11+ Tuition in Harrow: 2027 Entry Across Two Schools Inside the Borough

Harrow is a London borough whose own 2027-28 admission-arrangements list names twelve secondary academies, none selective, so no 11+ family here is choosing a borough grammar school. Two independent schools inside Harrow set their own 11+ exam instead: John Lyon School, testing on 18 or 19 November 2026, and North London Collegiate School, testing on 3 December 2026. State grammar schools in neighbouring Barnet remain reachable, but only on each school's own determined terms.

That distinction matters because the borough is often discussed as though "grammar school" and "selective school" meant the same thing. They do not. A Harrow family choosing between these routes is choosing between two different admissions processes entirely: an independent school's own written papers, or a grammar school's oversubscription criteria applied to a family living outside its usual area. Preparation for one does not automatically prepare a child for the other.

Why Harrow Has No 11+ System of Its Own

The London Borough of Harrow publishes its own list of secondary schools for September 2027 entry, and none of them runs an academic entrance test. The council's School Admission Arrangements 2027-28 page names twelve academy, free and voluntary-aided secondary schools — Avanti House Secondary, Bentley Wood High, Canons High, Hatch End High, Harrow High, Nower Hill High, Park High, Pinner High, Rooks Heath, Salvatorian College, The Sacred Heart Language College and Welldon Park Academy — each admitted under a standard oversubscription policy built on need, siblings and distance rather than an aptitude test. Nothing on that list carries a selective admissions policy. A name containing "Grammar" proves nothing on its own elsewhere in the country — Royal Grammar School Guildford, for instance, is independent — but the more useful test holds here too: read what the admissions authority itself lists, and Harrow's own list has no entrance exam on it at all.

That single fact reframes the whole question. In a borough like Kent or Trafford, an 11+ page is mostly about one shared local exam. In Harrow, it is about two genuinely different routes that happen to share a search term: independent schools inside the borough that set their own paper, and grammar schools outside it that a family has to reach on that school's terms. Our overview of tuition across Harrow covers the wider GCSE and A-level picture for the borough; this page stays with the 11+ routes specifically.

The Two Schools Inside Harrow That Set Their Own 11+ Exam

Two schools physically inside the borough run a genuine 11+ entrance exam of their own. John Lyon School, on Harrow-on-the-Hill, and North London Collegiate School, in Canons Park — whose HA8 postcode places it inside Harrow's own local-authority boundary, not Barnet's, despite the Edgware address most families associate with it — are the two.

John Lyon School

John Lyon's own Year 7 (11+) admissions page sets out a three-part process for September 2027 entry: an English written examination (45 minutes), a Mathematics written examination (45 minutes), and a group activity and discussion that the school describes as neither academic nor a formal interview. Asked directly whether candidates are assessed in verbal and non-verbal skills, the school's own FAQ answers "No" — a genuinely different format from the reasoning-heavy papers most generic 11+ courses are built around. The deadline for 11+ applications is 4pm on 31 October 2026, the exam itself falls on 18 or 19 November 2026, and results are emailed in the second week of February 2027. A boy who is not offered a place at 11+ is explicitly invited by the school to try again at 13+.

John Lyon is also, on its own current site, fully co-educational — "proudly co-ed from 2 to 18", in the school's own words — a detail worth stating plainly because it has not always been described correctly online, including on some of our own pages, which we are correcting as we find them.

North London Collegiate School

North London Collegiate's own Year 7 admissions page confirms roughly 70 to 75 external places each September, alongside about 45 girls moving up from its own junior school. For September 2027 entry, registration opened 1 May 2026 and closes at 4pm on 13 November 2026, with the entrance exam on 3 December 2026. The school states plainly that its two papers — Maths and English, each an hour and fifteen minutes, sat on paper rather than on screen — carry no verbal or non-verbal reasoning component at all, and that the English paper includes creative writing alongside comprehension. Shortlisted candidates then attend a 30-minute interview that includes further verbal Maths and English questions. Our dedicated North London Collegiate School 11+ preparation page covers the exam and our own programme for it in full; this page stays with what places NLCS inside the Harrow story specifically.

Reaching Barnet's Grammar Schools From a Harrow Address

The two state grammar schools most often discussed by Harrow families sit not in Harrow but in the London Borough of Barnet, and each decides who can realistically attend on its own determined terms, never on a borough boundary. We set out full detail on both, and on Barnet's other selective schools, in our Barnet 11+ guide; here we cover only what changes the answer for a family living in Harrow.

Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet

Queen Elizabeth's School is address-blind by its own published rule. Its own admissions FAQ states plainly that "Queen Elizabeth's School has no catchment", and that distance is used only "in the event of two or more applicants scoring the same mark" — a tie-break, not a filter. The school's Published Admission Number is 180, and candidates need a combined score of 225 or higher to be considered eligible at all. Living in Harrow neither helps nor hinders an application here; the test result is what decides it, and Harrow families competing for those 180 places are competing against the whole pool the school draws from, wherever it lives. Our own estimate — calculated from postcode coordinates via postcodes.io and a driving route from OSRM, not a figure either school publishes — puts central Harrow roughly 10 miles and a 24-minute drive from the school gate.

The Henrietta Barnett School

The Henrietta Barnett School works differently, and its own Admissions Policy for Entry in 2027-2028 is explicit about it. The school has no catchment either, but its third oversubscription criterion — Criterion Three, "Distance from School" — gives priority to "candidates who currently live within 3 miles of the school at the point when they submit their application to the Local Authority in October", ranked ahead of the general rank-order criterion that follows it. Our own estimate, using the same postcode and routing method as above, puts central Harrow roughly 8 miles and a 21-minute drive from the school. We are not stating that a Harrow address sits inside or outside that 3-mile band — an individual address, not a borough, is what the criterion measures, and the school's own policy document is where to check one, not a page like this.

The school's Published Admission Number is 120, filled first by any Looked After or Previously Looked After candidates, then by those eligible for Pupil Premium funding, then by the distance criterion above, and only then by rank order among everyone else. Its two-round entrance test — Round One in verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and English on 2, 3 or 4 September 2026, and Round Two in English and Mathematics for the top 300 scorers in early October 2026 — is set and administered by the school itself, and a candidate sits it once only.

Not the Same Page: This Area and Harrow School

One further school carries the Harrow name and is easy to conflate with everything above: Harrow School, the independent boys' boarding school on Harrow-on-the-Hill. It is not part of the 11+ picture at all. Harrow School admits boys at 13+, into Year 9, through its own two-stage process — the ISEB Common Pre-Test followed by the school's own Harrow Test — and that process, its dates and its full detail belong to our dedicated Harrow School admissions guide, not to this page. If a search for "11+ in Harrow" has led you to material about Harrow School specifically, you are one link away from the borough-wide picture this page covers; follow the link above for the school itself, and check its own admissions page directly for the current key dates rather than relying on a date repeated at second hand.

A related route worth separating out for the same reason: families weighing a 13+ application inside the borough — to Harrow School, to John Lyon's own 13+ round, or elsewhere — are better served by our dedicated 13+ non-verbal reasoning tutors in Harrow page, which covers which of those schools actually test non-verbal reasoning at that stage and which do not. This page stays with 11+ entry only.

Registration Deadlines for September 2027 Entry, in One Place

Every route above runs on its own calendar, and the earliest deadline is not the one most families expect. Read down the table below, then follow the link in each row for the full process.

Notice how far apart the deadlines sit. Henrietta Barnett's own form closes in the July of Year 5, four months before John Lyon's, and John Lyon's closes nearly two weeks before North London Collegiate's. A family weighing more than one of these routes is not managing one deadline but three or four, each attached to a different document and a different school.

Where We Stop Short of Promising a Place

Whether your address clears Henrietta Barnett's three-mile band. That is a straight-line measurement from an Ordnance Survey address point, run by the London Borough of Barnet's own geographic information system, not by us — our 8-mile estimate above is a borough-centre approximation for context, not a substitute for checking a real address against Criterion Three.

A pass mark for any of these four schools. Queen Elizabeth's publishes an eligibility floor of 225, not a pass mark for admission; none of the other three publishes a mark at all. Anyone quoting a fixed number for John Lyon, North London Collegiate or Henrietta Barnett is quoting a figure the school itself does not.

That grammar-school preparation and independent-school preparation are the same course. Henrietta Barnett's Round One tests verbal and non-verbal reasoning; John Lyon and North London Collegiate test neither. A child prepared only for one format is not prepared for the other, whatever a generic "11+ course" promises.

We do publish two figures about our own work, and only two: we are rated 4.8 out of 5 from 58 reviews on Trustpilot, read on 7 September 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. We do not publish a pass rate for any individual school, for the reason given above — the honest denominator is never the same for two families.

Building One Plan From Four Different Formats

Our expert 11+ tutors work with Harrow families across all four routes above, and the starting point is always the same question: which of these papers is your child actually sitting? A girl preparing for Henrietta Barnett needs verbal and non-verbal reasoning built early, because Round One tests both in the first week of September. A boy preparing for John Lyon needs neither — his two papers are English and Maths only, plus a group activity that rewards genuine collaboration over rehearsed answers. A daughter sitting North London Collegiate needs comprehension and creative writing at pace, on paper, with no reasoning component to fall back on. Treating all four as one generic 11+ course wastes the exact weeks that should be spent on the paper a child will actually face.

We work with Harrow families in person and online, building each programme around the specific school and format above rather than a shared syllabus. A baseline assessment comes first, so a family knows where a child's maths, reading and reasoning genuinely sit before any programme begins — and so that a shortlist decision, where one is needed, is made on evidence rather than on hope. Families whose children need GCSE or A-level support instead should start with our main Harrow tuition page, which covers the wider borough picture.

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