Super-Selective Grammar Schools: London and Near-London Guide

“Super-selective” is a common description for a grammar school that allocates places in rank order of test score rather than by distance. Queen Elizabeth's School in Barnet is the clearest example among the eight schools below: its own FAQs say admission is based solely on entrance test results, and it states that it has no catchment, gives no priority to Pupil Premium candidates, siblings or aptitude, and uses distance only to break a tie between equal scores. Its published admission number is 180, and a combined score of 225 or higher meets the standard to be eligible to be considered.

What Makes a Grammar School Super-Selective?

The common description is mechanical, not reputational. An ordinary selective grammar school sets a qualifying standard and then allocates its places among the children who reach it, usually by distance. A school described as super-selective sets a qualifying standard and then allocates its places by score, so a child two miles away and a child twenty miles away are treated identically.

Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet states the position more plainly than any commentary could. Asked whether distance or catchment affects admission, it answers that the school has no catchment, and that where two or more applicants score the same mark the rank order is settled by straight-line distance from the child's home to the main school gate. Asked separately about Pupil Premium priority, a sibling policy and music, sport or drama aptitude tests, it gives the same answer to all three: no, admission is based solely on entrance test results.

That is how the school itself describes admission by score. The interesting part is that almost none of the others match it.

How Each London Super-Selective Actually Ranks Candidates

Set the published criteria side by side and the category dissolves into a spectrum. Of the eight schools below, one says that admission is based solely on entrance test results. The other seven each publish at least one criterion — distance, disadvantage, free school meals or aptitude — that moves a place away from pure rank order.

Three of those rows are worth reading twice.

Henrietta Barnett's admissions policy for September 2027 entry says that if it is oversubscribed, priority goes first to looked-after and previously looked-after children, then to Pupil Premium candidates, in both cases if ranked in the top 300 in Round One, and then to candidates living within three miles of the school who sat Round Two. A girl four miles out can out-score a girl two miles out and not be offered a place. That is a distance criterion, and it is not a tie-break.

Nonsuch splits its intake explicitly. Of 210 places, 85 go on entrance test score irrespective of home address, and up to 125 are linked to a catchment circle of 5.25 km from the school's front door. Whether a family should think of Nonsuch as super-selective depends entirely on which of those two pools they are competing in.

Wilson's reserves 14 places for boys eligible for free school meals, 9 for demonstrated aptitude in sport and 9 for music, out of an admission number of 186. Those are small numbers against the total, but the free-school-meals places are open only to eligible boys, and the sport and music places are ranked on separate aptitude tests rather than on the entrance tests.

Where Does a Lower Score Still Win a Place?

Two of the Sutton schools publish a concession that is worth a great deal to the families it applies to. Nonsuch High School for Girls reserves up to 35 places for children eligible for Pupil Premium, including looked-after and previously looked-after children, who reach the pass mark or whose score is up to 20% below it. The school's own worked example: if the SET pass mark were 200, an eligible child would need 160 or above to be invited to the second stage, and 64 or above there against a second-stage pass mark of 80. Wallington High School for Girls publishes the same concession on the same terms.

The concession is not uniform even within one consortium. Wallington County Grammar School reserves up to 25 Pupil Premium places but attaches no score concession at all: the candidate must still meet the combined qualifying standard. Sutton Grammar School reserves up to 10 places for Pupil Premium boys and 75 of its 150 places for boys living in named postcodes — SM1 to SM7, KT4, KT17, CR0 4 and CR4 — with the Pupil Premium places also limited to those postcodes, and it adjusts SET marks for a boy's age and income deprivation.

Four schools, one shared entrance test, three different treatments of the same eligibility.

When Are the 2027-Entry Tests?

The London super-selectives are not on a common timetable, and several of them test twice. A family applying across two or three of these schools is managing several separate sittings, in different formats, between 2 September and 7 November 2026.

The compression is real for 2027 entry. The season runs from Henrietta Barnett's First Round on 2 September to The Tiffin Girls' School's Stage Two on 7 November 2026, with the Sutton second stages on 26 September and 3 October and Henrietta Barnett's Second Round on Tuesday 6 October in between. A girl applying to Henrietta Barnett, Nonsuch and Tiffin Girls' can sit on up to six days in that span — Henrietta Barnett's two rounds, the Sutton test, Nonsuch's second stage and both Tiffin stages — and only the first of them is the one most preparation is aimed at. Our timetable of 11+ exam dates for the 2027-entry round sets these beside the other English grammar-school tests.

Registration for every one of these has closed for 2027 entry. Most closed in July; The Tiffin Girls' School was the last, at 12.00 noon on Tuesday 1 September 2026, and it accepts no late registrations. Its Stage One and Stage Two dates, with Tiffin School's, are set out on our Kingston 11+ page.

What Does the Score Actually Have to Clear?

An eligibility mark is a different thing from an offer threshold. Queen Elizabeth's Barnet shows the difference: a combined score of 225 or higher is deemed to have met the standard required by the governors, which makes a candidate eligible to be considered for admission. Eligibility is the condition for being considered, not an offer. With 180 places allocated in rank order of score, the number that decides the outcome is not the eligibility mark but the score of the 180th boy. The school's own FAQs say historical data of the lowest scores that have gained admission is on its website.

This is the practical difference between a super-selective and an ordinary grammar school, and it changes what preparation is aiming at. Where a school qualifies and then ranks by distance, the target is a threshold, and a mark above it is a mark wasted. Where the school ranks by score, reaching the threshold only makes a child eligible; after that there is a queue to climb, and every additional mark is doing work right up to the last one.

If you are not sure which of these schools rank on score alone for your child, book a free consultation and our specialist 11+ tutors will go through each school's criteria against your address and shortlist.

How Should Preparation Differ for a Super-Selective?

Three things follow from rank ordering, and none of them is about working harder.

The first is that accuracy matters more than coverage at the top of the range. Where places are ranked by score, each mark moves a child up or down the queue, and a mark lost to a careless error counts the same as a mark lost to unknown content. Timed practice with the errors analysed is worth more than another topic.

The second is that format varies more than families expect, and preparing for the wrong one is expensive. Queen Elizabeth's is two multiple-choice papers in English and Maths in a single session, with no reasoning at all. Henrietta Barnett's First Round is verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and English, and its Second Round is English and Mathematics. A child prepared on a reasoning diet for Queen Elizabeth's has prepared for a paper the school does not set.

The third is that the second stage deserves its own preparation. At Nonsuch and Wallington High School for Girls the second-stage tests are not multiple choice; at Henrietta Barnett the Second Round drops reasoning and adds Mathematics. Families who treat the first sitting as the finish line arrive at the second one under-prepared, 11 to 18 days later at Sutton and 32 to 34 days later at Henrietta Barnett, against a field that has already been narrowed to the strongest candidates.

Our QE Boys, Henrietta Barnett and Tiffin Girls preparation pages each work from that school's own published format.

What Happens Between the Tests and Offer Day?

Several dates fall after the sittings and before the local authorities make offers. Queen Elizabeth's gave 1 October 2026 as the provisional date for notifying parents of the results of its entrance examination, and invites boys who scored sufficiently highly to book a further tour. It tells families to submit the Common Application Form to their home local authority by that authority's published deadline.

• The Tiffin Girls' School notifies parents on or around Wednesday 14 October 2026 whether their child is invited to Stage Two, and gives Saturday 31 October 2026 as the deadline to complete the local authority application form.
• The Tiffin Girls' School lists the evening of Monday 1 March 2027 as the time offers are made by the local authority.
• The Sutton Selective Eligibility Test dates list an Aptitude Test Day on Saturday 10 October 2026 for Wilson's School only.
• Wilson's School emails the outcome of its second stage in October 2026.

Reviewed October 2026: dates, figures and rules checked against the eight schools' own admissions pages and determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, and the Sutton Selective Eligibility Test dates.

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