Royal Grammar School High Wycombe 11 Plus Guide 2026

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The Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe (RGS) is a boys' state grammar school offering 182 day places and 10 boarding places at Year 7 for September 2027 entry, selected through the Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test (STT) with a qualifying score of 121. RGS is one of the most heavily oversubscribed boys' grammar schools in Buckinghamshire: official council data for the 2025/26 cycle recorded 213 first-preference applications for 185 advertised places, meaning fewer than four in five first-choice applicants secured an offer. This guide sets out the exact 2026 test timeline, the school's own admissions criteria and catchment areas, the most recent official application-and-offer figures, RGS's 2025 GCSE results, and how families in Priority Area A and Priority Area B should plan their preparation.

How Many Places Does RGS High Wycombe Offer at 11 Plus?

RGS High Wycombe's admissions policy for entry in September 2027 confirms 182 day places and 10 boarding places at Year 7 — a total published admission number of 192 places across both routes. The school also admits up to 50 external places into a co-educational Sixth Form, a change that took effect when RGS's Sixth Form became fully co-educational from September 2025 for the first time in the school's history. Boarding places sit within Fraser Youens House; RGS is one of a small number of state boarding schools nationally, and boarding places are allocated under a separate admissions policy from day places, with families needing to apply for both the STT-based day process and, where relevant, a distinct boarding assessment.

These figures come directly from RGS's own admissions policy documents published on rgshw.com. Families researching the school should treat any third-party figure that differs from the school's current-year policy PDF as out of date — the school revises its published admission number most years, and the 182+10 figure quoted above is specific to September 2027 entry, not earlier or later cohorts.

What Is the Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test Format and Pass Mark?

RGS High Wycombe does not set its own separate entrance exam. Like all 13 Buckinghamshire grammar schools, it selects Year 7 entrants using the single county-wide Secondary Transfer Test (STT), administered by The Buckinghamshire Grammar Schools (TBGS) using GL Assessment materials. The test consists of two papers sat on the same day, each covering a blend of verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, mathematics and English in a multiple-choice format, and takes roughly one hour per paper. There is no separate RGS-specific paper, no interview and no additional assessment for day places — a child sits the STT once and the resulting standardised score is used for every Bucks grammar school they list on their Common Application Form.

The qualifying (pass) score is 121, standardised for age so that summer-born children are not disadvantaged relative to those born in September. A score of 121 or above makes a child eligible to be considered for a place at RGS and any other Buckinghamshire grammar school — it does not, by itself, guarantee an offer. Because RGS is oversubscribed most years (see the official 2025/26 figures below), a score comfortably above 121 combined with a strong catchment position is what actually converts eligibility into an offer.

Key Dates for the RGS High Wycombe 11 Plus in 2026

The 2026 timetable below applies to every Buckinghamshire grammar school, including RGS High Wycombe, and covers the STT cycle for children currently in Year 5 who will sit the test in Year 6 for September 2027 entry.

Registration is automatic for children at Buckinghamshire state primary schools but must be completed manually by parents for children at independent schools, out-of-county primary schools, or those educated at home. Missing the 2 June 2026 registration deadline means a child cannot sit the STT that year — Buckinghamshire Council does not operate a late-registration route outside exceptional circumstances, so families intending to apply to RGS High Wycombe should register in the first week the window opens rather than waiting.

What Are RGS High Wycombe's Catchment Areas and Oversubscription Criteria?

RGS High Wycombe applies a two-tier priority area system, set out in its own admissions policy. Priority Area A covers High Wycombe itself, Beaconsfield, Stokenchurch and part of Princes Risborough. Priority Area B covers Gerrards Cross and surrounding areas where families typically have access to more than one grammar school. Within each priority area, and when the school is oversubscribed within a tier, places are allocated by straight-line distance — calculated from the family's normal home address, defined as where the child lives and sleeps more than 50% of school-term nights, to the middle of the school's main entrance gate on Walton Road, using Ordnance Survey ADDRESS-POINT data.

When RGS is oversubscribed, the school works through a seven-tier oversubscription policy in this order:

Tier 2's reserved Pupil Premium places are a distinctive feature of the RGS policy: up to six places are ring-fenced each year for catchment boys eligible for Pupil Premium funding who score between 115 and 120 — below the standard qualifying score of 121 but within a defined band the school treats as eligible under this specific route. Families should read the current admissions policy PDF on rgshw.com in full, since Tier 2 and Tier 3 criteria are reviewed most years and the school has previously amended its Sixth Form boarding oversubscription criteria following discussion with the Department for Education.

How Competitive Is Admission to RGS High Wycombe?

The single most useful — and least reported — piece of evidence for families is Buckinghamshire Council's own published preference-and-offer breakdown, rather than the qualifying score alone. For the 2025/26 admissions cycle (results issued in 2025 for September 2025 entry), Buckinghamshire Council's official school admissions data for RGS High Wycombe recorded:

Against 185 advertised day places, 213 families named RGS as their first preference alone — before second- and third-preference applicants are even counted. Only 163 boys were offered a place on first preference, with a further 19 offered on second preference and 2 on third preference, taking the total to 187 offers once late allocations and waiting-list movement are included. This is the figure that matters most in practice: a child scoring comfortably above 121 who lists RGS as a second or third preference has historically had a materially lower chance of an offer than a child who lists it first and lives in Priority Area A. For comparison, John Hampden Grammar School — the other boys' grammar serving the same High Wycombe catchment — has typically published a lower first-preference application count relative to its published admission number, making RGS the more heavily subscribed of the two Wycombe boys' schools in recent cycles; see our John Hampden Grammar School 11+ guide for the equivalent breakdown at that school.

What Academic Results Does RGS High Wycombe Achieve?

RGS High Wycombe's 2025 published performance data shows an Attainment 8 score of 73.9 and a Progress 8 score of +1.13, placing the school well above the national average for pupil progress between Key Stage 2 and GCSE. 97.6% of pupils achieved grade 5 or above in both English and maths at GCSE in 2025, and the school entered a high proportion of pupils for the full English Baccalaureate suite. The school has around 1,409 pupils on roll across Years 7–13, taught by roughly 83 teachers — an 18:1 pupil-to-teacher ratio. RGS holds an overall Ofsted rating of Good (October 2019), with Behaviour and Attitudes and Sixth Form provision both separately graded Outstanding.

Entry to the co-educational Sixth Form (both for existing RGS boys and the up to 50 external places available each September) requires a minimum of 49 points from a pupil's best 8 GCSEs, including grade 5 or above in English and maths — a threshold worth knowing early for Year 6 families thinking beyond the 11+ towards RGS's academic trajectory through to Sixth Form. The school traces its history back over 450 years, with a Royal Charter granted in 1562, making it one of the older state grammar schools in the county and a long-established part of the High Wycombe school landscape alongside John Hampden Grammar School and Wycombe High School.

How Should Families Prepare for the RGS High Wycombe 11 Plus?

Because RGS selects on the same Buckinghamshire STT as every other Bucks grammar school, preparation should be built around the GL Assessment format rather than any RGS-specific paper — there isn't one. Effective preparation typically covers four areas in the run-up to the September 2026 sitting: verbal reasoning question types (the STT draws from the full GL Assessment bank, including cloze, odd-one-out, and code-based questions), non-verbal reasoning (sequences, matrices, and 3D rotation), timed mathematics reasoning rather than pure arithmetic drilling, and comprehension-based English under time pressure. Because the qualifying score of 121 is only the entry threshold and RGS's own 2025/26 data shows most successful first-preference offers went to boys scoring well above the minimum, families should treat 121 as a floor to clear early — ideally by the spring term of Year 6 — leaving the final months for full timed mock papers under real test conditions.

Families living in Priority Area B, or outside both priority areas, should also read the school's own RGS admissions page and Buckinghamshire Council's grammar schools and transfer testing guidance before finalising preference order on the Common Application Form — because Tier 5 catchment allocation happens before Tier 7 distance-based allocation, an out-of-catchment family listing RGS first can still be outcompeted by an in-catchment family listing it lower, and preference order alone will not overcome that structural gap. For a county-wide view of how RGS compares with the other 12 Bucks grammar schools, see our Buckinghamshire Grammar Schools hub and our Buckinghamshire Grammar Schools Guide 2026. For general Buckinghamshire 11+ tutoring support, our 11+ tuition service covers the full STT syllabus.

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