King Edward VI Five Ways School 11+ Guide 2026: Admissions, Exam and Entry Requirements

King Edward VI Five Ways School is a selective, co-educational state grammar school in Bartley Green, in the south-west of Birmingham, and the only fully co-educational school within the King Edward VI Foundation. For September 2027 entry, children applying to Five Ways must register for the shared West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test, sit the exam on 12 September 2026, and reach the King Edward VI Foundation's qualifying score to be considered for one of the school's 180 Year 7 places — the largest single-school intake among the eight King Edward VI Foundation grammar schools. This guide covers the school's history and co-educational status, exactly how the shared consortium test works, the catchment wards and oversubscription criteria specific to Five Ways, the school's Ofsted rating and recent academic results, and how to build an effective preparation plan.

Key Facts: King Edward VI Five Ways School 2026/2027

About King Edward VI Five Ways School: History, Co-Education and the KE Foundation

King Edward VI Five Ways School was founded in 1883 as part of the wider expansion of the King Edward VI Foundation's grammar school network in Birmingham, a Foundation whose roots trace back to 1552, when King Edward VI granted Birmingham a royal licence to establish grammar schools in the town. The school takes its name from its original site near the Five Ways junction in central Birmingham, before relocating in 1958 to its present, more spacious site on Scotland Lane in Bartley Green, in the south-west of the city, where it remains today.

What makes Five Ways distinctive within the King Edward VI Foundation is its co-educational status. Of the Foundation's eight selective grammar schools, Five Ways is the only one that is fully co-educational across every year group. Girls were first admitted to the Sixth Form in 1988, and the school became fully co-educational from Year 7 in 1998. Its five KE Foundation sibling schools — Camp Hill Boys, Camp Hill Girls, Aston, and Handsworth Grammar School for Girls — remain single-sex throughout, as do the two further Foundation-linked Birmingham consortium schools, Bishop Vesey's Grammar School for Boys and Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, both in Sutton Coldfield. This makes King Edward VI Five Ways School the natural first choice for Birmingham families who want a fully selective, academically rigorous grammar school education in a mixed environment rather than a single-sex one.

Today, King Edward VI Five Ways School has around 1,300 pupils on roll, including approximately 400 in its Sixth Form, and is regularly described as the largest co-educational grammar school in the West Midlands and among the top five co-educational grammar schools nationally. The school's own published exam results describe 2025 as "a record-breaking year," with a school-record 12 students receiving Oxbridge offers, 24 progressing towards Medicine, and over 90% securing places at their first-choice university — figures that place Five Ways among the strongest state schools in the region for competitive university progression.

Which Birmingham Grammar Schools Share the Entrance Test With Five Ways?

King Edward VI Five Ways School does not set its own, separate entrance exam. Instead, the King Edward VI Foundation arranges a single shared entrance test — the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test — for all eight of its selective Birmingham-area grammar schools, provided by GL Assessment. A child registers once and sits one exam, and the resulting standardised score can then be used to apply to any combination of these schools, listed in preference order on the family's Common Application Form.

Places: Five Ways confirmed at 180 via published King Edward VI Foundation and Birmingham City Council admissions data; other schools' figures are approximate and should be verified directly with each school. All eight schools share the same GL Assessment entrance test, provided by the King Edward VI Foundation as part of a wider 19-school West Midlands Grammar Schools group that also includes selective schools in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Shropshire.

An important point families often miss: sharing an entrance test is not the same as sharing an admissions policy. Every school in the consortium, including Five Ways, sets its own catchment area, its own oversubscription criteria, and effectively its own competitive bar for an offer, even though every applicant sits an identical exam. For the full picture of how the shared King Edward VI test works across all eight schools, see our King Edward VI Birmingham 11+ hub guide, and for a broader look at Birmingham's specific preparation landscape, our King Edward VI School Birmingham 11+ preparation guide.

What Does the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test Involve?

The entrance test used by King Edward VI Five Ways School and its seven sister schools is delivered by GL Assessment across two papers, each approximately one hour long, sat on a single day. All questions are multiple-choice, and the test covers four skill areas: English comprehension and verbal reasoning combined (weighted at roughly 50% of the overall score), mathematics (roughly 25%), and non-verbal and spatial reasoning (roughly 25%). Because English comprehension and a full mathematics component both sit alongside the reasoning papers, families should not prepare narrowly for verbal and non-verbal reasoning alone — a common mistake given how many generic 11+ resources focus only on those two areas.

All raw scores are age-standardised before being reported, so that a child born in the summer term is not disadvantaged relative to an autumn-born classmate sitting the same paper. The King Edward VI Foundation then applies two thresholds to the standardised scores, common across all eight schools but with each school setting its own competitive reality based on demand for its own places: a qualifying score, which is the minimum standard required for eligibility at any King Edward VI Foundation school, and a higher priority score, which carries additional weight in each school's own oversubscription criteria for children living within its catchment area. In recent cohorts, the qualifying score has been set at approximately 205 and the priority score at approximately 224, out of a maximum possible standardised score of 280. However, eligibility on the qualifying score alone does not guarantee a place at a popular school: at Five Ways, as at Camp Hill, competitive offers in recent years have typically required scores well into the 220s or higher, particularly for children applying from outside the catchment area. Families should treat any single year's published figures as historical guidance rather than a fixed target, since the Foundation reviews and can adjust both thresholds each admissions cycle.

Key Dates for King Edward VI Five Ways September 2027 Entry

For children seeking a Year 7 place at King Edward VI Five Ways School from September 2027, the following timetable applies across the King Edward VI Foundation consortium:

Registering for the entrance test is separate from applying for a school place. Families must register their child for the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test directly with the King Edward VI Foundation, and separately submit a Common Application Form to their home local authority listing King Edward VI Five Ways School and any other preferred schools by the 31 October 2026 deadline. Missing the CAF deadline means a child will not be considered through the coordinated admissions process even if they sat and qualified in the entrance test. Official, up-to-date arrangements are published on the King Edward VI Five Ways School admissions page and via Birmingham City Council's grammar schools admissions guidance. For the national exam calendar, see our 11+ exam dates 2025–2026 guide.

Catchment Area, Priority Wards and Oversubscription Criteria at Five Ways

With 180 places against consistently high demand, King Edward VI Five Ways School is comfortably oversubscribed among children who reach the qualifying score each year. Rather than a single boundary line, the school's published admissions policy defines a specific catchment area made up of named electoral wards spanning south-west Birmingham and neighbouring Sandwell:

Birmingham wards: Allens Cross, Bartley Green, Bournville & Cotteridge, Frankley Great Park, Harborne, King's Norton North, King's Norton South, Longbridge & West Heath, Northfield, Quinton, Rubery & Rednal, and Weoley & Selly Oak.

Sandwell wards: Abbey, Bristnall, and Old Warley.

Once children have reached the qualifying score on the shared entrance test, King Edward VI Five Ways School allocates its 180 places broadly in the following order, as set out in its published admissions policy:

1. Looked-after and previously looked-after children achieving the qualifying score, ranked by score and then by distance
2. Pupil Premium-eligible children living within the catchment area who achieve the qualifying score, ranked by distance
3. Pupil Premium-eligible children living outside the catchment area, up to a maximum of 25% of total places, ranked by score with sibling priority and then distance as tiebreakers
4. Children achieving the priority score and living within the defined catchment wards, with sibling priority and then distance as tiebreakers
5. All other children achieving the qualifying score, ranked by score, with sibling priority and then distance as tiebreakers

In practice, this means a child's catchment address matters most once they have already cleared the qualifying score: children who reach the higher priority score and live within one of the named wards above are prioritised ahead of out-of-catchment applicants with the same priority score, while children who only reach the qualifying score are placed by score order and then by distance, regardless of catchment. Children from outside the catchment area, and even outside Birmingham entirely, can and do receive offers at Five Ways — catchment status becomes decisive only once demand within a given scoring band exceeds the places remaining. Because Five Ways draws heavily from Bartley Green, Harborne, Northfield, Bournville, and the wider Weoley and Selly Oak areas, families outside these wards should treat the priority score, rather than the lower qualifying score, as their realistic planning target.

Ofsted Rating, Academic Results and the Sixth Form at Five Ways

King Edward VI Five Ways School holds an overall Good Ofsted rating from its most recent inspection on 28 November 2023, with two categories rated Outstanding: Behaviour and Attitudes, and Sixth Form provision. Inspectors described pupils as "proud to be members of this vibrant and caring community," praised the "dedication, kindness and commitment of staff," and highlighted that "the culture of safeguarding is especially strong." The report also noted a change in leadership during the inspection period, with Dr Simon Bird succeeding interim headteacher Mrs Linda Johnson.

Academically, the school's own published 2025 results describe it as a "record-breaking year." At GCSE, the school achieved a 100% pass rate including English and maths, with 52% of grades at 9–8 and 75% of grades at 9–7. At A-Level, 52% of grades were A*–A and 81% were A*–B. University progression outcomes were similarly strong: a school-record 12 students received Oxbridge offers, 24 progressed towards Medicine, 5 towards Dentistry and 4 towards Veterinary Science, and over 90% of leavers secured a place at their first-choice university. Five Ways was ranked #36 among the top 100 secondary schools nationally and #7 in the West Midlands specifically, reinforcing its reputation as one of the top five co-educational grammar schools in the country.

The Sixth Form, which the Ofsted inspection singled out as Outstanding, accounts for roughly 400 of the school's approximately 1,300 pupils and offers a broad range of A-Level subjects alongside strong university and careers guidance. For families comparing Five Ways against other high-performing state secondary options nationally, our 2026 grammar school league tables guide provides wider context on how outcomes like these compare across the country.

How Should My Child Prepare for the King Edward VI Five Ways 11+?

Because the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test covers English, verbal reasoning, mathematics, and non-verbal and spatial reasoning across two hour-long papers, a genuinely broad preparation plan matters more at Five Ways than at 11+ tests built around reasoning papers alone. A programme that only drills verbal and non-verbal reasoning, while neglecting comprehension technique and a full mathematics curriculum, risks leaving a child underprepared for roughly half the marks available.

English and Verbal Reasoning together make up around half the overall score, so comprehension technique — reading unfamiliar passages accurately and quickly under time pressure — deserves as much attention as classic verbal reasoning question types such as codes, sequences, analogies and word relationships. Mathematics preparation should be built on secure Key Stage 2 arithmetic, fractions, decimals, percentages and reasoning-style word problems, since this is a full standalone paper rather than a handful of numerical reasoning questions embedded in a verbal paper. Non-verbal and spatial reasoning covers series, matrices, analogies, rotation and figure classification — skills that fall outside the national curriculum entirely, so children benefit from structured, progressive practice well before the September 2026 test date rather than last-minute cramming.

Given that competitive offers at Five Ways typically require scores well above the qualifying threshold, particularly for children applying from outside the school's catchment wards, a personalised one-to-one approach is especially valuable. It allows a tutor to identify precisely which of the four tested areas — English, verbal reasoning, mathematics, or non-verbal and spatial reasoning — is weakest for an individual child, and to close that specific gap rather than applying a generic, evenly-split study plan across every family. At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors support families across Bartley Green, Harborne, Northfield, and the wider Birmingham and West Midlands area preparing for King Edward VI Five Ways School and its sibling Foundation schools, with both in-person and online options available. For a broader introduction to how 11+ testing works across different English regions, see our guide to what the 11+ exam involves.