11+ Tuition in Wimbledon: Merton Has No Grammar School

Leading Tuition is a UK tutoring service preparing Wimbledon children for 11+ entry across five assessments, none of them run by Merton, which has no selective state school of its own. Sutton's SET and both Tiffin schools sit outside the borough and closed registration by 2 September 2026; King's College School Wimbledon and Wimbledon High School are independent schools inside it, open until 2 and 3 November 2026. We build one plan around whichever combination a family is pursuing.

Why a Wimbledon Family Faces Five Admissions Systems, Not One

Families in Reading or Kent weigh a handful of tests inside their own town. A family in Wimbledon weighs five, and none of them is set by Merton. Two are state grammar schools reached by travelling into a neighbouring borough — Sutton to the south-east, Kingston to the west — and two are independent schools that happen to sit inside Wimbledon's own postcode. A fifth consideration, easy to miss, is that the two directions work completely differently: Sutton treats a Wimbledon address as out-of-borough, ranked behind Sutton's own residents, while one of the two Kingston schools treats a large stretch of Wimbledon as inside its own defined area. Getting that distinction right, at source, changes which route is worth a family's time.

That geography is the first thing to establish, because a programme built around the wrong assumption wastes months. The independent routes are more straightforward: King's College School Wimbledon and Wimbledon High School are inside the borough, run their own tests, and treat every applicant the same way regardless of address.

Merton's Own Words: No Selective State School

Merton Council could not be plainer about this. Its own guidance for families choosing a secondary school states: "Merton schools do not have selection tests as our schools have a fully comprehensive system." The same page goes on to advise families considering a school in a neighbouring borough to "speak to your child's primary school Headteacher to find out the likelihood of your child passing the entrance test" — because, as the council notes, selective schools test before Merton's own application deadline closes, so a family can often know the result before naming their preferences.

This is not a gap in provision Merton is trying to fill; it is a settled position, and Merton's own coordinated admissions criteria for its comprehensive schools — Rutlish, Ricards Lodge, Raynes Park and the borough's other secondaries — confirm it. Those criteria run on looked-after status, medical or social need, siblings, staff children and straight-line distance. There is no test, no selective band, and no academic threshold anywhere in them. A family that wants a selective place for a child has to look past the borough boundary, in one of two directions, or to one of the two independent schools already inside it.

The Kingston Route: Tiffin School and Tiffin Girls' School

This is the direction most Wimbledon 11+ guides get least right, because the two Tiffin schools in Kingston upon Thames define eligibility in two different ways, and neither uses a name any Wimbledon parent would guess from the school's own site alone.

The Tiffin Girls' School defines its catchment by postcode, not proximity, and Wimbledon is inside it. Its determined admissions arrangements for entry in September 2027 list the postal districts making up its Designated Area, and the list includes SW19 and SW20 — Wimbledon's own postcodes — alongside SM4, which covers Morden in the same borough. The school's own advice is blunt about what that means in practice: "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." Living inside the Designated Area has been a precondition of every offer for over a decade — it is not, on its own, a guarantee for any individual child, and the school still ranks applicants by test score within it.

Tiffin School, the boys' school, works differently again. Rather than naming postcodes, its statutory admissions policy defines a Priority Area by straight-line distance: "All applicants who live less than 10 km from Tiffin School live in the Priority Area," a threshold introduced in September 2019, since which "places have only been offered to those who live within 10 km of Tiffin School." Wimbledon postcodes sit well inside that boundary. Using each postcode's published coordinates, our own straight-line calculation between Tiffin School and four sample Wimbledon addresses returns distances of roughly 4.9 to 7.1 kilometres — comfortably under 10 km, though this is our own approximation from public postcode data, not the school's precise address-point measurement, and it does not tell any individual family whether their own address qualifies. That has to be checked against the school's own system, address by address.

Both Tiffin schools ran a two-stage test for September 2027 entry — a Stage One sift in early October 2026, then a Stage Two for those invited in mid-to-late November — and both closed registration for this cohort in the first days of September 2026: Tiffin Girls' at 12 noon on Tuesday 1 September 2026, and Tiffin School's statutory policy at 12 noon on Wednesday 2 September 2026. Tiffin School's own Year 7 Admissions page is not internally consistent about that second date — it states the deadline as "Tuesday 1st September 2026" in one place and "2nd September 2026" in its own key-dates table a few paragraphs later, one day apart in the same document. Where a school's own statutory policy and its marketing page disagree, the policy is the document that governs, which is why we have used 2 September 2026 above. For a family reading this after that date, for September 2027 entry, that registration window has already closed at both schools; the process to watch now is Stage Two and, for those not offered a place, the local authority waiting list. A family with a younger child, thinking ahead to a later entry year, should expect a similar shape and a similar early-September deadline, checked directly against the school's site for that year rather than assumed from this one.

Our page on the Kingston 11+ process sets out the full Stage One and Stage Two structure, the exact dates each school worked to this cycle, and the aptitude routes Tiffin School now runs alongside its academic test — it is the place to read the mechanics in full; this page exists to answer the question that page does not: where Wimbledon itself stands against each school's own catchment definition.

The Sutton Route, in Brief

Sutton runs the other state-selective option, and the geography there points the opposite way. Sutton's Selective Eligibility Test, the shared entrance route into six schools in the borough, registered candidates from 1 May 2026 until midnight on Friday 31 July 2026, with the test itself sat on 15 September 2026. A Wimbledon address is outside the London Borough of Sutton, so — unlike the Tiffin Girls' position above — a Wimbledon family registers as an out-of-borough candidate and is ranked behind Sutton residents once the required score is met. Our Wimbledon hub already sets out that catchment position, the school list, and the journey time in detail, and our Sutton 11+ guide covers the SET's format and the six schools' own admissions criteria; we link to both rather than repeat them here.

The Two Independent Schools Inside Wimbledon

Unlike the two grammar routes, King's College School Wimbledon and Wimbledon High School sit inside the borough and apply their own tests to every candidate the same way, wherever they live.

King's College School Wimbledon's registration for September 2027 entry closes on Monday 2 November 2026 at 12 noon. The entrance tests — English, Mathematics and Verbal Reasoning — are set for Saturday 5 December 2026, with interviews for those selected on 14, 15 and 16 January 2027 and results emailed on 12 February 2027. The school has also confirmed a longer-term change worth noting even though it does not touch this cohort: King's is extending co-education to 11+ entry from September 2033, when girls will be admitted to Year 7 alongside boys for the first time. That is six cohorts away from the 2027 intake this page covers, and does not change anything for a family applying now.

Wimbledon High School, part of the Girls' Day School Trust, runs a genuinely different kind of test: no English or maths paper at 11+, only Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning as its first stage, sat at the school on 17 and 18 November 2026, followed by an invitation-only Creative Assessment on 8 January 2027. Applications for September 2027 entry opened on 24 April 2026 and close on Tuesday 3 November 2026. Both application windows, King's and Wimbledon High, remain open at the time this page was researched — the last two live registration routes for this cohort inside Wimbledon itself.

Both schools already have their own dedicated pages on this site — King's College School Wimbledon 11+ preparation and Wimbledon High School 11+ preparation — covering the exam format, what each school looks for, and how we prepare a child for it in more depth than belongs on this page.

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One Registration Calendar for September 2027 Entry

Read across all five routes together, the shape of the cycle is that the state-selective doors close first and quietly, months before most families start thinking about the 11+ in earnest, while the two independent schools inside Wimbledon stay open into November. A family that starts looking in October, having missed the Tiffin and Sutton windows without realising it, still has two genuine local options in front of them — but only if they know it.

What We Will Not Tell You

That living inside Tiffin Girls' Designated Area is enough on its own. It has been a precondition of every offer since 2014 — every single Year 7 place has gone to a girl living inside those postal districts — but the school still ranks every applicant by test score within that area, and being inside it is not a guarantee for any individual child.

That our own postcode calculation is a substitute for checking an actual address. We can say Wimbledon sits well inside Tiffin School's 10 km Priority Area on the evidence available to us; we cannot and will not tell an individual family that their specific address is or is not eligible. That has to be confirmed against the school's own measurement.

A published pass mark for any of these five tests. None of the five schools publishes one, and a course that quotes you a number for Tiffin, Sutton, King's or Wimbledon High is quoting something none of them has said.

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