Grammar schools: A parent's guide to selection, catchment and applying

Grammar schools are state-funded secondaries in England that select pupils by academic ability, through an entrance exam (the 11+) sat in Year 6. They're free to attend and make up a small slice of the state secondary sector: around 163 schools, out of roughly 3,400 state secondaries in England (per House of Commons Library briefing CBP 1398 and DfE schools data).

This guide covers what a grammar school is in practice, where they are, how selection works in practice once you factor in catchment and sibling priority, and what the application process looks like end to end, including the bit most guides skip: What happens if your child doesn't get in.

A grammar school is a state-funded secondary that selects pupils on academic ability. That second part is what makes it unusual. The vast majority of state secondaries are comprehensives, admitting children regardless of academic ability, usually based on catchment and oversubscription criteria.

Grammar schools were once the standard route into higher academic study under the post-war tripartite system. Most were converted to comprehensives during the 1960s and 1970s. The 163 that survived are concentrated in particular local authorities, mostly in the south and the Midlands, with Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire and the Birmingham area accounting for a large share.

A small group of partially selective schools admit a proportion of their intake (often 10 to 25 per cent) on academic grounds and take the rest by other criteria. These aren't strictly grammar schools, but the entrance test process for the selective places looks broadly the same.

Yes. Grammar schools are state schools, funded through the same per-pupil formula as any other state secondary in England. There are no tuition fees. Parents pay only the costs that apply at any state school: Uniform, trips, music lessons, school meals if your child isn't on free school meals.

This is the main practical difference between grammar schools and independent (private) schools. An independent senior school charging £20,000 to £45,000 a year may also be selective and use entrance tests, but it sits in a completely separate funding system. A grammar school place is, in cash terms, the same financial proposition as a comprehensive place.

Grammar schools are concentrated in a relatively small number of local authorities (sometimes called selective areas). The roughly 35 selective LAs are spread unevenly across England, with no grammars at all in many places: Most of the north-east, large parts of the north-west, the south-west, and much of inner London beyond a handful of boroughs.

The biggest concentrations are in Kent (around 32 grammars per Kent County Council), Buckinghamshire (around 13), Lincolnshire (around 14 to 15), Birmingham (the six King Edward VI consortium grammars plus a handful of others in the wider West Midlands), and the London boroughs of Sutton, Bexley, Barnet, Bromley, Kingston, Redbridge and Enfield. Other notable selective areas include Trafford, Wirral, Medway, Slough, Reading and parts of Essex.

Scotland and Wales have no state grammar schools. Northern Ireland has its own selective secondary system that works differently.

All grammar schools select on the basis of the 11+ exam, sat in September or early October of Year 6. The exam is set by one of a small number of providers (GL Assessment for most state grammars; a few use bespoke local papers). It tests some combination of English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning.

Raw marks are converted into a standardised age score that adjusts for the child's age in months on the day. Pass marks vary significantly by consortium and provider. On a typical GL Assessment single-paper SAS scale (where 100 is the national average), thresholds often sit somewhere between 111 and 121, but this isn't universal: Kent uses an aggregate of three papers (commonly cited around 332; check the current KCC threshold), Buckinghamshire uses its own scoring, and some schools set no fixed pass mark. Children who score at or above the relevant threshold are eligible for a grammar place.

But eligibility isn't an offer. Whether your child gets in then depends on the school's oversubscription criteria, which is where the picture gets more complicated.

There's a meaningful split between two kinds of grammar school, even though both use the same kind of entrance exam.

A "comprehensive" grammar school admits any child who passes the 11+, up to its capacity. If more children pass than there are places, oversubscription is normally settled by catchment, sibling priority, or distance to the school. Most grammars outside London, particularly in Kent, Lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire, work this way. A child who passes the exam and lives nearby will usually get a place.

A "super-selective" grammar school doesn't have a catchment area in any meaningful sense. It ranks all the children who passed the test by their 11+ score and offers places to the highest scorers. Most of the London grammar schools fall into this group: Tiffin, Tiffin Girls', Wilson's, The Henrietta Barnett School, Queen Elizabeth's Barnet, and Sutton Grammar among them. Passing the exam at these schools is necessary but not sufficient. A child also needs to score in the top few hundred candidates.

At comprehensive grammars, catchment is often the deciding factor for oversubscribed schools. If a Kent grammar fills up, the children who get in tend to be the ones living closest. A child who passes the exam but lives 20 miles away may not be offered a place if local children with lower (but still passing) scores fill the available slots.

At super-selective grammars in London, catchment in the conventional sense doesn't apply. Children can be offered a place from anywhere in the country if their score is high enough. The long commute means most pupils live within a sensible travel distance, but the offer isn't constrained by where you live.

The biggest cause of late disappointment is parents not reading the oversubscription criteria carefully enough. A child who passes the 11+ at a comprehensive grammar but lives outside the priority area can be denied a place. Distance, sibling priority, faith criteria (for the small number of faith-designated grammars) and pupil premium priority all matter.

There are two parallel processes, and you need to complete both.

First, you register your child for the 11+ with the local authority (or directly with the school, depending on the area). Registration usually closes in late June or early July of Year 5, months before the exam itself. If you miss the registration deadline, your child usually can't sit the test that year. This is the easiest part of the timeline to get wrong.

Second, after your child has sat the exam in September or October of Year 6 and received their result, you apply for a secondary school place through your local authority's normal secondary school common application form. The deadline is 31 October of Year 6. You can list grammar schools on the form alongside non-selective backups. The form is the same one every parent in England completes for state secondary entry. Grammar schools sit inside that process, not outside it.

On average, grammar schools post strong GCSE and A-level results, particularly at the top end. Their Progress 8 scores tend to look good in league tables, and university outcomes are typically strong. For an academically able child who responds well to a fast-paced classroom, a grammar school can be an excellent fit.

It's worth being honest about what the headline numbers tell us, though. Grammar schools select for academic ability, so they start with cohorts that would tend to do well anywhere. Some of the apparent advantage in raw results reflects pupil intake rather than school effect. The peer environment does matter genuinely: For an academically strong child, being surrounded by similarly motivated peers can lift aspirations and the cultural norm around effort.

The two most commonly raised concerns are pressure and access.

Pressure: Selection is competitive, and entry can feel high-stakes for a 10 or 11 year old. Once at the school, children are typically taught alongside others who also passed a demanding test, which can be motivating but can also feel relentless for a child who was used to being near the top of their primary class. Some children thrive on this; some find it eroding.

Access: Children from higher-income families tend to be over-represented at grammar schools, partly because preparation favours families who can afford tutoring or who have the time and confidence to support at home. Pupil premium priority has been added to many grammar schools' oversubscription criteria in recent years to try to broaden access, but the broader gap persists.

There's also a knock-on effect on the surrounding non-selective schools. In areas with a strong grammar sector, the local comprehensives can end up with a less academically diverse intake, which is a long-running policy argument rather than something individual parents can change.

Many children who sit the 11+ don't get a grammar school place. The maths is simple: There are far more entrants than places, particularly at super-selective schools where 2,000 or more apply for around 150 to 200 places.

If your child narrowly misses the cut-off, you can appeal, but appeals on academic grounds for selective schools have a low success rate (typically under 25 per cent in most LAs, and lower for super-selective grammars). Appeals are based on whether admission arrangements were applied correctly, or on exceptional individual circumstances on the day, not on "we think our child was unlucky".

The more useful focus is usually the local non-selective offer. Strong comprehensives exist in almost every area, and the school you end up at matters far less to long-term outcomes than how well your child is supported through Year 7 to Year 11. Children watch how the adults around them react; treat the result calmly and your child will too.