Getting into Bourne Grammar School
The Lincolnshire consortium 11+, one test shared by the county's grammar schools: what it involves and what to do next, for entry in September 2027.
Every fact on this page is checked against the school’s published admissions information, and nothing is guessed. · View sources · Report an error
Registration for the September 2026 test closed on Midnight on Tuesday 30 June 2026. 1 weeks to test day.
What to do and when
Sitting the year after (2028 entry)? These are 2027-entry dates, and yours are not published yet: there is nothing you need to do this far out. Sign up for reminders and tick the 2028-entry box, and we’ll email only when your cycle’s dates are out and it is actually time to act.
5 dates as a calendar file, for Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. Share the link with anyone who needs them.
Life’s busy, so we’ll email you a nudge before each Bourne Grammar deadline above. Nothing else: no newsletter, no marketing, and the reminders stop for good after National Offer Day (1 Mar 2027) unless you sign up again for another school.
The test, in one look
Bourne Grammar sits the Lincolnshire Consortium of Grammar Schools (LCGS), set by GL Assessment.
GL Assessment sets the 11+ for most grammar schools in England, including this one. Papers are multiple-choice, and scores are age-standardised: children born at different points in the school year are marked against slightly different scales, so a summer-born child isn’t disadvantaged. Because GL is the most widely used format, familiarisation materials and practice papers in the same style are easy to come by.
Because GL is multiple-choice and age-standardised, the two things that move a score are accuracy under time pressure and covering every question type rather than the comfortable ones. PlusProgress practice is adaptive across English, Maths, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning, so it keeps finding the types your child is weakest on instead of rewarding what they already do well, and mock papers follow the format this school sets. Progress is reported as a standardised age score, the same scale the school will use.
Bourne sets its own registration deadline rather than using the consortium's. For 2027 entry the school's form closed at midnight on 30 June 2026, three months after the consortium's 31 March. Both papers are sat at the school itself.
How places are decided
240 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area. Any qualified child anywhere may apply. The 15 mile radius in the policy scopes only one block of 24 places, and the rest are decided by straight line distance, nearest first.
Eligibility first: the child must reach the minimum standardised qualifying score of 220, the school must be named as a preference (or named on an EHCP), and children with an EHCP naming the school are placed first.
6 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked After Children and Previously Looked After Children, including children who were in state care outside England and left it through adoption;
- 2.children with a sibling on roll at the school at the time of application;
- 3.children of staff (employed two or more years, or recruited to a post with a demonstrable skill shortage);
- 4.35 places for children eligible for the Pupil Premium or for children of serving or recently serving UK armed forces personnel (if more than 35 Pupil Premium applications, the closest by straight-line distance are prioritised);
- 5.the next 24 places to the highest-ranking applicants by standardised score who live within a 15-mile radius of the school, excluding anyone already placed under criteria 1 to 4;
- 6.any remaining places by straight-line distance from home to school, nearest first. Tie-break: if two or more children are tied for the last place a lottery is drawn by an independent person, not employed by the school or working in the local authority's Children's Services Directorate. Criterion 5 applies only to the normal primary-to-secondary round, not to in-year applications: "Criterion 5 in the Oversubscription Criteria will only be used for application for transition to secondary school from primary and will be excluded for all applications for in-year places."
What an EHCP is: an Education, Health and Care Plan, a legal document from your council for a child with special educational needs. Where a plan names a school, that school has to offer a place, so those places are taken out of the number above before anyone else is ranked. It is not a route most families can apply through.
Taken from the school’s own determined admission arrangements. The full document is linked under sources.
How pupils here do at GCSE
This is based on how pupils at this school go on to perform in their GCSEs, five years after the 11+. Attainment 8 is their average result across eight subjects. Read it as a description of outcomes rather than of teaching: a selective school admits children who were already scoring well at ten, so a high position here reflects who the school takes in as much as what it does with them.
Scores from Compare school and college performance data in England, Department for Education, 2024/25, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The Department publishes the scores and does not publish a ranking: the position above is ours, calculated over state-funded schools with a published score. See the full table.
One sitting, 13 schools
The same test also covers these schools: We have pages for these so far:
Common questions
No, and this is the mistake that costs Lincolnshire families places. The county says it plainly: registering for or sitting a test is not an application, and qualifying is neither an application nor a guarantee. You register with a grammar school in the spring of Year 5, then apply separately to your home council by 31 October. A child who scores 220 and is never named on the council form gets nothing on offer day.
It is a qualifying floor, not a target and not a place. It is set to identify roughly the most able quarter of the age group, and what happens above it is decided by each school's own criteria. Twelve schools share the floor and none of them shares its oversubscription rules.
A Verbal Reasoning paper and a Non-Verbal Reasoning and Spatial awareness paper, sat about a week apart rather than on one day. Both come from GL Assessment, both are answered by shading boxes on a separate sheet, and there is no English paper and no writing task.
Either in their own primary school or at the grammar school they registered with, depending on the area. The consortium confirms the arrangement after registration.
Results are emailed to parents at midday on the published results day in October, and to primary schools that afternoon, comfortably before the 31 October council deadline.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.