King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon 11+ Guide 2026: Admissions, Exam & Prep

King Edward VI School (KES) in Stratford-upon-Avon is a selective state grammar school for boys aged 11 to 16, with a co-educational Sixth Form, tracing its origins to a Guild-run school documented from at least 1295 and refounded by royal charter in 1553. For September 2027 entry, boys applying to KES must register for the shared Warwickshire 11+ entrance test administered by GL Assessment, sit the test in September 2026, and reach that year's Automatic Qualifying Score to be considered for one of the school's 87 Year 7 places — one of the smallest intakes of any grammar school in the county. This guide covers the school's remarkable history, its distinctive priority-area admissions criteria, the exam format, key 2026 dates, and how to build an effective preparation plan.

Key Facts: King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon

About King Edward VI School: History and the Shakespeare Connection

King Edward VI School’s history stretches back much further than its famous royal charter. Educational activity on the school’s Stratford-upon-Avon site is documented from at least 1295, when a diocesan record names “Richard as rector scholarum,” teaching the basics of reading and Latin to local boys under the patronage of the town’s Guild of the Holy Cross. For more than two and a half centuries, the Guild funded a schoolmaster and schoolroom as part of its wider charitable and religious activities in the town.

That earlier Guild school was formally refounded, rather than founded from nothing, when King Edward VI granted Stratford-upon-Avon its royal borough charter in June 1553 — among the last acts of the young king’s brief reign before his death from tuberculosis later that year. The charter made specific provision for a schoolroom and a master’s salary, giving the town a legally secure grammar school under the new borough corporation rather than the dissolved religious guild that had run it before. This is why the school dates its formal foundation to 1553 while its educational lineage on the same site runs back into the thirteenth century — a distinction worth understanding before assuming the school is simply “500-odd years old” in a single, uninterrupted sense.

The school’s enduring nickname, “Shakespeare’s School,” reflects a connection that is best described as highly probable rather than documented fact. No Elizabethan-era pupil registers survive for the school, so no record proves William Shakespeare attended. However, his father John Shakespeare served as Stratford’s borough bailiff (effectively mayor) in 1568, a civic office that would have entitled his son to a free education at the town’s grammar school between roughly the ages of seven and fourteen — precisely the years during which young William would have been of school age. Tradition places him, if he did attend, in “Big School,” the first-floor schoolroom of the Guildhall, alongside possible contemporaries including Richard Field (the London printer who later published Shakespeare’s narrative poems) and Robert Dibdale (later a Catholic martyr). The adjoining Pedagogue’s House, built in 1427, is believed to be the oldest half-timbered schoolroom still standing in England, and the school’s own historical materials are careful to present the Shakespeare connection as probable local tradition grounded in circumstantial civic record, rather than as settled historical fact.

King Edward VI School converted to academy status on 17 August 2011 and operates under the name of its historic governing charity, The Grammar School of King Edward VI at Stratford-upon-Avon (registered charity number 528769). The school has been boys-only at Year 7 to Year 11 throughout its modern history, but its Sixth Form became fully co-educational in September 2013, meaning girls join the school community from Year 12 while the main school below remains single-sex. Headmaster Bennet Carr has led the school since 2010, overseeing academy conversion, the introduction of the co-educational Sixth Form, and the school being named Sunday Times “State Secondary School of the Decade” in 2020 and joint-happiest secondary school in the Sunday Times Parent Power rankings in 2025. Notable former pupils include Victoria Cross recipient Reginald Warneford, war poet Richard Spender, BAFTA-winning actor Tim Pigott-Smith, Suede keyboardist Neil Codling and Olympic rower Esme Booth.

Does King Edward VI School Share Its 11+ Test With Other Warwickshire Grammar Schools?

Yes. King Edward VI School is one of six selective and bilateral schools across Warwickshire that share a single 11+ entrance test, administered by Warwickshire County Council’s Admissions Service (Warwickshire Admissions) jointly with the Grammar Schools in Birmingham — a wider arrangement that also serves selective schools in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Shropshire. This means a boy registering for KES sits exactly the same GL Assessment test, on the same dates, as a child applying to any of the other Warwickshire schools listed below, and a single registration and sitting can support applications to more than one of them.

An important nuance families often miss: sharing a test is not the same as sharing an admissions policy. Each school in this consortium sets its own priority area, oversubscription criteria and, ultimately, its own Automatic Qualifying Score. King Edward VI School’s priority area is centred on the Fountain in Rother Street in the middle of Stratford-upon-Avon, whereas Rugby’s two grammar schools, Lawrence Sheriff and Rugby High, both use a priority circle centred on the Rugby Water Tower with a 10.004-mile radius. A boy could therefore qualify on the shared test yet find his chances of an actual offer at KES quite different from his chances at Lawrence Sheriff, purely because of where he lives relative to each school’s own priority area. For the wider regional picture, see our guide to consortium 11+ testing and our 11+ school guides hub.

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What Does the Warwickshire 11+ Test Cover?

The Warwickshire 11+ entrance test used for King Edward VI School is provided by GL Assessment and, unlike some regional consortium tests that cover only verbal and non-verbal reasoning, is built around four distinct sections, each lasting around 60 minutes including instructions:

English: Comprehension and vocabulary-based questions assessing reading, understanding and use of language, sat under timed, multiple-choice conditions.

Verbal Reasoning (VR): Pattern-based reasoning with language: codes, sequences, analogies, hidden words and word relationships, similar in style to VR papers used across many English 11+ regions.

Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR): Abstract shape-based reasoning covering series, matrices, analogies and figure classification, requiring no prior subject knowledge but rewarding structured practice.

Mathematics: A full numeracy paper built on Key Stage 2 arithmetic, fractions, decimals, percentages and reasoning-style word problems — a component many regional consortium tests, including Lincolnshire’s and several London-area consortia, do not include at all.

According to King Edward VI School’s own 2027 admissions policy, “weightings will be applied to the scores achieved in Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning and Numeracy,” with the precise weighting set annually rather than fixed in the policy itself. Independent 11+ preparation guides that track the Warwickshire test have historically described an approximate split of around 50% combined English and Verbal Reasoning, 25% Non-Verbal Reasoning and 25% Mathematics, though families should treat this as a helpful approximation rather than an official, guaranteed formula, since the school does not publish it as such each year.

All raw scores are age-standardised, adjusting for a child’s exact date of birth so that a summer-born boy is not disadvantaged relative to an autumn-born classmate. Rather than a single fixed pass mark, King Edward VI School’s Committee of Reference sets two thresholds every year using the actual pattern of that year’s results: an Automatic Qualifying Score, and a lower Required Minimum Academic Standard used only if places remain unfilled after the Automatic Qualifying Score group has been considered. Independent 11+ specialists have reported an Automatic Qualifying Score around 239 in a recent year, but because Warwickshire schools calibrate these thresholds to each year’s specific applicant pool and place numbers, families should treat any single year’s figure as historical context rather than a stable target.

What Are the Key 2026 Dates for King Edward VI School Admissions?

For boys seeking September 2027 entry to Year 7 at King Edward VI School, the following 2026–2027 timetable applies across the Warwickshire consortium:

Registration for the test itself is completed through Warwickshire Admissions, but families must separately submit a Common Application Form to their home local authority listing King Edward VI School and any other preferred schools before 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 11+ test. A child may sit the Warwickshire test only once; the school’s admissions policy treats attempting to sit it more than once as fraudulent or intentionally misleading, which can affect an application. Official arrangements are published on King Edward VI School’s own admissions page and on Warwickshire County Council’s grammar schools 11+ test page. For the national context, see our 11+ exam dates 2025–2026 guide.

How Does the Priority Area and Oversubscription Criteria Work at King Edward VI School?

With only 87 Year 7 places — one of the smallest published admission numbers of any grammar school in Warwickshire — King Edward VI School is consistently oversubscribed among boys who meet the required standard. Rather than a single catchment boundary, the school defines its priority area as two concentric circles measured from a single fixed landmark: the Fountain in Rother Street, in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon. The inner circle has a 13-mile radius, and the wider outer circle extends 16.936 miles, reaching the Warwickshire county boundary south of Long Compton. Residency within these circles must be established by 31 December 2026 for September 2027 entry.

Once boys have achieved the required standard on the shared Warwickshire test, King Edward VI School allocates its 87 places in the following order:

1. Looked-after and previously looked-after children achieving the Automatic Qualifying Score, or within 20 marks below it if the Automatic Qualifying Score cannot otherwise be met, down to the Required Minimum Academic Standard
2. Pupil Premium-eligible boys (registered for Free School Meals) living within the outer priority circle, achieving the Automatic Qualifying Score or up to 20 marks below it — limited to a maximum of 13 places
3. Boys living within the inner priority circle achieving the Automatic Qualifying Score — up to 70 places
4. Boys living within the outer priority circle achieving the Automatic Qualifying Score
5. Boys living outside the outer priority circle achieving the Automatic Qualifying Score
6. Boys scoring below the Automatic Qualifying Score but above the Required Minimum Academic Standard, considered only for the waiting list

The dedicated Pupil Premium tier, capped at 13 places, is a deliberate mechanism to widen access to the school for qualifying boys from lower-income households within the wider catchment, echoing similar provisions at other selective schools around the country. Where two or more applications cannot be separated within a tier, distance is measured in a straight line from home address to the school, and if that still cannot separate applicants for the final available place, a computerised random number generator, operated by Warwickshire Admissions and witnessed independently by Legal Services, decides the outcome.

Families should note that King Edward VI School’s priority area is entirely independent of the other Warwickshire consortium schools’ own catchments. Rugby High School and Lawrence Sheriff School, for example, both use a priority circle centred on the Rugby Water Tower with a 10.004-mile radius rather than Stratford’s Rother Street fountain — a reminder that sharing an entrance test does not mean sharing an admissions map, and that a family’s realistic chances can vary significantly between consortium schools depending purely on their home address. For the boys’ sixth-form partner across town, see our companion guide to the Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar School for Girls, and for the neighbouring co-educational option, our guide to Alcester Grammar School.

What Is the Sixth Form and Academic Record at King Edward VI School Like?

King Edward VI School’s Sixth Form became fully co-educational in September 2013, and today accounts for a substantial share of the school’s population — around 432 of the school’s approximately 879 pupils. This gives KES boys a genuinely mixed Sixth Form experience after five years in a single-sex Years 7–11 environment, a similar pattern to several other historic English grammar schools that have opened their Sixth Forms to girls in recent decades.

Academically, King Edward VI School performs exceptionally well even by the standards of England’s selective grammar schools. In the school’s most recently published results, 91% of GCSE grades reached grade 9–7, and 100% of pupils achieved grade 5 or above in both English and maths. At A-Level, 60% of grades were A*/A and 86% were A*–B, with an average points score of 46.41. The school holds an Outstanding Ofsted rating from its most recent inspection on 30 November 2021, across every category assessed, including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and Sixth Form provision. The school was named Sunday Times “State Secondary School of the Decade” in 2020 and was ranked among the joint-happiest secondary schools nationally in the Sunday Times Parent Power rankings in 2025.

Beyond exam results, King Edward VI School makes deliberate use of its extraordinary historic buildings — the 15th-century Guildhall, the Guild Chapel, and the 1427 Pedagogue’s House — as working parts of school life rather than museum pieces, alongside modern facilities including the Denis Dyson Building (2008) and Richard Spender Building (2017). For families weighing up grammar school options more broadly, our overview of 2026 grammar school league tables provides useful national context on how schools like KES compare on outcomes.

How Should My Child Prepare for the 11+ at King Edward VI School?

Preparation for King Edward VI School needs to be broader than for many regional 11+ tests, because the Warwickshire test examines four distinct areas rather than the two-paper verbal/non-verbal format common in some other English counties. A preparation plan that only covers verbal and non-verbal reasoning, while neglecting English comprehension and mathematics, risks leaving a child underprepared for half the test.

English preparation should focus on comprehension technique — reading unfamiliar passages quickly and accurately under time pressure — alongside vocabulary built through wide reading of fiction, non-fiction and quality journalism. Mathematics preparation should be grounded in rock-solid Key Stage 2 arithmetic: times tables, fractions, decimals, percentages, and the four operations, layered with reasoning-style word problems that reward careful reading as much as calculation speed.

Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning follow familiar patterns seen across many English 11+ regions: codes, sequences, analogies and word relationships for VR; series, matrices, figure classification, rotation and cube or net folding for NVR. Neither forms part of the national curriculum, so boys need structured, progressive practice well before the September 2026 test date, working through every question type before moving to full timed practice papers in the months beforehand.

Given that King Edward VI School has only 87 places and, once the Pupil Premium and inner-circle tiers are filled, competition for the remaining places can be intense, a personalised one-to-one approach is particularly valuable: it lets a tutor identify precisely which of the four tested areas — English, mathematics, verbal or non-verbal reasoning — is weakest for an individual boy, and design a programme that closes those specific gaps rather than applying a generic, evenly-split study plan. At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors support families across Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire and the wider West Midlands, including through online tuition for those living further from the town centre. For general background on how different 11+ regions structure their testing, see our guide to what the 11+ exam involves.