Redbridge's own determined arrangements, three Schools Adjudicator rulings and three years of official test data — read directly, not summarised.
Book a Free ConsultationIlford County High School is a selective boys' grammar school in Barkingside, London Borough of Redbridge, admitting 180 boys to Year 7 each September. For 2027 entry it shares an "11+ Common Catchment Area" with Woodford County High School for girls, administered by Redbridge Council rather than either school. Living inside that area is a ranking priority within a four-tier order, not a pass/fail gate — the real first cut is a minimum threshold score of 104, unchanged since 2017.
This page works through Redbridge's own determined arrangements, three Schools Adjudicator decisions spanning 2015 to 2020, and three years of the council's own published test statistics, so that "catchment area" means something more specific than a shape on a map. For how this compares with catchment models elsewhere in the capital, see our London grammar school catchment guide.
For September 2027 entry, Redbridge's determined arrangements set out one order of priority for both selective schools. Places go first to looked-after and previously looked-after children. The second tier reserves 45 places — 25% of the 180-place PAN — for children entitled to the pupil premium, ranked by total standardised score. The third tier is "other children living in the Common Catchment Area", ranked the same way, by score alone. Only once that tier is exhausted does the fourth tier apply: children living outside the Common Catchment Area, again ranked purely by score.
Notice what is absent. Redbridge's comprehensive-school arrangements give priority to siblings already on roll; the selective-schools section of the same document does not mention siblings at all. An older brother at Ilford County High buys his younger brother nothing in the ranking.
Distance itself only enters once every tier has run out of ties to break. Where two boys in the same tier post the same total standardised score, the tie-break is the shortest walking distance from home to the school's main entrance, measured on Redbridge's Geographic Information System; if that distance is also identical, the Admission Authority draws a name using the random-allocation facility inside its Synergy pupil database. Geography, in other words, decides almost nothing on its own — it only settles a dead heat inside a tier a boy has already reached on merit.
Before any of those four tiers matters, a boy has to clear a fixed bar. Redbridge's determined arrangements for September 2027 entry state it in one sentence: no one scoring lower than 104 will be added to the ranked list or waiting list at all. It makes no difference whether he lives on the school's doorstep or many miles away — below 104 he is out of the process entirely, and above it he is ranked purely on where his score sits inside whichever tier he qualifies for.
One page ranking for this search says only that "the pass mark for each year is decided after the tests have been marked" — a description of how a ranking cut-off is drawn from that year's score distribution, not the separate, fixed 104 minimum that gates entry to the ranking in the first place. The two numbers do different jobs, and blurring them understates how firm the floor actually is.
104 is not new. When the Schools Adjudicator examined Ilford County High's arrangements in a 2020 case, covered in full further down this page, Redbridge told the adjudicator that the threshold "has been used since 2017/2018 and was chosen by local headteachers" — a detail no page currently ranking for this search reports. Whatever else has moved in Redbridge's grammar admissions, the entry floor has held for the best part of a decade.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppRedbridge's determined arrangements say plainly that only children living in the Common Catchment Area have been admitted to either grammar school "in the last 10 years". That is a claim about a track record, not about eligibility — nobody is refused a test paper for living in the wrong postcode, and the council's own published test statistics show how many out-of-area boys sit anyway, and how few of the boys who clear 104 can be offered any of the 180 places on any given year.
| Entry year | Boys who sat the ICHS test | Scored 104 or more | Living in the Common Catchment Area | Living outside it | Highest score recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2024 | 1,230 | 497 | 1,003 | 227 | 141 |
| September 2025 | 1,116 | 447 | 807 | 309 | 141 |
| September 2026 | 998 | 398 | 814 | 184 | 135.2 |
Source: Redbridge Council's published 11+ registration, test-sitter and score statistics for September 2024, 2025 and 2026 entry.
Read across the three most recent completed cycles and two things stand out. First, the number of boys sitting the Ilford County High test has fallen by more than a fifth in two years, even though the share clearing 104 has stayed close to two-fifths throughout. Second, hundreds of boys who scored 104 or more have gone unplaced in every one of those three years, because supply is fixed at 180 and Redbridge ranks by score inside each tier before it ever reaches the fourth, out-of-area tier. An out-of-area boy needs a Priority 4 place to exist at all, and Redbridge's own record says none has existed for a decade.
That is a narrower and more precise claim than it might first appear. One competitor guide to the school states flatly that no child living outside the area has "ever" been offered a place, "regardless of their score" — which overstates what Redbridge's own document actually commits to. The council's wording is bounded to the last 10 years and describes a track record, not a guarantee that could not change in a future year if enough Priority 1 to 3 places went unfilled.
The Common Catchment Area is a boundary drawn on a council map, not a distance radius or a named list of postcode sectors of the kind some other grammar schools publish. Redbridge's own 2026-entry test statistics show what that produces in practice. Of the 998 boys who sat the Ilford County High paper, 620 lived in Redbridge itself, 110 in Barking & Dagenham and 88 in Waltham Forest — three different local authorities, all inside the same catchment boundary.
Distance tells a similar story. Of those same 998 boys, 542 lived between two and five miles from the school and 177 lived more than five miles away — a wider spread than a simple "nearby" radius would suggest, because the boundary follows roads, railways and historic ward lines rather than a ring drawn around the school gates. A family a short walk from Fremantle Road and a family several boroughs away can sit inside the same Common Catchment Area, while a family technically closer to the school in a straight line can sit outside it if the boundary runs the wrong side of their road. None of the pages ranking for this search publish either breakdown, because neither figure sits on the school's own admissions page — both come from Redbridge's separate annual 11+ statistics releases.
Ilford County High and Woodford County High are Redbridge's two selective schools, boys and girls respectively, and the borough's own determined arrangements describe them together for everything that touches geography — and, just as importantly, keep separate everything that doesn't. The document is explicit: "The schools have a Common Catchment Area... If parents live outside the Common Catchment Area, consideration for a place at one of these schools will be given after all the requests from those within the Common Catchment Area have been met." That single boundary, the same 18 September 2026 test date, and the same Synergy tie-break mechanism apply to both schools identically, because the same admission authority — Redbridge Council, not either school — determines both sets of arrangements in the same document.
Being outside the Common Catchment Area does not disqualify an application to either school; the arrangements permit it in principle. What Redbridge's own record shows is that permission has not translated into an offer at either school inside the last 10 years — a scoring priority that has not, in practice, been reached from outside the boundary, which is a different thing from a rule that forbids it outright.
What is not shared is everything that makes one school's page different from the other's. Ilford County High has its own 180-place PAN for boys, its own three-case adjudicator history, and its own January 2026 Ofsted report, covered in full below — none of which belongs to Woodford County High. Families weighing both schools alongside the wider area may also find our Woodford area guide useful; this page does not restate Woodford County High's own admissions figures, which belong on its own page.
Ilford County High's admission arrangements have been formally tested by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator three times since 2015, and the record shows how the current "score first, catchment second" structure came to look the way it does.
ADA2842 (18 May 2015) considered the school's 2015 and 2016 arrangements after a parent objected that boys living outside the catchment area were not allowed to sit the test at all. At that time Redbridge's own wording said selective tests "will only be arranged for children whose parents certify that they intend the child to be resident within the common catchment area" — a genuine testing gate, not merely a ranking priority. The adjudicator determined that those arrangements "do not conform with the requirements relating to admission arrangements", citing unclear waiting-list rules, a missing Sixth Form PAN and the ambiguous out-of-area testing wording together, and ordered Redbridge to revise within two months. The PAN itself was 120 in 2015, rising to 180 for 2016 — the figure that has held ever since.
ADA3527 (17 January 2020) partially upheld a separate objection: the arrangements' wording on what counts as "correct identification" at the test was found unclear, and the adjudicator separately flagged that the arrangements did not state that children with an Education, Health and Care Plan naming the school would be admitted. Objections to repeat-testing fairness, the pupil premium priority and how the pass mark was set were all not upheld — the core ranking structure was found to comply with the Code.
ADA3667 (13 October 2020) examined a further, wider-ranging objection to the September 2021 arrangements, covering age-standardisation of scores, pupil premium priority and pass-mark timing, and did not uphold it either, though it flagged other minor matters that Redbridge then revised. Taken together, none of the three cases has required Redbridge to abandon score-based ranking or reintroduce a testing gate; the direction of travel since 2015 has been away from the outright testing restriction that concerned the 2015 objector and toward today's model, where the catchment area is a ranking priority for an application already entitled to be tested, not a condition of being tested at all. Families weighing a different super-selective's rules may also find our QE Boys designated area guide a useful comparison, since Barnet's model works on entirely different lines.
Ofsted inspected Ilford County High (URN 102850) on 6 January 2026 and published its report on 27 February 2026, after every page ranking for this search was last updated. Under Ofsted's current report-card framework, all six graded areas came back at the same level: Achievement, Attendance and behaviour, Curriculum and teaching, Inclusion, Personal development and wellbeing, and Leadership and governance were each rated "Strong standard", and the report confirms that safeguarding standards are met across a school with a current roll of 1,115 pupils.
For families planning ahead to September 2027 entry, the practical calendar runs as follows. Registration for the test opens on 1 May 2026 and closes at 5pm on 15 June 2026. The test itself is provisionally set for Friday 18 September 2026, with results emailed to families in mid-October. The formal preference form must reach the home local authority by 31 October 2026, and Redbridge expects to confirm National Offer Day on or about 1 March 2027. A waiting list then runs until 31 December 2027, after which families must reapply to stay on it.
Yes. Redbridge's own guidance says explicitly that living outside the Common Catchment Area does not stop a family registering or sitting the test — it only changes where an application sits in the ranking once scores are in. A boy who lives in, say, Essex or Waltham Forest can register in the same window as a Redbridge resident, sit the same paper on the same date, and be ranked on the same standardised score. What changes is which of the four priority tiers his application falls into: pupil premium and in-catchment applicants are ranked ahead of out-of-catchment applicants, all by score, once looked-after children are placed first.
He will be ranked, but only inside Priority 4 — after looked-after children, the 45 pupil premium places, and every in-catchment applicant who also cleared 104. Redbridge's own document records that no application in that fourth tier has converted into an offer at either grammar school in the last 10 years, because places one to 180 have consistently been filled from the tiers ahead of it. A high score clears the entry floor; it does not change which tier an address places him in.
Not so far. Redbridge told the Schools Adjudicator in a 2020 case that the 104 threshold has been used since the 2017/2018 admissions cycle and was chosen by local headteachers rather than recalculated annually from that year's results. That makes it different from a moving pass mark set after each sitting — 104 is a fixed floor a boy either clears or does not, and it has held steady through several years in which the number of boys registering to sit the test has fallen.
No. Redbridge gives sibling priority in its comprehensive-school arrangements, but the selective-schools section of the same document — the one governing Ilford County High and Woodford County High — lists only looked-after children, pupil premium eligibility, catchment residence and out-of-catchment residence, in that order, with no mention of siblings at all. A younger brother is ranked exactly as any other applicant would be, on his own standardised score alone.
First by distance: Redbridge measures the shortest safe walking route from a child's home to the school's main entrance using its Geographic Information System, and the closer applicant takes the place. If two applicants live an identical measured distance apart — which does happen — the Admission Authority does not use age or application date to break it; it draws the result using the random-allocation facility built into the Synergy "Admissions and Transfers System" database used for the whole process.
Redbridge's arrangements set out a statutory right of appeal, heard independently of the school and the council, and families are told the deadline to lodge one once a decision is confirmed. Unsuccessful applicants also go on a waiting list that runs until 31 December 2027 for September 2027 entry, with places offered strictly in the same four-tier order used for the original allocation — an appeal does not reorder the waiting list, and a later application does not gain priority over one already on it.
Our specialist tutors work with families preparing for the Redbridge 11+ from Year 5 onward, building the exam technique and pacing a boy needs to clear the 104 threshold comfortably rather than scrape it, since every place beyond that floor is still decided on score alone. We plan around each family's target schools individually rather than teaching to a generic syllabus, and 91% of the families Leading Tuition works with secure a place at one of their target schools. Book a free consultation to talk through a plan for the 2027 cycle.
Catchment maps get most of the attention in a Redbridge 11+ search, but a place at Ilford County High is decided by the 104 threshold and the score inside whichever tier an application falls into. Leading Tuition's specialist tutors prepare boys for exactly that, and we're rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot. See our Ilford County High preparation programme for how we work with families through the Redbridge 11+ cycle.
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