Getting into Bournemouth School for Girls
The Dorset/BCP Grammar Consortium 11+, set by GL Assessment: 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 midday on 4 September 2026. 3 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 Bournemouth School for Girls 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
Bournemouth School for Girls sits the Dorset/BCP Grammar Consortium, 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.
How places are decided
180 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes: BH1 to BH11, plus BH12 5 and BH23 1, 2 and 3. But 100 of the 180 places go to the highest scorers wherever they live, so catchment only ranks the girls competing for what is left.
Eligible girls with an EHCP naming the school must be admitted, which reduces the places available under the PAN of 180.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.looked after and previously looked after girls, including those adopted from state care outside England, all with equal priority;
- 2.girls eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant, in rank order of entrance test scores, highest first;
- 3.100 places assigned to the girls who scored most highly in the entrance tests, in rank order of total test score, regardless of where they live;
- 4.of the remaining eligible girls, those living inside the designated catchment area who are not Pupil Premium eligible, in rank order of total test score;
- 5.the remaining eligible girls, those living outside the catchment area and not Pupil Premium eligible, in rank order of total test score.
Ties are broken by straight-line distance to the school using the local authority GIS, then by supervised random allocation.
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 many children actually sit
Schools and councils publish some of this and not all of it. The numbers below came from Freedom of Information requests, which anyone can make, and each one links to the reply it came from.
428 children sat for Bournemouth School for Girls for 2025 entry, for 180 places, about 2.4:1. Source
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, 4 schools
The same test also covers these schools:
Three weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.