QE Boys and Henrietta Barnett Sixth Form Entry

Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet does not admit anyone into its Sixth Form from outside. Its published admissions criteria state in one sentence that there is no formal point of admission into the Sixth Form, so the only route in is to have joined in Year 7. The Henrietta Barnett School does the opposite: it publishes a minimum of 6 grade 7s at GCSE, and enrolled 53 external students in September 2025 against a floor of 30 places.

Queen Elizabeth's has no sixth-form admission point at all

The sentence sits at the end of the section on admission at ages other than 11 in the school's Criteria for Admission & Our Admissions Guide for Parents for September 2027 entry, and it is easy to miss because it arrives without ceremony: "There is no formal point of admission into the Sixth Form."

The paragraph around it explains the rest of the picture. "There is only one formal point of admission to the School and this is at age 11 on secondary transfer." Places in Years 7 to 11 exist only where a vacancy occurs, and then only if the boy's "academic ability, as determined by entrance tests, meets the requirements of the Governors". At 16, not even that applies, because there is no admission point to attach a test to.

For a family in Year 11 elsewhere hoping to move a son to Queen Elizabeth's for A levels, that is the answer, and it is worth having early rather than in the January of Year 11.

What Queen Elizabeth's does not publish about staying on

Parents of boys already at the school ask a different question: what does he need at GCSE to continue into Year 12? On the school's website, as at 19 August 2026, there is no published answer.

We looked for one. The admissions section covers Year 7 entry and nothing else. The curriculum page describes what the Sixth Form contains — boys take "three or four A-level courses" alongside the Extended Project Qualification, the school's own University Admissions Support Programme, sports leadership awards and required voluntary service — but sets no grade thresholds. Neither does the admissions guide, which stops at the sentence quoted above.

That absence is the honest answer to a question that circulates constantly, usually attached to secondhand accounts of subject-by-subject thresholds and of a proportion of each year group leaving at 16. Those accounts may well describe the school accurately. They are not published by it, and we are not going to restate them as though they were. If your son is at Queen Elizabeth's and you need the requirement for a particular A level, the school's own year team is the only reliable source, and the requirement is worth asking for in Year 9 rather than Year 11.

What the published data does show is that leavers go somewhere. Department for Education figures for the 2023 leaver cohort record 100 per cent of Queen Elizabeth's pupils staying in education or entering apprenticeships or employment after Key Stage 4, against 92 per cent for England. It does not say how many stayed at Queen Elizabeth's.

Henrietta Barnett publishes a threshold, and it is specific

Everything below comes from the school's Admissions Policy for 2027-2028, approved by the Governing Body on 3 December 2025, and it applies to internal and external candidates alike.

Source: The Henrietta Barnett School Admissions Policy 2027-2028, Year 12 Admissions sections 1 and 3.

Two clauses in that table are doing more work than they look. The internal guarantee is conditional on the academic criteria, not on being there already — a Year 11 girl who does not reach six grade 7s does not continue automatically. And the school is explicit that meeting the minimum is not the same as being competitive: "the average GCSE score which facilitates acceptance to the Sixth Form is likely to be much higher."

Meeting the grades also does not guarantee the courses. The policy states that the school "cannot guarantee an offer of a place on specific chosen courses", and that applicants who meet the general requirements but cannot be accommodated in their preferred subjects "will be offered an alternative course".

How the Best 7 points score works

Where external applicants compete for the same places, the school ranks them on a Best 7 GCSE points score, and it publishes the arithmetic.

Points equal the grade: a grade 9 scores 9, a grade 6 scores 6. Legacy lettered grades convert at A* = 8.5, A = 7, B = 5.5 and C = 4. The seven subjects are drawn from a prescribed list, and the predicted-grade version of the score must include Mathematics, English Language and English Literature.

The eligible subjects are Mathematics, English Language, English Literature, the sciences (Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Computing, or Combined Science, which counts as two grades), Geography, History, a language studied as part of the school curriculum from French, German, Spanish, Latin or Classical Greek, Music, Art, Design & Technology, Drama, Classical Civilisation and Religious Studies. IGCSE versions are accepted where that is the course the candidate's school offers.

One condition catches candidates who spread their entries: the school expects most GCSEs to be taken in a single sitting, and requires "a minimum of five subjects, from the Best 7 calculation" to be taken in the candidate's final GCSE examination period.

How many outsiders does Henrietta Barnett actually take?

More than the published floor, and the school gives the real numbers rather than leaving them to be guessed at: "A minimum Published Admission Number – (PAN) of 30 places will be offered annually to external applicants. In September 2024 we enrolled 49 external applicants and in September 2025 this number was 53 external applicants."

Both actual intakes were well above the 30 floor, and the second was higher than the first. Against a school of 807 pupils across all year groups, an external Year 12 intake in the fifties is a substantial route in — and it is the only route into either of these two schools after Year 7, because Queen Elizabeth's has none.

Competition at this stage is also visibly lighter than at 11. The school's published appeals record for Year 12 reads: "In 2024 there was one appeal which was unsuccessful." One appeal, against 3,121 applications and two appeals at Year 7 in 2025. Our guide to grammar school sixth form entry requirements sets out how that pattern repeats across the selective sector.

The Year 12 timetable, and the two deadlines that end an application

The school runs a conventional autumn-to-spring cycle, and misses no chance to say that late paperwork is the applicant's problem.

Source: The Henrietta Barnett School Admissions FAQs 2026 for the 2026-entry calendar, and the Admissions Policy 2027-2028 for the 2027 application deadline.

The reference is the deadline families lose applications on. It has to come from the candidate's current school, on Henrietta Barnett's own form, through a link the school sends: "other methods of providing this information will mean the application cannot be processed." The policy puts the responsibility squarely on the applicant to make sure their school sends it in time, and it will not accept "working at" style grades — the reference must give predicted or achieved grades.

What happens on GCSE results day

A conditional offer at Henrietta Barnett is confirmed by two actions on the day, both with a clock on them.

Candidates who have met their offer must complete an online survey by midday on results day confirming their results and A level subject choices, using a link in their offer letter. They must also upload their statement of results, and the policy warns that "if there is a discrepancy between the two, a place may be withdrawn".

Then the school telephones. It contacts applicants "from the afternoon of GCSE Results Day and the following days to confirm the offer", and the sentence that follows is the one to read twice: "if an applicant cannot be reached by telephone, then it will be assumed that the place is no longer required and may be offered to the next applicant." Only the applicant may confirm, "not parents or other adults". A student on holiday with a dead phone can lose a place they have earned.

If she does not meet the offer

The route stays open, but the ranking restarts. Conditional offer holders who miss their points total and still want a place complete the same link on their offer letter, and are then re-ranked by total Best 7 points alongside anyone applying fresh on results day. Remaining places go strictly down that list, with distance from the school as the tie-break and random allocation if two candidates are equidistant.

New applicants can enter at that point too. The school says it may have places available after results day and directs families to its website in the summer term for a link to register interest.

An appeal is the other route, and it is time-limited: any Year 12 appeal "must be lodged within 20 school days of receipt of the letter refusing a place", with hearings in the autumn term. For context on the wider picture at both schools, see our comparison of QE Boys and Henrietta Barnett and our guide to what happens when a sixth form withdraws a place after GCSE results. Both schools' own pages are the authority: Henrietta Barnett's Year 12 admissions page carries the current subject requirements.

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.

Those are 11+ and 13+ figures, not 16+ ones, and we give the cohort size beside them because 40 is a small number. We do not hold a sixth-form conversion rate for either school and do not claim one. 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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