King Edward VI School Southampton 11+ Admissions: Assessment and Fees

Entry to King Edward VI School Southampton at 11+ is by academic selection: children sit an entrance examination in English and maths, attend a short interview, and are considered alongside a reference from their current school, with places and academic scholarships both decided on the exam result.

The school is an independent day school, so there is no catchment area or local-authority allocation; families register an interest, submit an application form, and then go through assessment and interview before an offer is made. Bursaries, assessed separately on family income, sit alongside the automatic academic scholarship consideration.

How the 11+ admissions process works

Getting into Year 7 runs through a fixed sequence: register an enquiry, visit the school, submit an application form, sit the entrance exam and interview, then receive and accept an offer. The school describes it as a six-stage process, moving from information-gathering through to a formal offer that is accepted with a deposit by a set deadline.

There is no local-authority allocation and no catchment area, since the school is independent; every candidate is assessed on the same exam and interview regardless of address. Families are advised to have a state-school place as a backup, since King Edward's runs its own admissions timetable separately from the local authority's secondary transfer process.

What the 11+ entrance assessment involves

Every Year 7 candidate sits two papers, in English and maths, both set internally by the school. The English paper runs 50 minutes in total: 20 minutes of reading comprehension on an extract from a children's novel, answered by multiple choice at this age, followed by a 30-minute writing task chosen from a set of options such as a letter, a speech, a story or a newspaper article. Markers look for spelling, punctuation, focus, structure and original ideas.

The maths paper runs 45 minutes without a calculator, covering integers, decimals, fractions, percentages, measurement, geometry, statistics, number patterns, coordinates and simple formulae, alongside problem-solving and reasoning. All candidates also attend an interview of around 15 minutes with a member of teaching staff; this is not academically focused and centres on the child's interests, alongside a reference supplied by their current school.

How to register and apply

Application forms become available in June and need to be returned by the published deadline in the autumn term before entry, alongside a non-refundable application fee that is waived for bursary-only applications. The pack includes the main application form, a reference form for the child's current school, and separate forms for anyone applying for a bursary, creative arts scholarship or sports award.

Before applying, most families visit through an individual tour, a taster morning in May or September, or the autumn Open Evening. Interviews are held in early January, with the entrance exam shortly after, mostly on a Saturday; offers follow by email, and acceptance requires a deposit by the deadline given with the offer.

Scholarships and bursaries

Every 11+ applicant is automatically considered for an Academic Scholarship on the strength of their entrance exam result, with no separate application needed; it carries a fee remission and runs for one year. Creative Arts Scholarships in music, art and drama, and Sports Scholarships, need a separate application involving an audition, portfolio or trial, and each carries the same fee remission.

Bursary Awards are means-tested by Bursary Administration Limited on gross family income and capital assets, with a full award available below the lower published income threshold and a sliding scale of partial awards up to the higher threshold; decisions follow in February after the entrance exam. An EPA Bursary Award, requiring an additional short science paper alongside English and maths, offers a further full-award route for applicants who show strong science aptitude.

Preparing for the entrance assessment calmly

The school states plainly that no special preparation is expected and that past papers are not published, so the aim is steady familiarity with the material, without drilling on anything school-specific. For English, that means practising timed reading comprehension and a short piece of writing on an unfamiliar prompt, with attention to spelling, punctuation and a clear structure.

For maths, working confidently without a calculator across the National Curriculum topics named on the school's own assessment page, including fractions, percentages, geometry and simple algebra, matters more than speed. As the interview is simply a conversation about interests, the most useful preparation is helping a child talk naturally about what they enjoy, in and out of school.

Entry beyond Year 7

Year 9 (13+) is the other main entry point to the senior school, assessed with the same English and maths format, though Year 9 candidates give written as well as multiple-choice answers in the reading section and Music Scholarship candidates are expected to reach a higher standard. Sixth Form entry at 16+ follows a separate process built around an information evening, application, interview and conditional offers based on predicted GCSE results.

Applications for other year groups are considered depending on availability, but deferring an offered place to a later year is not permitted; a family wanting a different year of entry has to reapply and the child sits the entrance exam again.

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Preparing for the King Edward VI School Southampton 11+ with Taylor Tuition

Families preparing for the King Edward VI School Southampton 11+ usually come to us a year or so before the assessment, though shorter runs work where the foundations are already sound. Having prepared pupils for entry to leading independent and grammar schools, with placements including Westminster, St Paul's, Wycombe Abbey and Eton, our tutors build each programme around the format the school actually uses, whether a written paper, an online pre-test, an interview or a combination of them.

More than half of our tutors hold Qualified Teacher Status and around three in five hold a master's degree or doctorate, and the pool includes former heads of department, exam-board examiners and teachers from independent and boarding schools, so the preparation is led by people who know how selective schools assess. Every tutor who works with children holds an enhanced DBS check.

Families in Birmingham and further afield work with us online, and in person in central London. Fees start from £50 per 50-minute session and depend on tutor level and subject, with no registration fee and a free initial consultation to talk through your child's current level and the timeline to the 11+. Families receive progress reports after sessions and have a dedicated point of contact, and we reply to enquiries within one working day with tutor recommendations.

Read more about our 11+ entrance exam tutors, or send an enquiry and we will come back with tutor recommendations.