Rugby High School 11+ Guide 2026: Admissions, Exam & Prep

Rugby High School in Bilton, Rugby, is a selective state grammar school for girls aged 11 to 16, with a co-educational sixth form that has also welcomed boys since 2018, tracing its roots to a small private school founded in 1903. For September 2027 entry, girls applying to Rugby High must register for the West Midlands Grammar Schools entrance test, sit the shared GL Assessment paper in September 2026, and be ranked highly enough within the school’s oversubscription criteria to secure one of the school’s 150 Year 7 places. Crucially, Rugby High School does not set its own independent test: it shares its exact paper, on the same dates, with Lawrence Sheriff School — the boys’ grammar school across town — and four other Warwickshire grammar schools. This guide covers the school’s history and character, the shared consortium test format, key 2026 dates, oversubscription and catchment rules, its Ofsted record, and how to build an effective preparation plan.

Key Facts: Rugby High School

About Rugby High School: History and Character

Rugby High School began life in 1903 as a small private school, Arnold High School, founded by Olive Hands on Elsee Road in the town. Its transformation into a state grammar school followed the Education Act of 1918: Warwickshire County Council took over the school in 1919, and it was renamed Rugby High School, becoming a fully state-funded selective school for girls. A new upper-school building on Clifton Road, with its foundation stone laid in October 1924, opened in 1927, before the school outgrew that site and relocated to its present home on Longrood Road in Bilton in September 1960 — the site the school still occupies today.

Rugby High School has been girls-only at Year 7 to Year 11 throughout its history, but its sixth form has been co-educational since 2018, when the school began admitting boys from age 16. The school’s motto, “She Sets Heights In Her Heart”, reflects its academic and pastoral ambitions, and Rugby High is the only state school in Warwickshire to offer Latin as a curriculum subject. Its house system, introduced in the early 2000s, is named after four notable women — author Onjali Raúf, Olympic athlete Dame Kelly Holmes, nurse and humanitarian Mary Seacone, and Paralympic musician Evelyn Glennie — reinforcing the school’s emphasis on ambitious female role models. Notable alumnae include former Oxfam GB Chief Executive Barbara Stocking and former Redditch MP Karen Lumley.

The school describes itself in its own admissions policy as one of three academically selective schools in Rugby: alongside Rugby High School itself, the town has Lawrence Sheriff School (a boys’ grammar school with academy status) and Ashlawn School (a mixed bilateral academy that offers both selective and non-selective places). This trio of selective options within a single town is unusual outside the traditional grammar counties, and it means many Rugby families weigh up Rugby High School, Lawrence Sheriff School and Ashlawn’s selective stream side by side when deciding where to apply.

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

Yes — and this is one of the most important facts for Rugby families to understand before applying. Rugby High School does not set its own separate entrance exam. Instead, it sits within the Warwickshire arm of the West Midlands Grammar Schools partnership, a wider network that also includes eight grammar schools in Birmingham and five schools across Shropshire, Wolverhampton and Walsall (including Queen Mary’s High School, Walsall and Newport Girls’ High School). Within the Warwickshire arm, Rugby High School shares exactly the same GL Assessment paper, on exactly the same test dates, as Lawrence Sheriff School — the boys’ grammar school on the other side of Rugby — and Warwickshire’s four other grammar schools, including Ashlawn School’s selective stream, Alcester Grammar School, King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, and Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar School for Girls.

Because the test is identical across the whole consortium, a family does not need to register separately for each school or sit different papers on different weekends: a single registration and a single sitting produces one standardised score, which the family can then use to apply to Rugby High School and any other Warwickshire consortium school listed on their Common Application Form. Parents can also request that their child’s score be shared with the Birmingham grammar schools or the Shropshire/Wolverhampton/Walsall grammar schools if they are considering options in those areas too — though each regional arm sets its own Automatic Qualifying Score and applies its own separate oversubscription criteria, so a strong Warwickshire score does not automatically guarantee a place at a Birmingham or Black Country school.

For families specifically choosing between Rugby’s two grammar schools, the practical implication is straightforward: a daughter registering for Rugby High School and a son registering for Lawrence Sheriff School will sit the same test format on the same dates, so families with children of both sexes can prepare them together using identical practice materials. For the boys’ equivalent, see our companion Lawrence Sheriff School 11+ guide. For the wider regional picture, see our guide to the King Edward VI schools in Birmingham and our guide to consortium schools and shared papers more generally.

What Does the Rugby High School 11+ Test Cover?

The West Midlands Grammar Schools entrance test used for Rugby High School is set and standardised by GL Assessment on behalf of Warwickshire County Council’s Admissions Service. It is sat as two papers, each lasting approximately 60 minutes (including around 15 minutes of practice questions and administration), divided into smaller, individually timed sections.

The test covers three skill areas with fixed weightings: English and Verbal Reasoning (50%), testing comprehension of unseen text alongside verbal reasoning question types such as codes, analogies and word relationships; Non-Verbal Reasoning (25%), testing the ability to spot patterns and rules in abstract shapes and sequences; and Mathematics (25%), covering Key Stage 2 arithmetic, reasoning and problem-solving. Because English and Verbal Reasoning together make up half the available marks, strong comprehension technique and a wide vocabulary carry particular weight in the final standardised score.

All raw scores are age-standardised before being combined into a final total, so that a girl born in the summer is not disadvantaged relative to one born in the autumn who has had almost a year more schooling. There is no fixed pass mark published in advance. Instead, the Headteacher sets an Automatic Qualifying Score (AQS) each year after consulting the Eastern Area Committee of Reference — a panel of local Headteachers — taking into account the strength of that year’s applicant cohort and the number of places available, so that everyone who reaches the AQS can be expected to thrive in a grammar school environment. Reaching the AQS makes a girl eligible for consideration, but as with all Warwickshire consortium schools, qualifying is a necessary but not sufficient condition: the school’s oversubscription criteria then decide who is actually offered one of the 150 places.

What Are the Key 2026 Dates for Rugby High School Admissions?

For girls seeking September 2027 entry to Year 7 at Rugby High School, the following 2026 timetable applies:

Registering for the entrance test is a separate step from applying for a school place. Families must register for the test with Warwickshire Admissions by the 30 June 2026 deadline, and must also separately submit a Common Application Form to their home local authority listing all preferred schools by 31 October 2026. Missing the CAF deadline means a child will not be considered through the coordinated admissions process in the first round of offers, even if she sat and qualified in the 11+ test. Official registration and admissions arrangements are published on the Rugby High School admissions page and on Warwickshire County Council’s admissions pages. For the national context, see our 11+ exam dates 2025–2026 guide.

How Does the Catchment and Oversubscription Criteria Work at Rugby High School?

Rugby High School defines two catchment areas that shape its oversubscription criteria. The Eastern Area of Warwickshire covers Rugby itself plus 37 named parishes and localities, including Dunchurch, Cawston, Long Lawford, Bilton, Brinklow, Brandon, Bretford and Wolston — effectively the combined catchment of Bilton, Ashlawn and Avon Valley Schools. The Priority Circle is a wider zone defined as a 10.004-mile radius centred on the Rugby Water Tower, which fully encloses the Eastern Area.

With 150 Year 7 places and typically far more qualifying applicants, Rugby High School allocates places using ten priority criteria, applied strictly in order to girls who have already reached the Automatic Qualifying Score (or, in some cases, scores just below it):

1. Looked-after children and previously looked-after children reaching the AQS, or within 20 marks of it, or the minimum waiting-list standard
2. Up to 30 places for children eligible for the Pupil Premium, living in the Eastern Area or Priority Circle
3. Up to 5 places for children eligible for the Service Premium, living in the Eastern Area or Priority Circle
4. Children of staff employed at the school for two or more years, reaching the AQS
5. Girls living in the Eastern Area of Warwickshire reaching the AQS
6. Girls living in the Priority Circle reaching the AQS
7. Remaining Pupil Premium places (from the 30-place allocation) for those living outside the catchment areas
8. Remaining Service Premium places (from the 5-place allocation) for those living outside the catchment areas
9. All other girls outside the catchment areas reaching the AQS
10. Girls reaching only the minimum academic standard for a place on the waiting list, inside or outside the catchment areas

Within each of these criteria, priority is first given to the girl with the highest test score; where scores are tied, priority goes to Pupil Premium/Service Premium eligibility; and where a tie still remains, places are decided by straight-line distance from home to school, measured from the Ordnance Survey address point of the family home to the centroid of the school’s Headteacher’s Office doorway. If distance still cannot separate two applicants for the final place, an independent computerised random allocation is used, witnessed by a member of Warwickshire’s Legal Services team. Because the school does not give any special consideration for siblings in its oversubscription criteria, having an older sister already at Rugby High School does not, by itself, improve a younger sibling’s chances of a place.

What Is Rugby High School’s Academic Record and Sixth Form Like?

Rugby High School was inspected by Ofsted on 15 November 2022 and rated Good overall, with Behaviour and Attitudes singled out for an Outstanding judgement, alongside Good ratings for Quality of Education, Personal Development, Leadership and Management, and Sixth Form Provision. Academically, the school performs well above local and national averages for a selective school: in its most recent published GCSE results, 99.2% of grades reached grade 5 or above in English and maths, the school’s Attainment 8 score stood at 74.7, and 72% of all GCSE grades awarded were at grade 7 or above. At A-Level, the average grade achieved was a B, with several students achieving at least three A* grades, and over 87% of leavers progressing into further education, employment or training.

Since 2018, Rugby High School’s previously girls-only sixth form has admitted boys as well as girls, giving Year 12 and 13 students at Rugby High a genuinely co-educational upper-school experience while Years 7 to 11 remain a single-sex girls’ environment, taught in classes of around 120 girls per year group across a four-form intake. Sixth-form entry has its own Published Admission Number of 90 places and its own separate application process, distinct from the Year 7 entrance test route. Beyond the classroom, the school is known locally for a broad co-curricular offer spanning sport, music and drama, and for being the only state school in Warwickshire to teach Latin, consistent with its long-standing academic ambition.

How Should My Child Prepare for the 11+ at Rugby High School?

Preparation for Rugby High School should focus on the three weighted components of the West Midlands Grammar Schools test: English and Verbal Reasoning, Mathematics, and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Because English and Verbal Reasoning together carry 50% of the available marks, this is the area most families should prioritise first — wide reading across fiction and non-fiction builds the vocabulary needed for comprehension and word-relationship questions, while structured practice of Verbal Reasoning question types (codes, analogies, sequences) builds speed and confidence under timed conditions.

Mathematics, worth 25% of the marks, draws on Key Stage 2 arithmetic, reasoning and problem-solving, but is tested at pace and often includes questions styled slightly differently from a girl’s usual classroom maths, so timed practice papers are important preparation even for confident mathematicians. Non-Verbal Reasoning, the remaining 25%, is highly learnable but unfamiliar to most children at first, since it draws on no academic subject knowledge at all; with targeted, repeated practice on each question type — series, matrices, analogies and figure classification — most girls improve substantially over a preparation period of several months.

Given how competitive the 150 places at Rugby High School typically are once the priority catchment criteria are applied, a personalised one-to-one approach is particularly valuable: it lets a tutor identify precisely which of the three test areas, and which specific question types within them, is costing a girl the most marks, and design a programme that closes those gaps directly rather than relying on generic practice alone. At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors are experienced with the West Midlands Grammar Schools test format and support families across Rugby, Dunchurch, Coventry and the wider Warwickshire area, including through online tuition. For a structured run-up to test day, see our 11+ six-month countdown guide, and for a wider comparison of grammar school performance nationally, see our 2026 grammar school league tables.