Nonsuch High School Sixth Form Entry Requirements

Nonsuch High School for Girls' Sixth Form has no test and no interview: entry for both internal and external candidates is decided on actual GCSE grades, under a general floor of an average point score of 6 across the best eight GCSE subjects plus grade 6 in English and Mathematics, with formal offers made only after Results Day. On top of that floor sits a subject-by-subject grade requirement for every one of the school's A-level courses — published in Appendix B of the Sixth Form Course Prospectus, a document neither of Leading Tuition's own live Nonsuch pages has ever opened. The school's Admissions Policy also states a minimum of 20 places offered annually to external candidates, against an anticipated Year 12 capacity of around 210-220 and a combined Year 12/13 roll of 450, and confirms that Sutton Council does not process Sixth Form applications at all — they go to the school's own Admissions Authority, the Girls' Learning Trust.

Does Nonsuch Sixth Form Test or Interview at 16+?

Families who know Nonsuch through its Year 7 entry route naturally assume something similarly rigorous happens at 16+: the school's 11+ process runs a genuinely unusual two-stage selective assessment, the SET followed by the NWSSEE, so it is the obvious first question to carry across. The Sixth Form Admissions Policy answers it directly, and answers it differently from what an 11+ family would expect. The policy states: "Applications for places from internal and external candidates are considered on receipt of the completed application form and actual GCSE grades from their present school. Formal offers will only be made after Results Day." No test, no assessment and no interview appears anywhere in the qualifications section of the policy.

That "actual grades" wording matters on its own. Many schools' sixth form offers are conditional on predicted grades submitted months in advance, with places confirmed or withdrawn once results land. Nonsuch's process is the reverse: the policy is explicit that offers are made only after results are known, which means a Year 11 candidate's real August grades — not a teacher's prediction the previous winter — are what the school actually assesses. For anyone weighing an application on the strength of a predicted grade profile, that distinction is the difference between a genuine offer and simply meeting a provisional threshold.

The policy also removes any ambiguity about whether external applicants face a harder bar than the school's own students. It states plainly: "The qualifications criteria for external applicants are the same as for students already in the School." Whatever grade a subject requires, it requires the identical grade whether the candidate has spent five years at Nonsuch or is applying from outside for the first time.

The General GCSE Entry Bar, Kept Separate From the Subject-by-Subject Grades

Nonsuch's Admissions Policy splits Sixth Form entry into distinct criteria that are easy to collapse into a single number if a summary is not careful to keep them apart. The base floor, stated first: "The minimum requirement for entry to the Sixth Form is an average point score of six (6) over the best eight GCSE/IGCSE subjects attained by the candidate as part of their school's taught curricular or extra-curricular provision." On top of that average, every candidate additionally needs: "All candidates must have GCSE grade six (6) or above in English (Language or Literature) and Mathematics." An average point score of 6 does not, by itself, guarantee entry to any specific A-level — it is the floor a candidate has to clear before the subject-specific table below even applies.

Science candidates who took Combined Science rather than the three separate sciences face an additional rule of their own. The policy states: "Students who have studied combined science and wish to study either Biology, Chemistry or Physics need a minimum of one grade 7 and one grade 8 and are advised to study one science only." That is a meaningfully higher bar than a straight grade 7 in a single separate-science GCSE, and the advice to limit a Combined Science candidate to one science A-level is worth noting on its own.

Students planning a fourth A-level face a further, separate floor again. The policy states: "Any student wanting to study 4 A Levels should have a GCSE Average Point Score across the 'best 8' subjects of a grade 7.8, and have at least a grade 8 in the subject they wish to study as a 4th A level." Further Mathematics as that fourth subject carries its own higher version again: "For those wanting to study Further Maths as the 4th subject, they must have a GCSE Average Point Score across the 'best 8' subjects of a grade 8 and a grade 9 in Maths and a grade 9 in one other subject that they wish to study at A Level." Three separate thresholds, each higher than the last, depending on how many A-levels a candidate wants and whether one of them is Further Maths.

What Does Every A-Level Actually Require? Appendix B of the Sixth Form Prospectus

Nonsuch's Admissions Policy is explicit that it does not itself carry the per-subject detail: "Subject Entry Requirements will be published in the Sixth Form Prospectus." That is the sentence every summary of Nonsuch's Sixth Form — including Leading Tuition's own existing 11+ page and 11+ blog guide for this school — stops at. This page opens the school's own Sixth Form Course Prospectus 2026-2028 itself and publishes Appendix B's complete grade table for every A-level course the school runs.

Three details in that table are worth reading before the table itself, because they are exactly the kind of thing a summary that never opened the document would get wrong. First, Economics carries no Economics GCSE requirement at all — its entry grade is set in English: "Minimum of a grade 7 in English Literature or English Language." Second, four subjects — Classical Civilisation, Government & Politics, Psychology and Philosophy & Ethics (Religious Studies) — have no additional GCSE requirement beyond the general entry criteria above; the prospectus states simply "No additional requirements" against each. Third, Further Mathematics' own line in the table reads: "A grade 9 in GCSE Mathematics and must be taken alongside Mathematics and with 4 A Levels" — the highest single-grade bar on the page, and one that only makes sense read alongside the fourth-A-level rule in the section above.

Read the whole table together and a pattern emerges beyond the three headline oddities. Every subject with a straightforward GCSE equivalent — the sciences, the languages, the humanities, English Literature, Mathematics itself — sits on the same default rule: grade 7 in the matching GCSE. The subjects that break that default all break it for the same reason: no GCSE equivalent exists to test against (Classical Civilisation, Government & Politics, Psychology, Philosophy & Ethics), the natural prerequisite is a different subject entirely (Economics, tested through English), or the subject demands a portfolio, audition or practical assessment alongside or instead of a written GCSE (Art, Product Design, Drama, Music, PE). Further Mathematics is the only course on the list with a bar above grade 7.

How Many External Year 12 Places Actually Exist at Nonsuch?

This is the number that decides whether an outside family should apply at all. Nonsuch's Year 11 net capacity is 210, and the Admissions Policy states that "the majority of these students normally transfer to our Sixth Form" — and it goes further, guaranteeing internal continuation: "All Nonsuch students will be offered a place in the Sixth Form, dependent on them meeting the minimum entry criteria outlined in Section 10 and on the combination of subjects chosen and the number of places available in individual subjects." For a Nonsuch Year 11 pupil who clears the entry bar, a Sixth Form place is close to automatic.

Against that near-automatic internal transfer, the policy states the external figure directly: "A minimum of 20 places will be offered annually to external candidates (subject to section 9.4)." The wider numbers put that 20 in context. The policy sets "the anticipated Sixth Form capacity in Year 12 is approximately 210-220 students," and the school's own published information states "there are 450 students in the Sixth Form, including a large number who join us from other schools" across the combined Year 12 and Year 13 roll. Read those three figures together and the arithmetic is unambiguous: with roughly 210 internal Year 11 pupils largely guaranteed continuation into a Year 12 of 210-220, only a genuinely small remainder of that capacity is contested by outside applicants — and the Admissions Policy commits to a guaranteed floor of just 20 of those places for them, not a share of the full 210-220 figure. An external family should read Nonsuch's Sixth Form as a competition for roughly twenty places, not two hundred.

Who Actually Decides Sixth Form Places — the Girls' Learning Trust, Not Sutton Council

Nonsuch's Year 7 entry runs on a hard catchment boundary: the Admissions Policy sets aside "up to 125 places linked to our catchment area circle," awarded to applicants whose "permanent place of residence on 31 October 2025 (the deadline for submission of the Common Application Form) is 5.25 km or less from the front door of Nonsuch measured in a straight line." The natural question for the Sixth Form is whether that same geographic filter carries over to external 16+ applicants, and who even administers the round given how central Sutton Council is to Nonsuch's Year 7 process.

On oversubscription, the Admissions Policy publishes a full, ordered list for what happens once eligible external applications exceed the places available, stating that "the following criteria will be applied in the order set out below to decide the candidates to whom we will make an offer of a place." That order runs: Looked After Children first, then students eligible for Free School Meals, Pupil Premium or Young Carer status, then four successive tiers ranked by GCSE average point score against how many of a candidate's chosen subjects are undersubscribed courses (three, then two, then one, then any remaining places by highest average point score), and finally a tie-break for equal scores: "the final place will be determined by random allocation, drawn by a person independent of the School in the presence of at least two witnesses." Read that full eight-step list against the 5.25km circle that governs Year 7, and one thing stands out by its absence: nowhere in the published Sixth Form order does catchment, distance or place of residence appear as a step. The published criteria are about care status, financial need and GCSE score — not geography. That is what the current policy states; a future cycle could in principle add such a criterion, and this page describes only what is published today.

On who decides: Sutton Council's own school admissions service is explicit that its role stops at Year 11. Its guidance states: "If your child is aged 16 to 18 they can apply for post 16 education in year 12 or 13 directly with a school or college. The Cognus School Admissions Team do not process this type of application." Nonsuch's Sixth Form applications instead go straight to the school's own Admissions Authority, which the Department for Education's register identifies as the Girls' Learning Trust — a multi-academy trust of three schools, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Wallington High School for Girls and Carshalton High School for Girls, incorporated on 10 May 2011. A family used to Sutton's co-ordinated Year 7 scheme should not expect the council to have any role at all in a Sixth Form application.

What's Closed for September 2026, and What Isn't Published Yet?

As of this page's research date in mid-August 2026, the most recently published Nonsuch Sixth Form admissions cycle — September 2026 entry, an intake starting within weeks — has already closed to new applications. The school's own application page states this in as many words: "Applications to Nonsuch High School Sixth Form for September 2026 have now closed." The same page adds what comes next: "information on how to make a late application will be available on our website in August 2026, once you have received your GCSE results." GCSE Results Day for 2026 is published as 20 August, which is when that late-application guidance is promised to appear.

For the 2026-2028 prospectus cycle that has just closed, both Nonsuch's own Year 11 students and applicants from other schools were required to confirm their subject choices online by midnight on Thursday 12 February — a single shared deadline for internal and external candidates alike.

September 2027 entry is, as of now, entirely unpublished. The school's "Admissions Policy Consultation 2027 Entry" page currently returns nothing but an error: "The item you've tried to access isn't currently available on the website. It may have been archived automatically or it may be configured to go onto the website on a future date." That confirms only that the next cycle's arrangements have not yet gone live — it says nothing about what those arrangements will contain, and nothing further should be inferred from a page that simply is not there yet. Families should also note the Admissions Policy's appeals provision applies to whichever cycle they enter under: "Appeals against the School's decision not to allow entry to the Sixth Form should be lodged by 14 September in the year of entry."

Whole-school performance — Nonsuch's Attainment 8, Progress 8 and A-level average grades — is covered in depth on Leading Tuition's existing Nonsuch High School 11+ guide and its 11+ preparation blog guide; that is outcomes data, not admissions criteria, so this page does not repeat it. What those two pages do not carry is any of the Sixth Form entry detail above — the per-subject grade table, the true external places number, or the oversubscription order — because neither ever opens the Sixth Form Course Prospectus or the Admissions Policy this page is built from.

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