Best Grammar Schools in Wirral: GCSE and A Level Results Ranked

The best grammar schools in Wirral on average Attainment 8 score are West Kirby Grammar School at 71.3, Wirral Grammar School for Girls at 69.3 and Calday Grange Grammar School at 68.1, with Upton Hall School FCJ next at 65.6. Six schools are ranked on a single measure, the average Attainment 8 score from the latest DfE key stage 4 performance tables, which totals each pupil's grades across eight GCSE-level qualifications with English and maths double-weighted, out of a maximum of 90.

The table also shows the percentage of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths, and the DfE's average A level grade where one is published.

Which grammar schools in Wirral have the best GCSE results?

Across the six schools the average Attainment 8 score runs from 71.3 at West Kirby Grammar School down to 57.2 at St Anselm's College, and the percentage achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths runs from 95.6 to 75.5 over the same span. Three schools sit in an upper band, West Kirby Grammar School on 71.3, Wirral Grammar School for Girls on 69.3 and Calday Grange on 68.1. Upton Hall on 65.6 and Wirral Grammar School for Boys on 65.4 form a second cluster of near-equal figures, whilst St Anselm's College stands alone at the foot of the table.

Girls' schools hold ranks 1, 2 and 4 (West Kirby Grammar School, Wirral Grammar School for Girls and Upton Hall), and boys' schools hold ranks 3, 5 and 6 (Calday Grange, Wirral Grammar School for Boys and St Anselm's College). Calday Grange has a mixed sixth form according to the county guide, though its GCSE figures relate to its boys. On English and maths at grade 5 or above, Calday Grange records 92.6 per cent and Wirral Grammar School for Girls 92.2, both just ahead of Wirral Grammar School for Boys at 91, so the order on that measure differs slightly from the Attainment 8 order.

The A level grades follow the GCSE order only loosely. Wirral Grammar School for Girls has the highest average A level grade at B+, West Kirby Grammar School is on B despite ranking first at GCSE, and Calday Grange, Upton Hall, Wirral Grammar School for Boys and St Anselm's College all show B-. Five of the six therefore sit within one grade band at A level, a much tighter spread than at GCSE.

How does entry to the Wirral grammar schools work?

Places at all six Wirral grammar schools go to children who reach the required standard in an entrance assessment taken in Year 6. Four of the six sit inside a shared arrangement coordinated by Wirral Council and tested through Quest Assessments, while the two Catholic grammars, St Anselm's College and Upton Hall School FCJ, run their own entrance exams and registration deadlines outside it.

Because the routes differ, a family keeping both a consortium school and a Catholic grammar open usually needs to register for more than one process in the same autumn. Wirral Council's school admissions pages and each school's published admissions policy give the exact requirements and closing dates, and those are the sources to check before registering.

Travel is worth weighing alongside the entrance route, since two of the schools are in West Kirby, two in Bebington, and one each in Prenton and Upton.

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Which Wirral grammar schools use the Quest test?

Calday Grange, West Kirby Grammar, Wirral Grammar School for Boys and Wirral Grammar School for Girls all use Quest Assessments, with Wirral Local Authority conducting the test on their behalf. The test is sat as two separate timed booklets of multiple-choice questions covering verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and mathematics, and each raw score is standardised for the child's exact age in years and months so that summer-born children are not disadvantaged.

The consortium schools send families to Quest's own parent guidance for sample materials and set no separate practice papers of their own. Pupil premium-eligible children can usually access free familiarisation support through Atom Learning, a partnership Calday Grange highlights on its admissions pages.

Applicants complete an Assessment Request Form online and return it to Wirral Local Authority in Year 5, by the closing date the authority publishes, whether they live in Wirral or in Cheshire.

How do the Upton Hall and St Anselm's entrance exams differ?

Upton Hall and St Anselm's College each set their own exam and take their own registrations, so neither uses the Quest test. Upton Hall's exam has one verbal reasoning paper and one English paper, and the school directs candidates to free familiarisation materials from GL Assessment.

St Anselm's College sets three tests, in English, mathematics and verbal reasoning, with every paper passed to external examiners for marking. Candidates register with the college directly online, separately from the consortium process, which means a family applying to either Catholic grammar and a consortium school registers twice.

What do the Wirral grammar school results show and not show?

The ranking shows each school's average Attainment 8 score in the latest DfE performance tables, alongside the share of pupils reaching grade 5 or above in English and maths and the average A level grade where published. Every school admits through an entrance assessment, so the figures describe cohorts that have already been selected, and they say nothing about teaching quality or about how an individual child would fare.

Single-sex intakes also affect how the table reads, since the three girls' schools and three boys' schools are compared directly even though each recruits from a different group of applicants. A parent comparing West Kirby Grammar School on 71.3 with Calday Grange on 68.1, for instance, is comparing a girls' school with a boys' school. The A level column adds a second view, with Wirral Grammar School for Girls on B+ and most others on B-.

How the schools are ranked

The ranking covers every state grammar school in Wirral with a published Attainment 8 score in the Department for Education's key stage 4 performance data, ordered from highest to lowest, with schools on the same figure sharing a rank. Every school in the table selects by ability at eleven, so the figures reflect a selective intake as well as the teaching; Progress 8 was not calculated for this cohort.

The data is the Department for Education's own download from Compare school and college performance, so anyone can reproduce the order from the same file; the data year and source are listed in the key facts above.

Admissions guides for the ranked schools

• West Kirby Grammar School (ranked 1)
• Wirral Grammar School for Girls (ranked 2)
• Calday Grange Grammar School (ranked 3)
• Upton Hall School FCJ (ranked 4)
• Wirral Grammar School for Boys (ranked 5)
• St Anselm's College (ranked 6)

Related guides

• Wirral Grammar Schools
• Best grammar schools in the UK by GCSE results
• Grammar schools in England: the full directory
• The 11+ entrance exam explained

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