Grammar schools, explained

Grammar, comprehensive, independent

• Grammar: state funded, no fees, selects by exam.
• Comprehensive: state funded, no fees, does not select by ability. Most secondary schools in England.
• Independent or private: charges fees, sets its own entrance requirements, which may include an exam that resembles the 11 Plus without being the same paper.

A fourth thing you will meet is a partially selective school, which allocates some proportion of its places by ability or aptitude and the rest by its normal criteria.

Where they are

Grammar schools are not spread evenly. They are concentrated in particular areas, including Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, parts of Essex, Birmingham, Trafford, the Wirral and several London boroughs. Large parts of the country have none at all, and in those places the 11 Plus simply is not a thing local families do.

You are generally not restricted to your own county. Many families sit exams in more than one area, which means more than one registration, more than one format and more than one set of dates to keep track of.

Catchment and oversubscription

Qualifying on the exam and being offered a place are two different steps. Once the qualifying children are known, the school applies its oversubscription criteria, which are published and typically run in an order something like: children in care first, then siblings, then distance or a defined catchment area.

This is why a child can score well and still not get in. It is also why the distance a place was last offered at, sometimes called the cut-off, is worth looking up for any school you are seriously considering.

Super-selective schools

A super-selective school ranks all qualifying children by score and offers places from the top down, with no distance element at all. Scores needed are correspondingly high, applications come from a wide area, and the odds are harder to read from previous years because the applicant pool changes.

Is it right for your child?

Worth separating from whether they could pass. A selective school is a room where everyone was in the top few per cent of their primary, and a child who was comfortably top of the class can find being middle of that room hard. Plenty thrive on it. Some do not, and it is worth an honest conversation before a year of preparation rather than after.