Private Tuition in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a home county north of London with no single 11+ system across its 144 secondary schools: the county council names specific schools that test academic ability or aptitude for Year 7 entry, set school by school rather than countywide. Seven of those, including both Watford Grammar schools, sit inside the South West Herts Consortium, covering only the south-west of the county by its description. Leading Tuition tutors families across Hertfordshire from primary through GCSE, A-level and sixth-form entry.

Is There a Hertfordshire-Wide 11+? What the County Council Actually Says

Ask Hertfordshire County Council whether the county runs an 11+ system and its own website gives a careful answer. The council's guidance on types of school does not use the word "grammar" at all. It describes two governance categories, maintained schools and academies, and adds the same qualification to both: some are "partially selective" — they offer places based on the child's academic ability or aptitude. Nothing in that guidance implies a shared exam, a shared provider or a shared calendar across the county. Selection is a property of the individual admission authority, decided school by school.

That distinction matters for how a family plans. A parent moving into Hertfordshire from a county with one grammar-school test cannot transfer that assumption here. There is no single Hertfordshire form to register on, no single date to diarise, and no single pass mark to ask about. Each partially selective school runs its own admission arrangements, publishes its own testing timetable, and sets its own criteria for how many places the test actually decides.

The deadline that does apply to every Hertfordshire family, selective or not, is the ordinary secondary transfer timetable the council runs county-wide: for September 2027 entry, on-time applications must be submitted by 31 October 2026, whichever schools a family is naming as preferences.

We cover the school-by-school detail — which schools test, what they test, and when — on our Hertfordshire 11+ guide. This page sets out the shape of the county, then routes you to it and to the individual school pages below.

Where Selection Happens, and Where It Doesn't: A County Map

Hertfordshire County Council publishes the actual list of schools whose admission arrangements include an academic ability or aptitude test, on its aptitude or ability testing page. It splits into two groups, and the difference between them is the clearest way to see that the county has no single system.

Schools That Set Their Own Test

The council names these schools as running the test themselves, spread across the county rather than concentrated in one area: Dame Alice Owen's, The Broxbourne School, The Bishop's Stortford High School, Chancellor's School, Goffs Academy, The Hertfordshire & Essex High School, Hockerill Anglo-European College, The John Warner School, The Knights Templar School, Monk's Walk School, Mount Grace School, Onslow St Audrey's School, Simon Balle School and The Stanborough School. Each sets its own timetable and its own criteria; a family should read that school's own admissions page before assuming anything carries over from a neighbouring school.

The South West Herts Consortium

The other group tests jointly, through a single body that describes itself, on its own website, as "a group of seven partially selective schools in Southwest Hertfordshire": Croxley Danes School (music only), Parmiter's School, Queens' School, Rickmansworth School, St Clement Danes School, Watford Grammar School for Boys and Watford Grammar School for Girls. That description matters: the Consortium is explicit that its coverage is south-west Hertfordshire, not the whole county, so families in St Albans, Bishop's Stortford, Hertford or Stevenage are outside it entirely. The Consortium's own admissions detail, including the place split between academic and community routes at each school, is set out on our Watford tuition page and on our Watford Grammar Schools 11+ guide, which we do not repeat here.

The Bishop's Stortford High School, in the individually-testing group above, is a different school from the independent Bishop's Stortford College covered in the next section — the two sit a short distance apart in the same town and are easy to conflate by name alone.

Dame Alice Owen's, the Watford Grammar Schools and the County's Other Selective Routes

Dame Alice Owen's School in Potters Bar runs a Governors' Entrance Examination in two stages. Part I is a 50-minute, 80-question verbal reasoning paper provided by GL Assessment; candidates who rank inside the school's cut-off then sit Part II, a one-hour English paper with an extended writing piece and a one-hour mathematics paper, both set internally. For September 2027 entry, Part I falls on 1 September 2026 and Part II on 26 September 2026, both in the first weeks of Year 6. Registration itself opens earlier, in the spring before that, on the school's own key dates page. Our Dame Alice Owen's 11+ guide covers the local priority areas, the shortlisting cut-off and full preparation detail, and you can book a free consultation to talk through which of the county's routes fits your child.

Watford Grammar School for Boys and Watford Grammar School for Girls sit inside the South West Herts Consortium described above, and both are partially selective rather than fully selective: a minority of places at each school are awarded on academic or musical aptitude, and the rest are allocated through each school's own published priority order, which runs from looked-after children through a small near-distance allowance, staff children and siblings before distance decides what remains — read the schools' own Watford Boys admissions policy and Watford Girls admissions policy for the full order and every place number. The academic and community place split, the geographic sub-areas, and the full registration and testing calendar are set out on our Watford tuition page and our Watford Grammar Schools 11+ guide.

The remaining schools named in the county map above each publish their own admissions page, and a family should start there rather than with a general 11+ guide: the paper a child sits for The John Warner School in Hoddesdon has no reason to resemble the paper set by Simon Balle School in Hertford, and preparation built for one does not automatically transfer to the other.

Independent Schools Running Their Own Entry Across the County

Hertfordshire's independent sector runs a parallel set of entry routes, entirely separate from the council's admissions timetable above. St Albans School and St Albans High School for Girls both set their own entrance assessments; Bishop's Stortford College, on the county's eastern edge, sets a single assessment day rather than the two-stage pattern used at Dame Alice Owen's; and Haberdashers' Boys' School and Haberdashers' Girls' School, on a shared campus in Elstree, each run their own process. Each of these five independent schools — St Albans School, St Albans High School for Girls, Bishop's Stortford College, Haberdashers' Boys' School and Haberdashers' Girls' School — was checked open, and not closed under any previous name, against the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register at the time of writing, as were Dame Alice Owen's School and both Watford Grammar schools named above.

Each of these schools names its own test and its own dates on its own admissions page, and those details belong there rather than on a county-wide summary. Read our dedicated guides for the specifics: St Albans High School for Girls 11+, Bishop's Stortford College 11+, Haberdashers' Boys' School 11+ and Haberdashers' Girls' School 11+.

The pattern across all of these routes is the same: read the admission authority's own published arrangements before assuming anything about format, timing or catchment, because Hertfordshire's schools do not share a single playbook. The table below summarises how the two state-selective groups differ.

GCSE and Sixth-Form Across Hertfordshire's 144 Secondary Schools

Selection is only ever one route into secondary school; most Hertfordshire children join a non-selective school, and every family eventually reaches GCSE, sixth form or a further education college regardless of which Year 7 route they took. The Department for Education's Compare School and College Performance service lists 144 secondary schools, 481 primary schools and 124 providers of 16-to-18 education across the county — a figure that itself makes the point: no single narrative fits a county this size, and Hertfordshire County Council does not attempt one. Its own exams and school performance page tells parents to search the school directory for "an individual school's current performance table" rather than publishing a county-wide GCSE figure.

One measure is currently absent everywhere, not only in Hertfordshire: DfE states on its own performance service that it cannot calculate Progress 8 scores for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 academic years, because the Key Stage 2 baseline needed to compute it is unavailable following COVID-19 disruption to primary assessment. A results table or a league-table article citing a current Hertfordshire school's Progress 8 score is citing a figure DfE itself says it cannot currently produce.

Whatever route a Hertfordshire family takes into Year 7, our tutors work with students at every stage that follows: GCSE tuition, A-level tuition and primary tuition before that.

Where Families in Hertfordshire Already Work With Us

Watford is the one Hertfordshire town with its own dedicated tuition hub on this site. Our Watford tuition page already carries the South West Herts Consortium's full place-split tables, the geographic sub-areas, and the year-by-year key dates for Watford Grammar School for Boys, Watford Grammar School for Girls and Dame Alice Owen's — we route to it rather than reproducing those tables here.

Beyond Watford, our school-specific pages cover the county's 11+ routes in full, plus Dame Alice Owen's, the Watford Grammar Schools, St Albans High School for Girls, Bishop's Stortford College, Haberdashers' Boys' and Haberdashers' Girls'. Our blog also carries year-specific guides to the Watford Grammar Schools and to Dame Alice Owen's admissions.

Our Expert Tutors Across Hertfordshire

Our expert Hertfordshire tutors help students from primary age through to sixth form, in person across the county and online nationwide. For families preparing for a selective test, a programme is built around the specific paper a child is actually sitting: the format the South West Herts Consortium sets is not the same preparation as Dame Alice Owen's own three-paper examination, and neither resembles the bespoke paper an independent school such as St Albans School or Bishop's Stortford College sets for itself.

GCSE and A-level students work with a tutor who knows their exam board's specification and command words, not a generic syllabus. Primary-age students build the reading, writing and reasoning foundations that every route above eventually depends on, whichever school a family is aiming for. Sessions run online or in person, and a programme is adjusted as a student's own school reports and mock results come in.

Our expert Hertfordshire GCSE and A-level tutors build every programme around a student's own school, exam board and starting point — never a generic Hertfordshire-wide syllabus, because the county does not have one. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.

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