Wirral Grammar Schools: The 11+ and How Entry Works

Wirral has six state grammar schools, with places allocated each year to children who reach the required standard in an entrance assessment taken in Year 6. Four of the six sit inside a shared assessment arrangement coordinated by Wirral Council and tested through Quest Assessments, while the two Catholic grammar schools, St Anselm's College and Upton Hall School FCJ, set their own separate entrance exams and registration deadlines outside that arrangement.

Because the assessment routes differ between the consortium schools and the two Catholic grammars, families often need to register for more than one process in the same autumn if they want to keep several schools open as options. The local authority's own school admissions pages and each school's published admissions policy set out exactly what is required and by when, and this guide draws only on that published material.

The six grammar schools in Wirral

Wirral's grammar schools are spread across the peninsula, with two in West Kirby, two in Bebington and one each in Prenton and Upton, so families weighing preferences usually need to think about travel as well as which entrance route each school uses.

• Calday Grange Grammar School, West Kirby: boys, mixed sixth form
• St Anselm's College, Prenton: boys
• Upton Hall School FCJ, Upton: girls
• West Kirby Grammar School, West Kirby: girls
• Wirral Grammar School for Boys, Bebington: boys
• Wirral Grammar School for Girls, Bebington: girls

The consortium test: Quest Assessments

Calday Grange, West Kirby Grammar, Wirral Grammar School for Boys and Wirral Grammar School for Girls all use Quest Assessments to test applicants, with Wirral Local Authority conducting the assessment 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 child's raw score is standardised to take account of their exact age in years and months so that summer-born children are not disadvantaged.

Pupil premium-eligible children can usually access free familiarisation support for the Quest test through Atom Learning, a partnership Calday Grange highlights on its own admissions pages. The schools point families to Quest's own parent guidance for sample materials and do not set separate practice papers of their own.

Upton Hall and St Anselm's: separate entrance exams

Upton Hall School FCJ and St Anselm's College sit outside the Quest consortium and run their own entrance exams and registration processes, so families considering either alongside a consortium school need to register twice.

Upton Hall's exam consists of one verbal reasoning paper and one English paper. The school directs candidates to free familiarisation materials from GL Assessment; it does not use Quest materials. St Anselm's College sets three of its own tests, in English, mathematics and verbal reasoning, with every paper passed to external examiners for marking; candidates register directly with the college online, separately from the mathematics and verbal reasoning testing used by the consortium schools.

Registration and the admissions timetable

For the consortium schools, the Assessment Request Form has to be completed online and returned to Wirral Local Authority during May of Year 5, by the closing date the authority publishes; this applies equally to families living in Wirral and those applying from Cheshire. The test itself is sat in the third week of September at the start of Year 6, with results returned to parents by the local authority in the second half of October, ahead of the secondary preference form deadline of 31 October.

St Anselm's College asks families to complete its own online registration for the entrance exam, alongside a copy of the boy's baptismal certificate where relevant, by a summer deadline set separately from the local authority's timetable; the Local Authority Wirral Parental Preference Form still has to be returned by 31 October regardless of which schools a family is applying to. National Offer Day for secondary places falls on 1 March, when Wirral Local Authority confirms which school has been allocated.

Catchment, priority and oversubscription

None of Wirral's grammar schools operates a defined catchment area, so entry depends on reaching the required standard in the entrance test or exam regardless of where a family lives. Once a school is oversubscribed by children who have met that standard, each school applies its own published order of priority, and these differ meaningfully between schools.

The four consortium schools broadly prioritise looked after and previously looked after children, then children with a demonstrable medical or social need, then a reserved number of places for children eligible for free school meals ranked by distance, then siblings already at the school, then children of staff, with any places left over allocated by shortest distance from home to school. St Anselm's College and Upton Hall instead prioritise looked after children first and then apply faith-based categories, such as baptised Catholic applicants living within a defined area, before falling back on exam rank order or distance to settle ties.

How places are allocated and appeals

Where a school has more qualifying applicants than places once its oversubscription criteria have been applied, the remaining places usually go by shortest distance from home to school, measured using the local authority's computer mapping system, or in St Anselm's case by exam rank order first and distance only as the final tie-break.

Parents whose child does not receive an offer from a preferred grammar school can appeal to an independent appeals panel; Wirral Local Authority coordinates appeals for the consortium schools, while St Anselm's College and Upton Hall each run their own panel process, with strict deadlines for lodging an appeal after the offer letter is issued. A child does not need to have already accepted a different offer in order to appeal.

Preparing for the test

Because the consortium test and the two Catholic schools' exams assess different combinations of subjects, preparation usually works best when it matches the specific test a child is registered for. A single generic 11+ course is unlikely to match this as closely. Children applying to Calday Grange, West Kirby Grammar or either Wirral Grammar school benefit from practice across verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and mathematics in the multiple-choice, timed format Quest Assessments uses, drawing on the parent guidance the schools link to directly.

Given Upton Hall's published exam format, children applying there need practice weighted towards verbal reasoning and English, with less emphasis on mathematics or non-verbal reasoning. Those sitting St Anselm's College's own exam benefit from preparation across all three of English, mathematics and verbal reasoning, since the college marks and ranks candidates across all three papers.

Preparing for the Wirral Grammar Schools 11+ with Taylor Tuition

The Wirral Grammar Schools 11+ rewards steady preparation over a year or so, with the last term given to timed practice and interview confidence. Having prepared pupils for entry to leading independent and grammar schools, with placements including Westminster, St Paul's, Wycombe Abbey and Eton, our tutors match the programme to the school's assessment format and to where the child is starting from.

Because the pool includes former heads of department, exam-board examiners and teachers from independent and boarding schools, and more than half of our tutors hold Qualified Teacher Status, families get a tutor who understands what the assessors are looking for. Every tutor who works with children holds an enhanced DBS check.

Families in the North of England 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.