as Boys — consistent with, not contradicting, the school's own age-banded policy once the age bands are understood. The same pattern recurs elsewhere in the Foundation: the King Edward VI Foundation describes King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls' sixth form as "a co-educational facility for 16-19 year olds", again mixed only from 16.
Five Ways is different in kind, not just in degree: the Department for Education records its gender of entry simply as Mixed across the entire 11-to-18 range, with no age-banded qualifier attached, because there is none to attach. A family comparing our Handsworth Grammar sixth form entry guide against this page is comparing an age-banded sixth form against a school that has been mixed at every year group since 2003.
Five Ways published its 2025 results on 5 September 2025, describing the year as placing the school among the "Top 5 co-educational grammar schools nationally." The headline figures: 52% of A Level grades were A*-A and 81% were A*-B; at GCSE, 100% of students passed including English and Maths, with 52% of grades at 9-8 and 75% at 9-7. University and career destinations included 12 places at Oxbridge (a new school record), 24 students going on to study Medicine, 5 to Dentistry and 4 to Veterinary Science, with over 90% securing their first-choice university or apprenticeship.
Independent verification sits alongside those self-published figures. The Department for Education's own compare-school-performance service records 193 students completing Level 3 (A Level) study at Five Ways in 2025. Ofsted's inspection of 28 November 2023, published 19 January 2024, graded the school Good overall, but its Sixth form provision specifically was graded Outstanding, alongside an Outstanding grade for Behaviour and attitudes — a sixth-form-specific judgement that a simple "rated Good" headline does not capture.
Yes. Five Ways' own determined policy expects around 20 external admissions into Year 12 for both September 2026 and September 2027 entry, alongside internal Year 11 students who meet the same bar. Parents of external candidates are told to contact the school directly rather than complete a formal application form, and places are confirmed only after GCSE results are known, not before.
A minimum of six GCSE passes at grade 6 or above, including English and Mathematics, under both the September 2026 and September 2027 determined policies. On top of that floor, most subjects need at least a grade 7 GCSE in the specific subject to be studied at A Level, and Further Mathematics needs a grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics specifically, one grade higher than the general subject gate.
Yes, and by a wide margin. Both schools are named in Five Ways' own oversubscription order as priority category 2, ranked above Pupil Premium applicants (category 3, capped at 25% of external places) and above every other external candidate ranked on GCSE points (category 4). Both feeder schools are non-selective and teach only to Year 11, so their leavers have no sixth form of their own to progress into.
The Open Evening for students new to Five Ways was 5 November 2025, and the online registration form stayed live from 6 November 2025 until 23.59hrs on 9 January 2026. Registering does not submit predicted grades; it simply flags interest so the school can contact successful applicants once real GCSE results are uploaded on results day, 20 August 2026.
Mixed throughout. Five Ways completed its move to full co-education in September 2003 and the Department for Education's register confirms its gender of entry as Mixed across the full 11-to-18 age range. That is different from several neighbouring King Edward VI schools, such as Handsworth Grammar, which admit one sex at 11 and open only their sixth form to the other sex at 16.
Five Ways does not collect predicted grades from external applicants at all; the whole process runs on actual results uploaded to the school's Results Portal between 05.00hrs and 10.30hrs on 20 August 2026. Successful students are then offered a telephone meeting on 20th or 21st August 2026. Offers remain conditional on capacity in the specific A-Level subjects chosen, even where the grade floor is met.
Ofsted's inspection of 28 November 2023, published 19 January 2024, graded the school Good overall but rated Sixth form provision Outstanding, alongside an Outstanding grade for Behaviour and attitudes. That sixth-form-specific Outstanding judgement sits inside an overall Good rating, a distinction easy to miss in a headline summary.
Because Five Ways marks on actual results rather than predicted grades, there is no discrepancy risk to manage, only one fixed target: the real Year 11 exams. Our tutors work backwards from a student's intended A-Level subjects to the specific GCSE grades that gate them, prioritising Mathematics if Further Maths is wanted, since that alone needs a grade 8 rather than the general grade 7. Start with a free consultation.
This page covers 16+ entry into Five Ways' sixth form only. For 11+ entry at age 11, see our King Edward VI Five Ways School 11+ guide, and browse our other 16+ sixth form entry pages for neighbouring Birmingham schools. We also support students through GCSE and A-Level study once a Five Ways place is confirmed. Full details of Five Ways' own entry requirements sit in the school's September 2026 determined admission policy, and the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register for the school (URN 137046).
Registration for September 2026 entry has already closed, but results-day preparation for the grade 6/7/8 gates matters most in the months before it. We are rated 4.8 out of 5 from 58 reviews on Trustpilot; talk to us about which specific GCSE grades your child's intended A Levels at King Edward VI Five Ways School will actually require.
Book a Free Consultation