Lawrence Sheriff School 11+ Guide 2026: Admissions, Exam & Prep

Lawrence Sheriff School in Rugby is a selective state grammar school for boys aged 11 to 18, with a co-educational sixth form, founded in 1878 to revive the original educational bequest of Elizabethan grocer Lawrence Sheriff. For September 2027 entry, boys applying to Lawrence Sheriff must register with Warwickshire Admissions, sit the shared Warwickshire 11+ test in September 2026, and achieve the school's Automatic Qualifying Score (AQS) — recently stable at around 211 to 212 — to be considered for one of the school’s 150 Year 7 places. Crucially, this is exactly the same test, on the same dates, as neighbouring Rugby High School, the girls’ grammar school in the same town. This guide covers the school’s history, its distinctive catchment-based admissions criteria, the exam format, key 2026 dates, and how to build an effective preparation plan.

Key Facts: Lawrence Sheriff School, Rugby

About Lawrence Sheriff School: History and Character

Lawrence Sheriff School takes its name from an Elizabethan act of civic philanthropy that also gave the town its most famous independent school. Lawrence Sheriff (circa 1515 to 1567) was born in Rugby and rose to become grocer to Queen Elizabeth I in London, gaining admission to the Worshipful Company of Grocers in 1554 and, for his loyalty to Elizabeth during her years out of royal favour, receiving a coat of arms granted with her approval in 1559. When Sheriff died in September 1567, his will left an endowment — including his eight-acre Conduit Close estate, later part of London’s Bloomsbury district — to establish almshouses and a free grammar school for the boys of Rugby.

That original 1567 bequest is what founded Rugby School. But as Rugby School grew through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into one of England’s great fee-paying independent schools, it moved further and further from Sheriff’s original intention of a free local grammar education. Lawrence Sheriff School was established in 1878 specifically to revive that founding purpose: a selective, free grammar school for the boys of Rugby and the surrounding area, carrying Sheriff’s name and a version of his 1559 coat of arms into a new institution built for the town’s own children rather than fee-paying boarders.

The school has occupied its Clifton Road site for well over a century, weathering a serious fire in 1980 that required substantial rebuilding. It became Voluntary Aided in the post-war grammar school settlement and converted to academy status in September 2014, while retaining its fully selective, boys-only character at Years 7 to 11. Pupils are organised into five houses — Caldecott, Simpson, Tait, Wheeler and Kent, the last added in 2020 — which structure pastoral care, sport and the school’s internal competitions. The school has a long record of strong academic performance, having been ranked first nationally for its GCSE and A-Level results in several years during the late 2000s and early 2010s, and it continues to rank among the top state schools in England on measures such as Attainment 8 and Progress 8.

Lawrence Sheriff School has been boys-only at Year 7 to Year 11 throughout its history, but its Sixth Form is fully co-educational, with a Published Admission Number of 75 places at Year 12 alongside continuing Lawrence Sheriff boys. Entry to the Sixth Form requires eight GCSEs, including four at grade 5 or above and four at grade 6 or above, with grade 5 or above specifically required in English and grade 5 or above in Mathematics. Headteacher Mrs Teresa Mpofu leads the school today, overseeing both the boys-only main school and the co-educational Sixth Form.

Does Lawrence Sheriff School Share Its 11+ Test with Rugby High School?

Yes. Lawrence Sheriff School sits within Warwickshire’s shared grammar school testing arrangement, meaning a boy registering for Lawrence Sheriff sits exactly the same 11+ test, on exactly the same dates, as a girl applying to Rugby High School — Rugby’s other grammar school, which sits directly across town and admits girls only at Year 7 to Year 11. The same shared test, coordinated on behalf of Warwickshire County Council, is also used by King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon and Alcester Grammar School. A family registers once through Warwickshire Admissions and the resulting standardised score can be used to apply to any of the four Warwickshire grammar schools listed on the Common Application Form — there is no need to sit separate papers for Lawrence Sheriff and Rugby High School, even though the two schools have entirely separate, single-sex admissions criteria and are not interchangeable for a given child.

The four Warwickshire grammar schools sharing this test and their published admission numbers are:

Because Lawrence Sheriff and Rugby High School are the only two grammar schools in Rugby itself — one for boys, one for girls — most local families with both a son and a daughter approaching Year 6 find themselves navigating both schools’ admissions arrangements in parallel, even though only one shared test needs to be sat per child. Families should note that Lawrence Sheriff and Rugby High School each publish their own separate oversubscription criteria and catchment maps, so qualifying in the shared test is only the first step at either school. For the wider county picture, including Alcester Grammar School (another shared-test Warwickshire school), see our Alcester Grammar School 11+ guide, our 11+ school guides hub and our Coventry and Warwickshire grammar schools guide.

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What Does the Warwickshire 11+ Test Cover?

The Warwickshire 11+ test used for Lawrence Sheriff School is coordinated as part of a wider West Midlands testing framework, using GL Assessment-style question types, and is sat across two papers of around 60 minutes each. Unlike some regional consortia that test reasoning skills alone, the Warwickshire test combines curriculum subjects with pure reasoning across four components:

English: Comprehension and technical English skills, assessing a boy’s ability to read and analyse unfamiliar text passages, along with grammar, punctuation and vocabulary in context.

Mathematics: Curriculum-based arithmetic, reasoning and problem-solving questions pitched at the expected standard for the end of Year 5, testing both calculation accuracy and the ability to apply maths to worded and multi-step problems.

Verbal Reasoning (VR): Pattern-based questions built around language, codes, sequences and logical relationships between words — a skill set not directly taught on the national curriculum and requiring dedicated practice.

Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR): Questions built around abstract shapes and figures, covering series, matrices, analogies, and figure classification — again a skill set that depends on structured, progressive practice rather than classroom teaching alone.

All four components are marked and combined into standardised verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and mathematics scores plus a combined total score. Because the test blends academic subject knowledge with abstract reasoning, boys need a genuinely broad preparation programme — strength in NVR alone, or in English alone, is not enough to reach the Automatic Qualifying Score reliably. The resulting total score determines whether a boy has reached the AQS; reaching it is necessary but not sufficient, since the school’s oversubscription criteria then decide who is actually offered one of the 150 places.

What Are the Key 2026 Dates for Lawrence Sheriff School Admissions?

For boys seeking September 2027 entry to Year 7 at Lawrence Sheriff School, the following 2026 timetable applies, as published on the school’s own admissions pages and confirmed against Warwickshire County Council’s coordinated arrangements:

Registration for the 11+ test itself is completed through Warwickshire Admissions, but families must separately submit a Common Application Form to their home local authority listing all 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 reached the qualifying score in the 11+ test. Official registration and admissions arrangements are published on the Lawrence Sheriff School 11+ information page and on the Warwickshire County Council school admissions arrangements page. For the national context, see our 11+ exam dates 2025–2026 guide.

How Do Catchment Areas and Oversubscription Work at Lawrence Sheriff School?

With 150 Year 7 places and consistently more than three applications for every place, Lawrence Sheriff School's admissions arrangements are built around two overlapping catchment zones rather than a single distance ranking. Boys who reach the Automatic Qualifying Score (AQS) are then prioritised for the 150 places in the following order:

1. Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) naming Lawrence Sheriff School
2. Looked-after and previously looked-after children reaching the AQS, within 20 marks of it, or meeting a minimum academic standard
3. Up to 30 places for Pupil Premium-eligible children living in the Eastern Area or Priority Circle who reach a lower, published threshold score
4. Up to 5 places for Service Premium-eligible children (children of serving armed forces personnel) living in the Eastern Area or Priority Circle, reaching the same lower threshold
5. Children of school staff reaching the AQS
6. Children living in the Eastern Area reaching the AQS
7. Children living in the Priority Circle reaching the AQS
8. Remaining Pupil Premium and Service Premium-eligible children outside the catchment areas
9. Children living outside the catchment areas reaching the AQS
10. All remaining applicants reaching a minimum academic standard, placed on a waiting list

The Eastern Area is defined as Rugby itself together with the combined catchment areas of Bilton High School, Ashlawn School and Avon Valley School, and includes named surrounding parishes such as Dunchurch, Cawston and Thurlaston. The Priority Circle is a wider zone, centred on the Rugby Water Tower with a radius of exactly 10.004 miles, which entirely contains the Eastern Area and extends admissions priority to children living at an equivalent distance outside Warwickshire’s own boundary, including parts of neighbouring Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. Where places must be decided by distance — for example between two Priority Circle applicants for the final available place — the school measures a straight line from the child’s home address to the centroid of the school site at the Headteacher’s Office entrance.

This catchment-based system was tested by a parental objection to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator in May 2025 (case reference ADA4479), which argued that Eastern Area applicants could theoretically be awarded all 150 places, leaving Priority Circle families with appreciably higher scores without a place. In a determination published on 31 October 2025, the adjudicator did not uphold the objection, finding the school’s published arrangements clear, objective and compliant with the School Admissions Code, and noting that the AQS itself had remained consistent at around 211 to 212 across the 2022 to 2025 admissions rounds — evidence, in the adjudicator’s view, against any suggestion that the qualifying score was being manipulated to favour one catchment group over another.

Because there is no single catchment area and no simple distance ranking, families should not assume that living close to the school guarantees a place, nor that living further away rules one out: a Priority Circle address up to 10 miles from Rugby carries real priority once the Pupil Premium, Service Premium and staff categories are satisfied, while an address just outside the Priority Circle falls to the lowest-priority "outside catchment" category regardless of proximity.

What Is the Sixth Form and Academic Record at Lawrence Sheriff Like?

Lawrence Sheriff School's Sixth Form is fully co-educational, with a Published Admission Number of 75 places at Year 12 in addition to boys continuing from Year 11. Entry requires eight GCSEs including four at grade 5 or above and four at grade 6 or above, with grade 5 or above specifically required in English and grade 5 or above in Mathematics.

Academically, Lawrence Sheriff consistently performs well above national averages. In the most recent published results, 67.9% of GCSE grades reached grade 7 or above, with an Attainment 8 average of 75.1 and a Progress 8 score of +0.89 — a strongly positive figure indicating that pupils make substantially more progress from Key Stage 2 than pupils with similar starting points nationally. At A-Level, around 71% of grades were awarded at A*–B. The school's Sixth Form typically sends a large majority of leavers to higher education, including a handful of Oxbridge offers and around a dozen or more medical school places each year, reflecting the school's long-standing academic reputation, which included being ranked first nationally on GCSE and A-Level measures in several years during the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Beyond the classroom, Lawrence Sheriff offers a broad extracurricular programme organised through its five houses — Caldecott, Simpson, Tait, Wheeler and Kent — spanning sport, music, drama and a wide range of clubs and societies. The school's Outstanding Ofsted rating, awarded following an inspection on 29 March 2022, reflects strong outcomes across quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and Sixth Form provision.

How Should My Child Prepare for the 11+ at Lawrence Sheriff School?

Preparation for Lawrence Sheriff should cover all four components of the Warwickshire 11+ test: English, Mathematics, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Because two of these components draw directly on the national curriculum while the other two do not, boys need a preparation plan that balances curriculum consolidation with dedicated reasoning practice.

English and Mathematics reward strong classroom foundations, but the test is pitched to stretch beyond routine schoolwork, so boys benefit from working through unfamiliar comprehension passages and multi-step, worded maths problems well before test day, rather than relying solely on what is covered in school during Year 5 and Year 6.

Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning are not taught on the national curriculum at all, so structured, progressive practice across the full range of question types — codes, analogies, sequences, matrices and figure classification — is essential. Most families begin familiarisation in Year 5, gradually increasing to full, timed four-component practice papers from January of Year 6, mirroring the roughly 60-minute-per-paper structure of the real test.

Given how competitive the 150 places at Lawrence Sheriff typically are once the catchment and priority categories are applied — with well over three applications for every place in the most recent admissions round — a personalised one-to-one approach is particularly valuable: it lets a tutor identify precisely which of the four components a boy is weakest in, whether that is a curriculum gap in maths or an unfamiliar NVR question type, and design a programme that closes those specific gaps rather than relying on generic practice alone. At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors are experienced with the Warwickshire 11+ test and support families across Rugby, Coventry and the wider county, including through online tuition. Families preparing a daughter for Rugby High School at the same time may also find our 6-month 11+ countdown plan useful for structuring preparation across both applications.