11+ Exam Dates 2026–2027

The 11+ for September 2027 entry is a set of separate tests run by individual local authorities, consortia and schools, and the confirmed sittings fall between 2 September and 10 October 2026. Eight of the nine registration windows checked for this page have closed; The Tiffin Girls' School closes at 12.00 noon on 1 September 2026. Every date below was read off the authority's own timetable on 22 August 2026.

What Is Still Open, and What Has Already Closed

Registration is the part of the 11+ calendar with no appeal attached. A missed sitting can sometimes be raised with a school; a missed registration almost never can, because the authority has already built its test-day logistics around the list it holds.

Nine 2027-entry registration windows were verified for this page. Eight have closed. One has not.

If you are applying to The Tiffin Girls' School and have not registered, that is the only live deadline in this table. Registration is by Supplementary Information Form and the school states plainly that no late registrations are accepted — the same wording Kent, Buckinghamshire and the Sutton consortium use.

Confirmed 2027-Entry Test Dates, Authority by Authority

Every row below is a date the authority itself publishes. Where an authority sets different dates for children inside and outside its own primary schools — Kent and Buckinghamshire both do — both dates are given, because the difference decides which one your child sits.

Two rows in that table are commonly reported wrongly, including on the May 2026 version of this page. The Sutton Selective Eligibility Test is described almost everywhere as a GL reasoning paper. It is not: Sutton Grammar School's own admissions FAQ states that the test is two papers, a multiple-choice Maths paper and a multiple-choice English paper, and that the tests do not include verbal reasoning or non-verbal reasoning. A child prepared on a reasoning diet for the SET has prepared for the wrong exam.

Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet is the second. Its entrance test is two multiple-choice papers in English and Mathematics sat in a single session, and the school confirms it runs one round of testing only. That is a different exam from the four-part reasoning paper it is often said to use, and a different shape of preparation. Our QE Boys 11+ preparation and Sutton 11+ preparation pages both work from the schools' own published formats.

The Schools That Test Twice, and the Dates Nobody Lists

The headline date is not the last date. Three of the most competitive entries in the table above run a second sitting, on a separate published day, and a family that reads only the first date plans for half the process.

The Sutton row is the one that catches families out. A boy sitting the Selective Eligibility Test on 15 September, a second stage on 3 October and Wilson's aptitude tests on 10 October faces three separate test dates inside 25 days — and the second stage is a written paper, not the multiple-choice format of the first. Wilson's School and Nonsuch High School for Girls sit on different Saturdays, so a family applying across both is managing two second stages a week apart.

The Henrietta Barnett School is the earliest and the longest. Its First Round runs across 2, 3 and 4 September 2026 — before every other date in the table — and tests verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and English. Its Second Round, in the week commencing 5 October 2026, tests English and Mathematics instead. Invitations go out by 28 September, which leaves about a week between knowing and sitting.

What Happens Between the Test and 1 March 2027

Results arrive on different days in October, and none of them is the deadline that matters most. That is 31 October 2026, the Common Application Form deadline at your home local authority, and it is the same date whether your child has a result yet or not.

Read that table in order and the pinch point is obvious. Kent results land on 15 October and Warwickshire on 16 October, leaving about a fortnight to redraw a preference list before the CAF closes. Where a school runs a second sitting, the outcome is not known until well after 31 October — The Tiffin Girls' School holds Stage Two in November, five weeks after the CAF deadline — so the form has to be completed on the assumption that your child might qualify, not on the knowledge that she has. Naming a school you have not yet heard from is the normal, correct thing to do.

Where the Independent-School Calendar Collides With the Grammar One

Families running both routes are managing two calendars that were designed without reference to each other. The ISEB Common Pre-Test window for the 2026–27 session opens on 1 September 2026 — the same week as the Henrietta Barnett First Round and a fortnight before the Sutton and Kent sittings. The ISEB Guardian Portal opened for registration on 9 June 2026.

The mechanics help more than the calendar hurts. A child sits the ISEB Common Pre-Test once and the result is shared with every participating school through a single Applicant ID, so the independent side of a dual application is one sitting rather than several. The window then stays open until late May 2027, which means it can usually be scheduled around a September grammar date rather than against it. Our ISEB Common Pre-Test preparation page covers what the four adaptive sections contain.

Thirty-eight days separate the first fixed sitting in this cycle, the Henrietta Barnett First Round on 2 September 2026, from the last, Wilson's Aptitude Test Day on 10 October 2026. A family applying across regions is not preparing for one exam day; it is preparing across five or six weeks, in two different test formats, with a results-and-forms deadline sitting in the middle of it.

How Long Each Sitting Actually Takes

The dates tell you which mornings to keep free. They do not tell you how long your child will be sitting, and the answer differs enough between authorities to be worth knowing before you plan the day around it.

Kent runs the longest programme of the three. Kent County Council publishes Test 1, covering English and maths, as one hour in total, with each section made up of a 5 minute practice followed by a 25 minute test. Test 2, the reasoning paper, takes about an hour, split between a verbal reasoning section and a non-verbal reasoning section of roughly equal length. There is also a writing exercise of 40 minutes, including 10 minutes of planning, which is not marked as part of the score.

Sutton is shorter on the day but repeated. Sutton Grammar School states that the two Selective Eligibility Test papers take between 40 and 50 minutes each, with a rest break between them. The second-stage papers, sat two or three weeks later, run to around 45 minutes to 1 hour each and are written rather than multiple choice — the same subjects in a different format, which is the part worth preparing for separately.

Queen Elizabeth’s School Barnet sits both of its multiple-choice papers in a single session, which is why the school is able to run its whole cohort across two days rather than a week.

How to Build a Calendar You Can Trust

The method behind this page is the method worth copying. For each school on your list, open the school's or the authority's own admissions page — not a summary, not a tuition provider's table — and write down four things: the registration deadline, the test date, the second-sitting date if there is one, and the results date. Then write down the day you checked.

The check date is the part everyone leaves off, and it is the part that tells you when to look again. Dates on this page carry theirs. Of the nine authorities checked for the table above, all nine publish a full 2027-entry timetable on their own site; the Slough Consortium is not included, because neither its own site nor Slough Borough Council's selection-test page returned a usable timetable when both were checked on 22 August 2026, and a date we cannot show you the source for is a date we will not print.

If your list runs across regions — Kent, Buckinghamshire, Essex and London are the usual combination — build one sheet rather than four, sorted by date rather than by school. The clashes only become visible when the dates sit next to each other. Kent's non-Kent-primary sitting on 12 and 13 September and Warwickshire's test on the same two days are a real, and easily missed, collision.

Reviewed August 2026: registration windows, test dates, second-stage dates and results dates for nine admissions authorities checked against each authority's own published timetable, and the Sutton and Queen Elizabeth's test formats confirmed against those schools' own admissions FAQs. Dates for the Slough Consortium are not published here because no source for them resolved on 22 August 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions