Sutton Grammar School for Boys 11+ Guide 2026

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Sutton Grammar School for Boys now offers 150 places in Year 7 — a genuine increase from the 135 places set for September 2025 entry, confirmed in the Trust's own determined admissions policies. Entry runs through the shared Sutton Selective Eligibility Test (SET) followed by a second-stage test that Sutton Grammar sits with only two other schools, Wallington County Grammar and Wilson's. This guide sets out the exact two-stage format, the postcode-based oversubscription criteria, the full 2027 entry timetable, and Sutton Grammar's 2025 GCSE, A-level and Ofsted results — including the documented PAN increase and its knock-on effect on open-postcode places that most 11+ admissions guides for this school have not caught up with.

How Many Places Does Sutton Grammar School for Boys Offer for 2027 Entry?

The Published Admissions Number (PAN) for Year 7 at Sutton Grammar School is 150, confirmed in the Sutton Grammar School Trust's determined admissions policies for both September 2026 entry and September 2027 entry. This is a real, dated change: the Trust's determined policy for September 2025 entry set the PAN at 135, meaning 15 additional places were added from the 2026 admissions cycle onwards. Boys with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) naming Sutton Grammar School and meeting the required standard are offered a place first, before the oversubscription criteria are applied to the remainder.

The extra 15 places did not go into either fixed-size priority category — the disadvantaged-places criterion has stayed at up to 10 places, and the specified-postcode criterion has stayed at 75 places, across the 2025, 2026 and 2027 policies. Instead, the increase flows entirely into the open, any-postcode rank-order category, which rises from roughly 50 places (135 minus 10 minus 75) under the 2025 policy to roughly 65 places (150 minus 10 minus 75) under the current 2026 and 2027 policies — a meaningful improvement in realistic chances for boys applying from outside the priority postcodes, and a detail that is easy to miss unless the three policy documents are read side by side.

What Format Is the Sutton Grammar School 11+ Exam?

Entry to Sutton Grammar School is decided across two separate tests, not one. Stage one is the Sutton Selective Eligibility Test (SET), the screening test shared by six Sutton schools — Sutton Grammar, Wilson's School, Wallington County Grammar School, Wallington High School for Girls, Nonsuch High School for Girls and Greenshaw High School's selective band. According to the school's own admissions FAQ, the SET comprises two multiple-choice papers, Mathematics and English, each taking roughly 40 to 50 minutes with a break between them — and, importantly, the SET does not include verbal or non-verbal reasoning, unlike some other regional 11+ tests. Each participating school sets its own SET pass mark after the papers are marked, so no fixed score can be quoted in advance of the sitting.

Boys whose SET results meet or exceed Sutton Grammar's own pass mark are invited to a second-stage test that is unique to just three of the six SET schools: Sutton Grammar, Wallington County Grammar and Wilson's. This second-stage test consists of a Mathematics paper and an English paper, each around 45 minutes to an hour, and — unlike the SET — is not multiple choice. Marks from both the SET and the second-stage test are adjusted for a boy's age and income deprivation score, using data from the government's Income Deprivation Affecting Children (aged 0-15) Index (IDACI), published in 2019. Results from the second-stage test are emailed to families before 31 October, ahead of the Common Application Form deadline. For the mechanics of the shared SET itself, including registration and scoring across all six schools, see our complete Sutton SET exam guide.

Does Sutton Grammar School Have a Catchment Area?

Sutton Grammar School does not use a fixed-radius catchment in the way some grammar schools do. Instead, after boys who are looked-after or previously looked-after children, and boys whose parent is a permanent member of staff, up to 10 places go to Pupil Premium-eligible boys living in one of the postcodes SM1-7, KT4, KT17, CR0 4-- or CR4, ranked by combined SET and second-stage score. A further 75 places then go, again by rank order, to any boy from those same postcodes. Only after those two categories are filled do the remaining places — roughly 65 under the current PAN of 150 — become available to boys from any postcode in the country, still ranked purely by combined score.

Where boys tie on rank order and admitting all of them would exceed the places available under a given criterion, Sutton Grammar breaks the tie by straight-line ("as the crow flies") distance from the boy's home address to the school's front door on Manor Lane, measured using a computerised Geographical Information System maintained by the London Borough of Sutton. Notably, the 2027-entry policy also updates the disadvantaged-places wording from the earlier "income based free school meals" language used in the 2025 and 2026 policies to "Pupil Premium Funding" — a technical but genuine change in how eligibility for those 10 places is assessed from the 2027 cycle.

Key Dates for September 2027 Entry at Sutton Grammar School

For children applying for a Year 7 place starting September 2027, Sutton Grammar School's admissions timetable runs from spring 2026 through to spring 2027. Missing the SET registration window or the Common Application Form deadline is one of the most common — and entirely avoidable — reasons families lose priority, so the dates below are worth calendaring as early as Year 5.

The Common Application Form is submitted through a family's home local authority — via the Pan London eAdmissions System for London boroughs and Surrey — rather than directly to Sutton Grammar School, and it is where families rank Sutton Grammar alongside any other preferences, including Wallington County Grammar and Wilson's. Because second-stage results arrive by email before 31 October, the same day as the CAF deadline, families effectively have their result in hand right up to the moment they finalise their ranking. The waiting list, held until 31 December in the year of admission, is reassessed every time a place becomes free, so an initial position is not necessarily final.

How Competitive Is Entry to Sutton Grammar School for Boys?

Sutton Grammar School is consistently oversubscribed. Meeting the required standard across the SET and second-stage test makes a boy eligible, but eligibility is not the same as a place: once the small looked-after-children and staff categories are filled, the 10 disadvantaged places and the 75 specified-postcode places are awarded strictly by combined rank order within their own postcodes, and only the remaining places — roughly 65 under the current PAN of 150 — are open to boys from any postcode nationally, again on rank order alone. Because Sutton Grammar sets its SET and second-stage pass marks only after each year's papers are marked, no fixed qualifying score can be quoted in advance; realistic competitiveness depends on where a boy's combined score ranks against that year's cohort, not against a published threshold.

Founded on 21 July 1899 and based on its current Manor Lane site since the main building opened in 1928, Sutton Grammar School converted to academy status in 2011 and has admitted girls into the Sixth Form since September 2017, while Years 7-11 remain boys-only. The school's motto, "Floreat Suttona" ("May Sutton flourish"), dates to its founding, and it operates a well-known Combined Cadet Force established in 1915. Sutton Grammar's academic reputation, combined with the newly widened 150-place PAN, keeps demand high from both inside and outside the specified postcodes every year.

What GCSE and A-Level Results and Ofsted Rating Does Sutton Grammar School Achieve?

Most 11+ guides for Sutton Grammar School stop at admissions mechanics — places, postcodes, dates and test format. Just as important for families weighing Sutton Grammar against Wallington and Wilson's is what happens after a boy is admitted. Sutton Grammar's most recently published results and inspection outcome give a detailed, dated picture.

In the 2025 published GCSE results, Sutton Grammar School recorded an Attainment 8 score of 80.3, with around 99% of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in both English and maths, and roughly 80% of all GCSE entries graded 7-9. The most recently published Progress 8 figure for the school stands at approximately +1.16, well above the national average of 0.0. At A-level in 2025, across 181 pupils and 22 subjects offered, the average point score was 47.57 (an average grade of A-), with the substantial majority of entries graded A*-B. Ofsted inspected Sutton Grammar School on 22 June 2022 (report published 21 September 2022) and rated the school Good overall, with Behaviour and Attitudes rated Outstanding and Quality of Education, Personal Development, Leadership and Management, and Sixth Form Provision all rated Good.

For families comparing Sutton Grammar against the other schools that share its second-stage test, our Wallington County Grammar School 11+ guide covers the sibling school in the same three-way second-stage group, and our Wilson's School 11+ guide covers the third. For the full Sutton consortium picture across all six schools sharing the SET, see our Sutton Grammar Schools 11+ hub, and for borough-wide preparation and local support beyond 11+, see our Sutton tuition page. For the school's own admissions documentation, the official Sutton Grammar School admissions page is the primary source for any figures in this guide.

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