11+ Tuition in Guildford: Two Test Formats Across Three Schools for 2027 Entry

Royal Grammar School Guildford, Guildford High School and Tormead School run Guildford's 11+ routes, because Surrey has no state grammar school and the nearest selective ones, in Kingston, sit roughly 17 miles away. For September 2027 entry, Royal Grammar School Guildford and Tormead both sit the ISEB Common Pre-Test; Guildford High School sets its own assessment instead. Registration deadlines start closing from 15 October 2026.

Several search results advertise CEM- or GL-branded courses for “Grammar Schools in Guildford” that do not exist. We build programmes around the assessments the three real schools actually set.

Why Guildford Has No Grammar-School Route of Its Own

Surrey County Council’s own school admissions pages set out the ordinary comprehensive process for primary, secondary and in-year applications, and nowhere describe a selective test or a grammar-school pathway of their own — a contrast worth noticing next to a neighbouring authority such as Kent, whose council runs the well-known Kent Test. That absence is consistent with what the Department for Education’s own school register records for the school with “Grammar” in its name here: Royal Grammar School Guildford is classified in the Get Information about Schools database as an “Other independent school,” not a local-authority-maintained one, even though its admissions-policy field reads “Selective.” The word in a school’s name does not settle the question; the register does.

The two schools most families mean when they ask about “the grammar schools near Guildford” are Tiffin School and Tiffin Girls’ School, both in Kingston upon Thames. Tiffin School’s own admissions policy for 2027 entry defines a Priority Area of everyone living less than 10km from the school in a straight line, and states plainly that “since September 2019, when a 10 km Priority Area was introduced, places have only been offered to those who live within 10 km of Tiffin School.” Using the postcodes each school publishes and coordinates from postcodes.io, we calculate a straight-line distance of roughly 17 miles (27km) between central Guildford and Tiffin School — our own approximation, not the school’s official measurement, and not a verdict on any individual family’s position. It is, however, nearly three times the 10km boundary the school itself applies.

Tiffin Girls’ School runs a different mechanism again. Rather than a radius, its Designated Area is a fixed list of postal districts — covering Kingston, Twickenham, parts of Richmond, south-west London and single districts around Acton and Morden — and its own Determined Admissions Arrangements state that “since the Designated Area was first introduced in September 2014, all Year 7 places have been offered to girls living within that area of specific postal districts.” No Guildford postal district (GU) appears on that list. For families still weighing whether the journey to Kingston is worth it, our separate pages on Tiffin School and Tiffin Girls’ School cover each school’s own test in full.

The Three Schools That Actually Run an 11+ Here, and the Tests They Set

Royal Grammar School Guildford assesses with the online ISEB Common Pre-Test during the first term of Year 6 — English, Mathematics, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning, sat in a multiple-choice format over roughly two and a quarter hours — followed by a confidential headteacher reference, an individual interview, a short creative-writing task and a teamwork exercise. The school’s own senior admissions page also states that girls join the RGS in Year 12 from September 2027, with the first Year 7 intake of girls following a year later, in September 2028 — the 11+ route this page covers remains a boys’ process for the immediate cycle. Our separate guide to Royal Grammar School Guildford’s 11+ process covers the school’s scholarships and interview preparation in more depth.

Guildford High School sits its own online assessment for every 11+ applicant, followed by a separate interview day — a different format from RGS Guildford’s. Tormead School’s own key dates for September 2027 entry list an “11+ ISEB Entrance Assessments” event on Friday 27 November 2026, the same ISEB Common Pre-Test format the school names directly elsewhere on its admissions page, with its own interview to follow on Tuesday 5 January 2027. Three schools, three separate application processes — but two of them now share the same underlying test.

The 2027-Entry Registration Deadlines, in the Order They Close

Read down the deadlines and the order is not the order the schools are usually listed in. Royal Grammar School Guildford closes first, nearly three weeks before Guildford High School. Each row below is sourced to that school’s own key-dates page, linked in the sections above.

Parents often think of the 11+ as beginning with the test. In Guildford it begins with the registration form, and those deadlines fall earlier than most families expect. Royal Grammar School Guildford’s registration closes on 15 October 2026, Tormead’s on 31 October 2026, and Guildford High School’s on 1 November 2026 — all in the autumn term of Year 6, weeks before any assessment day. A family that starts thinking seriously about the 11+ over the Christmas holiday has already missed the registration window for every school on this page.

What Some 11+ Providers Get Wrong About “Grammar Schools Near Guildford”

Several of the pages currently ranking for “11+ tuition Guildford” sell CEM- or GL-branded preparation aimed at schools that do not exist as grammar schools, or direct families toward a grammar-school consortium without checking the distance it poses. One such page advises Guildford families to target Sutton’s grammar schools instead of Kingston’s. Using the same postcode method as above, Sutton is roughly 18 miles (29km) from central Guildford in a straight line — further than Tiffin School in Kingston, which is itself already well outside a realistic catchment. A Guildford family is not closer to a state grammar route by looking east instead of north; both sit well beyond any catchment either school publishes.

What This Means for a Guildford 11+ Programme

A programme built around this landscape looks different from a generic 11+ course. The shared spine across two of Guildford’s three schools is the ISEB Common Pre-Test’s four components — English, Mathematics, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning — so a family targeting any combination of Royal Grammar School Guildford and Tormead is training largely the same skills, at least until each school’s own interview, and the RGS’s creative-writing task, take over closer to each date. Guildford High School’s own online assessment sits alongside that shared spine as a fourth, separate format. We build one programme around the shared ground first, then split into school-specific interview and writing preparation once a family’s shortlist is set.

Every programme starts with a baseline assessment rather than a syllabus: where a child’s maths sits against the Year 5 curriculum, how accurately they read and answer under time, and how they behave when a question defeats them — the best single predictor of how a child copes with a test whose exact content they cannot see in advance. Most Guildford families we work with begin the shared groundwork in Year 4 or early Year 5, with format-specific work starting six to eight weeks before each school’s own assessment date. Mock papers are run in the actual format — on screen for the ISEB Common Pre-Test and Guildford High School’s assessment — so a child is not meeting the medium for the first time on the day itself, and families receive written feedback after each mock so the decision about which school stays realistic is made on evidence rather than on hope.

Families whose children are past this stage, or who need GCSE, A-level or wider subject support alongside 11+ preparation, should start with our main Guildford tuition page, which covers the town’s schools and exam boards beyond the 11+ route this page is about.

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