Our 2025 School Entrance Results

In the 2025 admissions cycle we worked with 40 students sitting selective entrance examinations at 11 plus and 13 plus. 38 received at least one offer, a success rate of 95.0%, including 10 places at Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet and 7 at Henrietta Barnett. This page sets that record alongside what each school itself publishes about how many apply and how many are admitted.

What the 2025 numbers were

In the 2025 admissions cycle we worked with 40 students sitting selective school entrance examinations at 11 plus and 13 plus. Of those, 38 received at least one offer from a selective or independent school: a success rate of 95.0%.

The definition matters, so here it is in full. We count a success as an offer from a school the family had genuinely targeted from the beginning. We do not count offers from schools added late as safety options after a first-choice school declined. A rate calculated the other way would be higher and would mean less.

It was our largest cohort to that point and our most geographically spread, with families across North, South, East and West London and from Hertfordshire, Kent and Berkshire, and with far more of the teaching delivered online than in person.

How selective were the schools these offers came from?

A success rate means nothing without knowing what it was measured against. Since 2025 several of these schools have started publishing their own admissions data, so the comparison can now be made properly rather than asserted.

Tiffin School's figures give the clearest single measure of what these families were up against: 1,866 boys tested for 186 places is 10.0 candidates per place, and only 665 of those 1,866 were invited to the second round at all. At The Tiffin Girls' School, 1,498 candidates competed for 180 places, or 8.3 per place. Both schools have also published that no place has recently gone to a family outside their catchment: Tiffin School reports that every place for 2024, 2025 and 2026 entry went to a boy inside its 10km Priority Area, and Tiffin Girls' that every place since September 2014 has gone to a girl inside its Designated Area.

Queen Elizabeth's and Henrietta Barnett are structured differently again. QE sets multiple-choice tests in Maths and English, sat on one of two days in September, with results out at the start of October. Henrietta Barnett admits 120 girls through two rounds: Round One in verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and English is standardised and ranked, and only the top 300 are invited to Round Two in English and Mathematics. Ten QE offers and seven Henrietta Barnett offers in a single cohort is a meaningful share of two intakes drawn from across London.

Where the 2025 offers were, school by school

The full distribution across the cohort.

Two clusters stand out. The first is Barnet and Enfield, where ten Queen Elizabeth's offers and seven Henrietta Barnett offers accounted for nearly half the cohort. The second is the 13 plus group, where three students went to boarding schools whose admissions run on a completely different timetable from the 11 plus, with registration closing years rather than months in advance.

What changed between the 2021 cycle and 2025?

For a sense of the direction of travel, our 2021 cycle involved 32 children sitting exams disrupted by lockdown, of whom 30 gained offers, twelve of them through the Sutton consortium. Three things had changed by 2025.

The work became school-specific. In 2021 a large share of preparation was consortium-shaped, because the Sutton schools sat a single shared paper. By 2025 the centre of gravity had moved to schools that set their own examinations, and preparation that was not built around a named school's format was visibly less effective.

The geography widened. The 2021 cohort was concentrated in south-west London around the Sutton schools. The 2025 cohort spanned four quadrants of London and three counties beyond it, which is largely a consequence of teaching moving online.

The competition tightened. Tiffin School's published figures show Stage One entries rising from 1,654 for 2024 entry to 1,675 for 2025 and 1,866 for 2026, an increase of 11.4% in a single year, against an unchanged 186 places. Where schools publish their numbers, they point the same way.

What our tutors saw in the 2025 cycle

The clearest observation from the year was that the gap between generic and school-specific preparation is widening, and the published test designs explain why.

Queen Elizabeth's sets multiple-choice tests in Maths and English, sat on one of two days in September. Henrietta Barnett runs a first round in verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and English, standardises and ranks it, then sets English and Mathematics to the top 300. Tiffin School works with Quest to build a bespoke paper that changes every year, computer-marked at Stage One and handwritten at Stage Two. St Paul's Girls' sets its own paper to its own standard.

None of those is interchangeable with another, and none is interchangeable with a commercial practice format. A child who has done a great deal of one publisher's practice material and none of a target school's own past material is not prepared for that school, however strong the practice scores look. That is not a claim about effort; it is a claim about what the paper in front of them will actually contain.

The corollary is that the first useful question in any consultation is not how much preparation a child needs but which schools are genuinely in reach, given the tests they set and where the family lives. Our school-specific 11 plus pages set out what each school tests.

What parents told us

We asked several families whether they would share a brief reflection after results day. A note on the dates in them, because the two systems differ and it catches families out every year: state schools all release offers on National Offer Day, 1 March, through the local authority, while London independent schools release theirs in February. For 2027 entry, St Paul's Girls' sends offers on Friday 12 February and sets an acceptance deadline of 2 March — so a family can be holding an independent offer and a decision deadline before the state results have arrived at all.

A parent whose son gained a place at Queen Elizabeth's wrote: "The tutor knew the QE exam specifically — the structure, the time pressure, the level of difficulty. That specificity was what we were looking for and what we found. Our son went into the exam knowing exactly what to expect."

A parent whose daughter gained a place at St Paul's Girls' wrote: "St Paul's has its own paper and its own standard. We had tried a general 11 plus tutor first and it was not working — the practice material was too easy and the approach was too broad. When we switched to Leading Tuition the difference was immediate. The tutor had worked with St Paul's applicants before and the sessions became much more targeted. Our daughter got her offer in February and we are still a little in shock."

What has changed at these schools since 2025?

If you are reading this while planning an application, the 2025 record is context, not instructions. Four of the schools above have altered their arrangements since that cycle, and all four changes are ones a family could easily miss.

Tiffin School now awards up to 10% of places on aptitude, split evenly between sport and music, introduced from September 2025 entry. The catch is timing: for 2027 entry the aptitude deadline fell in early July, roughly two months before academic registration closed.

Both Tiffin schools close registration at 12.00 noon on 1 September, and both state that no late applications will be accepted. There is no reserve process and no exception.

Eton College's registrations now close on 31 August, moved from the previous 30 June deadline. A boy can be registered any time up to the end of UK School Year 5. The later date lengthens the window but shifts it into the summer holidays, when schools are closed and supporting paperwork is hardest to obtain.

Henrietta Barnett admits within 3 miles ahead of rank order. Its Criterion Three takes candidates living within 3 miles of the school who sit Round Two; Criterion Four, plain rank score order, comes after it. A strong score alone does not settle the question of an offer. Our Barnet 11 plus guidance covers how that interacts with Round Two.

What a family starting now should actually do

Three steps, in order.

Settle the address question first. Where a school publishes catchment outcomes, read them before committing to preparation. Two of the schools above have stated that no recent place has gone outside their boundary. That is a faster answer than any assessment.

Work backwards from the earliest deadline that applies to you, not from the one everyone quotes. For a musical or sporting child applying to Tiffin School that is early July. For 13 plus boarding schools it can be years earlier still.

Prepare for named papers. Once the realistic list is two or three schools long, preparation should follow those schools' published formats. If you want help drawing up that list and a timetable to match it, book a free consultation and we will start from your child's target schools rather than from a syllabus.

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