What is the Sutton SET? Six schools, two stages, 2027 entry

If your child is sitting the Sutton SET, it decides less than you would think. At five of the six schools it only settles who is invited back. The paper that ranks your child comes about a fortnight later, and one form registers your child for all six schools .

Families get that shape wrong in both directions. Some prepare hard for the SET and then treat October as a formality. Others stop counting the SET the moment the invitation arrives.

Both stages count, at every school that runs one.

Which six schools share the test?

To register, go to the website of any one of them, and do it once . That same form is the supplementary form for every school in the group, so there is no second one to hunt for .

At five of the six, reaching the standard buys your child exactly one thing: the right to sit a second stage paper.

What are the dates for 2027 entry?

Two rows matter more than the rest. One of them closes in July. The other shows how much you will already know by the time the application form falls due.

What happens	Date
Registration opened	Friday 1 May 2026
Access arrangements evidence, from the primary school SENCO	Friday 12 June 2026
Registration closed, with no late entries accepted	Midnight, Friday 31 July 2026
Selective Eligibility Test, at all six schools at once	Tuesday 15 September 2026
SET outcome emailed	During the week after the test
Second stage, girls, at Nonsuch and Wallington High School for Girls	Saturday 26 September 2026
Second stage, boys, shared by Sutton Grammar, Wallington County and Wilson’s	Saturday 3 October 2026
Second stage outcomes emailed	Before the October half term
Closing date for the application form	31 October 2026
National Offer Day	1 March 2027

Registration opens and closes in the summer term of Year 5, months before the test itself, and no late entry is accepted under any circumstances . That is the date families move house over and still miss.

The second one is a kindness. By the time your application form is due you will already hold both results . That lets you name your schools in the order your child’s marks justify, rather than in the order you hope for.

What is actually in the SET papers?

Stage	Papers	Format	Length as published
Selective Eligibility Test, all six schools	Maths and English	Multiple choice, answers marked on a separate sheet	Between 40 and 50 minutes each, with a rest and toilet break between them
Second stage, boys, shared by three schools	Maths and English	Not multiple choice	Around 45 minutes to 1 hour each, morning session only
Second stage, girls, shared by two schools	Maths and English	Not multiple choice	Not published on the schools’ own pages
Greenshaw High School	No second stage	Ability places decided on the SET alone	Not applicable

Neither stage includes verbal reasoning or non-verbal reasoning . If your evenings are going into a reasoning workbook, part of that work is for a test your child will not sit. The same goes if you have moved here from a county where reasoning is half the paper. We would settle which test each school actually sets before buying anything else.

Scores are adjusted for age, and there is no fixed amount for that adjustment, because it is calculated for each test separately . How a standardised age score is worked out covers the machinery if you want it.

What decides the SET is the total, not each paper. A very good performance in English can compensate for one a little weaker in maths . That is the opposite of the floor-under-every-paper rule some other counties use.

Then there is the answer sheet, which costs children marks that have nothing to do with what they know. Answers go on a separate sheet, filled in as a lozenge for A, B, C, D or E, or a combination of them . Some English questions ask for two options and score only if both are right .

There is no negative marking, so a guess costs nothing . No rough paper is provided either, so the working goes in the space on the question paper .

We have watched more children lose marks to a sheet like that than to anything on the question paper.

Our own SET-format mock papers copy the shape: two multiple-choice papers of 45 minutes each, no reasoning section, the same separate answer sheet. That is our reading of what the schools publish, not anything the schools have approved.

Why can nobody tell you the pass mark?

There is none published in advance, and that is not an oversight. The schools set it after the papers are marked, and each school may set its own . A child who reaches the standard is told only that, never a score . A child who does not is given standardised scores for both papers and a total .

So before you go hunting for last year’s number, read what a pass mark, a qualifying score and a cut-off each mean. In Sutton there is not one for you to find.

The near-miss arithmetic is where we would put your attention instead. The final total is standardised and carried to several decimal places . A child one whole point below the standard has not missed it by one mark.

The school’s own example puts fifty to a hundred children between one whole standardised point and the next . In a field that size, the marks that decide your child’s morning are the ordinary ones. They go to a rushed answer sheet, not to the one hard question at the end.

What happens at the second stage?

Boys who reach the standard sit one shared paper for Sutton Grammar, Wallington County and Wilson’s. Each school then applies its own criteria to it, so your son can qualify for one of the three and not another . Girls sit a joint paper held by Nonsuch and Wallington High School for Girls. There the test and the standard applied are common to both schools .

At the girls’ schools the final total is the SET score restandardised and halved, plus the two standardised second stage scores . Each boys’ school combines the two stages in its own ratio . Sutton Grammar publishes its own: the two SET papers and the two second stage papers, standardised and weighted 2:2:3:3, with an age allowance added afterwards .

Sutton Grammar weights four standardised scores in the ratio 2:2:3:3, the two SET papers first and the two second stage papers after. Aaron scores 120 on both SET papers and 100 on both second stage papers. Bilal scores 100 on both SET papers and 120 on both second stage papers. Who is ranked higher?

The usual wrong route

Most parents say it is a tie, because the two boys have the same four numbers and the same average. The ratio is the whole point: the numbers sit on different sized scales.

The method

1. Aaron: (120 × 2) + (120 × 2) + (100 × 3) + (100 × 3) = 240 + 240 + 300 + 300 = 1,080.
2. Bilal: (100 × 2) + (100 × 2) + (120 × 3) + (120 × 3) = 200 + 200 + 360 + 360 = 1,120.
3. Bilal is ahead by 40 weighted points on identical raw numbers.

The same twenty point advantage is worth half as much again when it lands on the second stage. The school adds an age allowance and rounds the total afterwards, so these figures are the shape of the calculation rather than a score anybody receives. Neither boy knows whether his total reaches the standard either, because the standard is set after marking.

Answer: BilalIn the paper: About a minute.

The SET is the gate. The second stage is the race.

A child who scrapes through the gate starts that race a few lengths behind. So we would keep the work going through the first fortnight of October rather than celebrating in September.

Why does St Olave’s call its test the SET too?

St Olave’s Grammar School sits over the boundary in Bromley and takes boys from the same commuter belt. It runs a two-stage test of its own and calls its first stage the SET as well. It is not the Sutton test, and if your son is sitting both, the difference is not cosmetic.

The St Olave’s first paper lasts one hour and is multiple choice in English, logic, meaning verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and maths . Its dates are its own: the first stage falls in September and the second in November, weeks after the Sutton round has finished .

We build practice papers to both formats and they are not interchangeable. A boy sitting both needs reasoning for one paper and not the other, so the verbal reasoning question types are worth an evening. If you are still weighing which tests to register for, start with which test your child will actually sit. Families in this corner of south London often add the Kent Test, from registration to results.

Does qualifying mean your child gets a place?

It does not. Success in tests or assessments for any of these schools does not guarantee an offer of a place . Sutton Grammar says the same about its own test . Qualifying means your child may be considered, and each school then ranks and allocates on its own published criteria.

Distance is the criterion parents most often underestimate. A school with no catchment for most of its places may still hold a large block for an inner circle. Whether your address falls inside one is not something you can eyeball from a map of the borough.

What should you do next for your child?

• Diarise the registration window, not the test date. It closes at the end of July, before your child even starts Year 6, and there is no late entry.
• Take reasoning out of your Sutton plan and put the time into maths and English comprehension. Add it back only if St Olave’s or another reasoning test is genuinely on your list.
• Practise the answer sheet, not only the questions. A separate sheet, lozenges, two-answer questions and no rough paper: we would have your child meet that format before the day, not on it.
• Keep working through October. The second stage is weighted more heavily at the schools that publish a ratio, and it is written rather than multiple choice, which is a different skill.
• Sit at least one paper in the real shape. Our school-format mock papers build the SET structure paper by paper, so the format is not what costs your child the marks.

If you are reading this a year or more out, the useful question is not which book to buy but when to begin preparing. Afterwards, the thing nobody warns you about is the wait: what happens on results day and on the lists that follow.

Common questions

Which schools use the Sutton Selective Eligibility Test?

Six of them, and one online form registers your child for all six . That form doubles as the supplementary form for each school. They are Greenshaw High School, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Sutton Grammar School, Wallington County Grammar School, Wallington High School for Girls and Wilson’s School.

What is in the Selective Eligibility Test papers?

Two multiple-choice papers, maths and English, with a break in between. Each runs between 40 and 50 minutes, and your child answers on a separate sheet . There is no verbal reasoning and no non-verbal reasoning, and the content is broadly the Key Stage 2 curriculum.

Is there a pass mark for the SET?

Not one published in advance. The schools set it after the papers are marked, and each may set its own . Scores are age standardised, and if your child passes you are told only that the standard was met, never the mark.

Does the SET score still count after the second stage?

Yes, at every school that runs one. The schools rank on the two stages combined, not on the second stage alone . Each school weights them in its own way, so a strong first paper is still worth something for your child in October.

Is St Olave’s part of the Sutton SET?

No. St Olave’s Grammar School is in Bromley and runs its own two-stage test. It happens to call its first stage the SET as well. That paper is one hour of multiple-choice English, maths and logic, with verbal and non-verbal reasoning included, so the two tests ask for different preparation .