SEND and Access Arrangements at QE Boys and HBS

Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet and The Henrietta Barnett School both make access arrangements for the 11+ entrance test, and both require the request at registration rather than later. Neither lowers the mark. Queen Elizabeth's states that once adjustments are made, "the minimum score required by the governors is also the same". Between them the two schools taught 2,121 pupils in 2024/25, of whom 0.46 and 0.12 per cent held an EHC Plan.

How to request an access arrangement, and by when

The deadline is the part families get wrong, because at both schools it falls months before the test and is attached to the registration form rather than to any separate SEND process.

Source: Queen Elizabeth's School Secondary Transfer Entrance Test FAQs, question 4, and its key dates for the 2027 intake; The Henrietta Barnett School Admissions Policy 2027-2028, section 1.2.

Both schools decide what is appropriate rather than accepting what you propose. Queen Elizabeth's frames its test explicitly against what already happens at the child's current school: "when a pupil with a special educational need takes our entrance test, our practice is always to aim to make the same provision as is made for him during assessments at his current school."

That framing has a consequence worth acting on in Year 4 or Year 5. If a child does not currently receive extra time in school assessments, there is nothing for Queen Elizabeth's to mirror. The arrangement has to exist in the primary school first.

The rule that surprises families: the score does not move

Queen Elizabeth's says it in a single sentence that answers a question parents rarely ask out loud: "having made any adjustments which are appropriate for the candidate to sit the test, the marking process for such pupils is then identical to that for all others, and the minimum score required by the governors is also the same."

So a boy with extra time still needs the same combined standardised score as everyone else — 225 to be eligible for September 2027 entry, against lowest admitted scores of 235 in each of the last two completed cycles. The adjustment removes a disadvantage in sitting the paper. It does not create an allowance in the marking.

Henrietta Barnett does not state the equivalent rule in those words, but its structure produces the same outcome: Round One results are standardised, combined and ranked, and the top 300 go through. There is no separate threshold and no separate list.

This is worth being clear-eyed about before a family invests a year in securing an arrangement in the hope that it changes the odds. It levels the sitting, and the bar it is being sat against is unchanged.

What the two schools' SEND populations actually look like

Department for Education figures for 2024/25 give the clearest available picture of how many pupils with identified needs are in each school, and how that compares with mainstream secondaries nationally.

Source: Compare school and college performance, Department for Education, 2024/25 pupil population data for URN 136290 and URN 138051, read on 19 August 2026.

Applying the percentages to the rolls gives roughly six boys with an EHC Plan at Queen Elizabeth's and roughly one girl at Henrietta Barnett, with about 14 and 16 respectively on SEN Support. Those are our calculations from the published percentages, and small counts of this kind carry real rounding error, so treat them as orders of magnitude rather than headcounts.

The honest reading of that table is that both schools have identified SEND populations far below the national picture, and it does not by itself tell you why. Two explanations are usually offered — that highly selective intakes contain fewer children with identified needs, and that a needs profile is less likely to be identified in a child who is achieving highly. Neither school publishes anything that would let a parent choose between them, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

How Queen Elizabeth's identifies need once a boy is in

The school's SEND information sets out six routes, and one of them is a whole-cohort screen that many families do not know about.

Records come across from primary schools, and information may come from doctors or other outside agencies. Then, before the October half-term in Year 7, every pupil in the new intake sits the University of Durham's MidYIS assessment, which the school uses as "an early indicator and standardised baseline of ability". After that, need surfaces through regular assessment across all subjects and year groups, through teachers raising concerns with the SENCo, through Year Heads and Form Tutors referring boys after pastoral checks or bespoke tutor sessions, and through concerns raised by parents.

The school lists what it provides: staff mentors assigned to individual pupils, a peer mentoring scheme, subject clinics and revision classes, differentiated resources including accessible use of laptops, and examination arrangements such as modified papers, scribes, extra time or one-to-one invigilation in a separate room. Where a pupil does not progress despite extra support, "the School will consider whether it would be appropriate to arrange for the pupil's assessment for an Education, Health and Care Plan by the Local Authority."

The MidYIS point is the practically useful one. A boy arrives in September and is baselined within about seven weeks, which means a need that was never identified at primary school has a formal route to surfacing early rather than waiting for a subject teacher to notice.

Naming either school in an EHC Plan

Henrietta Barnett publishes the fullest account of how this works at a selective school, and it is unusually direct about the sequencing.

The legal position is that a school named in Section I of an EHC Plan must admit the child, and the local authority must consult the school first. What Henrietta Barnett adds is that the consultation will rarely succeed before the entrance test has been sat: "EHCP consultations regarding The Henrietta Barnett School will therefore rarely be effective if the child has not yet sat or obtained a result from The Henrietta Barnett School entrance test, or if the child does not have significant evidence of prior academic attainment commensurate with a highly academically selective environment."

The reasoning is that the school cannot assess suitability without knowing the child's academic ability and what reasonable adjustments would be needed. Its stated evidence of suitability is the test itself: "the taking of The Henrietta Barnett School Round One entrance test for the relevant year group and obtaining of a score of the required standard (within the top 300) will be good evidence that the child is academically suited to the school."

It then publishes the timetable it expects the local authority to follow: Round One on 2, 3 or 4 September 2026, results in late September 2026, EHCP consultation to start no earlier than 1 November 2026 or the day after results if later, and a response from the school 15 days after receipt. For secondary transfer the consultation must be completed by 15 February in the year of transfer at the latest.

The practical instruction inside all of that is simple: if you want either school named, enter your child for the entrance test in the ordinary way and on the ordinary deadline, even while the EHCP process runs.

If your child has no formal diagnosis

Both schools work from what is already in place rather than from a label, which cuts both ways.

Queen Elizabeth's asks what provision the current school makes during its own assessments, so a child receiving extra time in primary school assessments has something to point at whether or not a diagnosis exists. A child with a recent diagnosis but no established provision has less to point at, which is the opposite of what most families assume.

Henrietta Barnett requires the information and supporting evidence at registration, by 5pm on 1 July 2026 for the September 2027 cycle, and warns that later documentation may not be considered. An assessment booked for August is an assessment that arrives too late.

Neither school publishes a list of arrangements it will and will not grant, so the answer for any individual child comes from the admissions office rather than from a page like this one. Both have a named admissions email and both answer questions of this kind. For the wider admissions picture see our guides to what score QE Boys requires and the Henrietta Barnett Round Two test, and for how each school handles preparation materials, QE Boys and Henrietta Barnett practice papers. Queen Elizabeth's publishes its full policy summary on its SEND page.

Where our own numbers come from

In the 2025 admissions cycle we worked with 40 students sitting selective entrance examinations at 11+ and 13+, of whom 38 received at least one offer from a school the family had genuinely targeted. Ten took up places at Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet and seven at The Henrietta Barnett School.

We publish the cohort size beside the counts because 40 is a small number and a rate without it is not evidence. We do not hold and do not claim outcome data broken down by special educational need, and nothing on this page should be read as advice on whether either school is right for an individual child. Families rate us Excellent on Trustpilot, 4.8 out of 5 from 57 reviews read on 19 August 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades — a practice-wide figure across every level we teach, not a Barnet cohort.

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