Test format, timing, scoring and 2026 cut-off scores for every fair-banding school in one comparison
Book a Free ConsultationWandsworth, Lambeth and Camden are the three London boroughs where secondary schools admit through a fair banding test rather than a selective 11+. Wandsworth’s Year 6 test covers four schools — Ashcroft Technology Academy, Burntwood School, Chestnut Grove Academy and Graveney School — using a 55-minute Non-Verbal Reasoning paper and a 50-minute Verbal Reasoning paper. Lambeth’s CAT4-based admissions test covers Dunraven School, Lilian Baylis Technology School, The Norwood School and Platanos College. Camden’s fair-banding school, Camden School for Girls, uses a four-part CAT4 assessment across four ability bands. This guide sets test format, timing, scoring method and named-school cut-off scores for all three boroughs side by side in one table — a comparison no single-borough guide currently publishes.
A fair banding test is not a pass/fail exam. It is a cognitive ability assessment — usually Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, or a combination with Quantitative and Spatial Reasoning — that a non-selective, comprehensive school uses to sort applicants into ability bands before applying its normal oversubscription criteria (distance, siblings, looked-after children, and so on) within each band. The goal, set out in the School Admissions Code, is a genuinely comprehensive intake: a school using five equal bands admits roughly the same number of higher-scoring and lower-scoring children, rather than filling up with only the highest scorers as a grammar school 11+ would. Wandsworth, Lambeth and Camden are the three London boroughs with the largest concentration of schools using this model, though each borough runs its own test, timetable and scoring method — which is exactly where the confusion for parents starts.
Crucially, banding is different from the selective 11+ used in nearby boroughs such as Kingston, Sutton or other grammar school areas. A banding test never disqualifies a child outright; it only determines which of that school’s ability bands they are placed in for the purposes of allocating places. Understanding your target school’s specific format, and how its bands and cut-offs have moved historically, is the single most useful piece of preparation information a family can have.
The Wandsworth Year 6 test is set and marked by GL Assessment and consists of two timed sections: a 55-minute Non-Verbal Reasoning paper and a 50-minute Verbal Reasoning paper, both multiple-choice and marked on machine-read answer sheets, with a short practice section built into each paper’s time allowance. Raw scores are age-standardised — adjusted for how many months old a child is on the test date — producing a scale that runs from roughly 69 to 141, with an average score of 100. Four Wandsworth secondary schools use the results:
For September 2027 entry, registration for the test opened in May 2026 and closes on 3 September 2026. The test itself runs across four sitting days — Thursday 24, Friday 25, Saturday 26 and Monday 28 September 2026 — with each child assigned one date; results are released to parents by 23 October 2026. Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan are exempt from sitting the test, and children receiving SEN support may be eligible for extra time. Full registration guidance is published on the Wandsworth Council Year 6 test page. For the underlying scoring method, see our guide to how 11+ standardised scores are calculated.
Because Ashcroft and Chestnut Grove band on a five-tier scale (Band A being the highest), while Burntwood and Graveney set a single combined-score cut-off for their selective stream, the two systems are not directly comparable — but tracking each school’s threshold over time shows how much movement to expect year on year. The table below sets out five years of published thresholds, from 2022 to 2026:
| Year | Ashcroft Band A (NVR only) | Chestnut Grove Band A (VR+NVR avg) | Burntwood selective (combined) | Graveney selective (combined) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | ≥ 111 | ≥ 113.5 | 209 | 250 |
| 2025 | ≥ 111 | ≥ 112.5 | 210 | 249 |
| 2024 | ≥ 111 | ≥ 113 | 200 | 250 |
| 2023 | ≥ 112 | ≥ 114 | 214 | 254 |
| 2022 | ≥ 114 | ≥ 115.5 | 212 | 254 |
Two patterns stand out. First, Ashcroft’s Band A threshold has settled at 111 for three consecutive years (2024–2026) after falling from 114 in 2022 — a sign the applicant pool’s top end has stabilised. Second, Graveney’s selective cut-off dropped from a five-year high of 254 in 2023 to 249–250 in the two years since, while Burntwood’s swung more sharply, from 214 in 2023 down to 200 in 2024 before recovering to 209–210. A single year’s cut-off tells you very little on its own; the trend across several years is what shows whether a target score is realistic.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppLambeth’s fair-banding schools use the CAT4 (Cognitive Abilities Test, fourth edition), a GL Assessment battery that takes around one hour to complete and is built from three parts: Non-Verbal Reasoning (pictures and diagrams), Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning (word- and number-based problem solving), and a further Quantitative and Spatial Reasoning section. Four Lambeth secondary schools use the test to place applicants into one of five ability bands, with an equal number of places offered to each band and no set pass mark:
Every applicant must complete a Supplementary Information Form (SIF) for each Lambeth school they want considered by; a child is only invited to sit the test once the relevant school receives that form on time. In the most recently published cycle, Dunraven and Platanos College tested on the same Saturday in mid-November, with Norwood the following Monday and Lilian Baylis the Tuesday after that — each school sets its own date within a similar window each autumn, so confirm the exact 2026 date directly with your target school rather than relying on the previous year’s calendar — current guidance is published on the Lambeth Council secondary admissions page. For background on how CAT4 scores are reported, see our CAT4 standardised scores explained guide.
Camden School for Girls is the borough’s principal fair-banding school and admits 120 girls into Year 7 each September, split across four ability bands of 30 places each; if a band is undersubscribed, its spare places are redistributed equally to the adjacent bands. The banding assessment is set and marked independently by GL Assessment using the CAT4 across four components — Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Spatial Reasoning — all sat in a single half-day session, with a short warm-up practice before each part. The school states that a girl’s allocated band has no bearing on her likelihood of receiving an offer; banding results are used only for admissions and are not used to set or stream pupils after enrolment.
For September 2027 entry, registration for the banding assessment opened at 5pm on 1 July 2026 and closed at midday on 22 September 2026. Test sessions ran on Wednesday 23 September 2026 at 1:30pm and Saturday 26 September 2026, with four separate morning slots (8:30am, 8:45am, 10:00am and 10:15am) to spread candidate numbers across the day. Within each band, places are then offered in priority order: looked-after and previously looked-after children first, then siblings, then exceptional medical or social need and staff children, then up to 8 places reserved for musical aptitude (3 on aptitude alone, 5 on aptitude combined with ability), and finally straight-line distance from the school’s Sandall Road gate. The school publishes full detail in its Banding Assessment FAQs. Full detail on how banding schools weigh distance against other criteria is in our regional pass marks guide.
Because each borough sets its own format, timing and scoring approach, families weighing schools across more than one borough often end up cross-referencing three separate council pages and several individual school websites. The table below puts the three systems side by side in one place:
| Feature | Wandsworth Year 6 Test | Lambeth Admissions Test | Camden Banding Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Test / provider | GL Assessment | CAT4 (GL Assessment) | CAT4 (GL Assessment) |
| Format | Non-Verbal Reasoning (55 min) + Verbal Reasoning (50 min) | Non-Verbal + Verbal/Quantitative + further Quantitative/Spatial (~1 hour) | Verbal, Non-Verbal, Quantitative & Spatial Reasoning (half-day session) |
| Scoring | Age-standardised, 69–141 scale, average 100 | No published scale; sorted directly into bands, no pass mark | No published scale; sorted directly into bands, no pass mark |
| Ability bands | 5 bands (Ashcroft, Chestnut Grove only); Burntwood/Graveney use a single selective cut-off | 5 equal bands at all 4 schools | 4 equal bands of 30 places (PAN 120) |
| Schools using it | Ashcroft Technology Academy, Chestnut Grove Academy (banding); Burntwood School, Graveney School (selective ~25%) | Dunraven School, Lilian Baylis Technology School, The Norwood School, Platanos College | Camden School for Girls |
| 2026/27 registration deadline | 3 September 2026 | Set per school via Supplementary Information Form (SIF) | 22 September 2026 (midday) |
| 2026/27 test date(s) | 24, 25, 26 & 28 September 2026 | Mid-to-late November (most recent cycle: 15–18 November) | 23 & 26 September 2026 |
The clearest structural difference is scoring transparency: Wandsworth is the only one of the three boroughs that publishes an age-standardised numeric scale (69–141) with year-on-year cut-off data, which is why a five-year trend table is possible for Wandsworth schools but not for Lambeth or Camden, where results are reported only as a band with no published raw score.
All three boroughs run their tests on an annual cycle, and dates shift by a few days each year, so always confirm the current year’s date directly with the council or school before planning around it. For the current 2026/27 admissions round (children applying now for September 2027 entry):
Missing a registration deadline is one of the most common and entirely avoidable reasons a child is not banded at all: at Ashcroft Technology Academy, for example, unregistered applicants cannot be banded and are not considered until every banded applicant has already received an offer.
Because a banding test sorts children across the full ability range rather than filtering for the top scorers only, preparation looks different from grammar school 11+ preparation. The priority is broad familiarity with every question type your target school’s test uses, solid exam technique under time pressure, and enough practice to remove nerves — rather than pushing for an extreme top-band score that isn’t actually necessary for admission. For Wandsworth, that means dedicated practice across both the Non-Verbal Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning question formats used in the GL Assessment paper. For Lambeth and Camden, preparation needs to cover all four CAT4 domains — Verbal, Non-Verbal, Quantitative and Spatial Reasoning — since Camden School for Girls tests all four in a single half-day session and a weak spot in any one domain affects the overall banding outcome. Families targeting 11+ tuition across more than one borough should start preparation with the CAT4 domains common to all three systems (verbal and non-verbal reasoning), then add borough-specific practice — timed GL Assessment papers for Wandsworth, and quantitative/spatial CAT4 practice for Lambeth and Camden — in the final term before the test.
A fair banding test is a cognitive ability assessment used by non-selective schools to admit a spread of ability across their intake rather than the highest scorers only. In Wandsworth, Ashcroft Technology Academy and Chestnut Grove Academy sort applicants into ability bands and admit similar numbers from each band. In Lambeth, Dunraven School, Lilian Baylis Technology School, The Norwood School and Platanos College use the same principle across five ability bands. Camden School for Girls uses four bands. Unlike a grammar school 11+, there is no pass mark — the test only decides which band a child sits in, not whether they qualify for a place.
The Wandsworth Year 6 test has two timed sections set and marked by GL Assessment: a 55-minute Non-Verbal Reasoning paper and a 50-minute Verbal Reasoning paper, both multiple-choice with a practice section before each. Raw scores are age-standardised, producing a scale that runs from roughly 69 to 141 with an average of 100. Four schools use the results: Ashcroft Technology Academy and Chestnut Grove Academy for banded admission, and Burntwood School and Graveney School for their selective streams, which cover around 25% of Year 7 places at each school. Registration for the September 2026 test closes on 3 September 2026.
For 2026 entry, Ashcroft Technology Academy’s top band (Band A) required a Non-Verbal Reasoning score of 111 or above, and Chestnut Grove Academy’s top band required a combined Verbal and Non-Verbal average of 113.5 or above. For the selective streams, Burntwood School’s March offer cut-off was a combined score of 209, and Graveney School’s was 250. These thresholds move year to year — Graveney’s has ranged from 249 to 254 since 2022, and Chestnut Grove’s Band A threshold has moved between 112.5 and 115.5 over the same period — so treat them as a guide to the required standard rather than a fixed target.
The Lambeth admissions test is the CAT4 (Cognitive Abilities Test, fourth edition), a battery lasting around one hour that covers non-verbal reasoning, verbal and quantitative reasoning, and further quantitative and spatial reasoning. Four Lambeth secondary schools use it to place applicants into one of five ability bands, with an equal number of places offered per band: Dunraven School, Lilian Baylis Technology School, The Norwood School and Platanos College. There is no set pass mark. Demand is high — Dunraven received 1,300 Year 7 applications for 158 places (its published admission number) for September 2024 entry, an 8.2x oversubscription rate, with last-offered distances ranging up to 0.90 miles depending on ability band.
Camden School for Girls is the borough’s main fair-banding school and admits 120 girls into Year 7 each September, split across four ability bands of 30 places each; unused places in one band are redistributed to the adjacent bands. The assessment uses four GL Assessment components — Verbal, Non-Verbal, Quantitative and Spatial Reasoning — sat in a single half-day session with built-in warm-up practice before each part. For September 2027 entry, registration opened on 1 July 2026 and closed at midday on 22 September 2026, with test sessions on Wednesday 23 September and Saturday 26 September 2026.
Leading Tuition provides specialist tutors experienced in the specific formats used across Wandsworth, Lambeth and Camden’s fair banding schools — GL Assessment Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning for the Wandsworth Year 6 test, and full CAT4 preparation across Verbal, Non-Verbal, Quantitative and Spatial Reasoning for the Lambeth admissions test and the Camden School for Girls banding assessment. Because these are ability-banding tests rather than pass/fail exams, our tutors focus on genuine reasoning fluency and exam technique across every question type, so your child performs to their true ability on the day. Rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot. Book a free consultation or message us on WhatsApp to discuss your child’s target school.
Leading Tuition provides specialist tutoring for the Wandsworth Year 6 test, the Lambeth admissions test and the Camden School for Girls banding assessment. Rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot.
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