Getting into Caistor Grammar School
The Caistor Grammar entrance tests, set and administered by the school: two Verbal Reasoning papers, what they involve 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 Friday 14 August 2026. 2 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 Caistor 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
Caistor Grammar sits the school 11+.
This school writes and marks its own 11+ papers rather than buying them from a national provider. That changes preparation in two ways. The format is whatever the school says it is, so its own admissions pages and any sample material it publishes are the only reliable guide to what comes up. And there is usually no bank of past papers to work through, because schools that set their own tests rarely release them. Steady work on the underlying skills counts for more here than drilling a particular format.
When a school writes its own papers there is rarely a bank of past papers, so the school’s own admissions pages and any sample material it publishes are the only reliable guide to the format. Preparation is therefore about the underlying skills rather than a particular paper’s habits, which is what adaptive practice across the four subjects is for.
When a category is oversubscribed, the higher Verbal Reasoning score decides who gets in, so the mark still matters above 220.
How places are decided
96 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes, a 6.5 mile straight line radius from the school. You need to be living inside it on 1 September 2026 to count as in-catchment, and in-catchment children are ranked ahead of everyone else who qualifies.
Places are first allocated to children with an EHCP naming the school; the policy states this happens before the criteria below are applied.
4 ranked criteria decide the order. Tie-break (5.4): highest VR score, then mean rank position, then highest individual score on the written test, then fewest mistakes on the written paper, then raw mark on the written paper, then raw mark overall; if two students are still tied both are admitted, and if more than two are tied an independent person draws a lottery to select one.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.criterion 5.1, qualified candidates who are in Public Care (Looked After Children), with the policy's full definition also covering previously looked after children who were adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order, and children who were in state care outside England and left it through adoption;
- 2.criterion 5.2, qualified candidates who are in-catchment, meaning principal residence within 6.5 miles in a straight line from the school's Post Office address, ranked within that category by higher Verbal Reasoning score if needed;
- 3.criterion 5.21, up to 12 places reserved in the main Year 7 round for students in receipt of Pupil Premium (Ever 6); in-catchment Pupil Premium pupils already placed under 5.2 count towards this, and out-of-catchment Pupil Premium pupils fill the remainder on the highest VR scores, with parents required to declare Pupil Premium status on the registration form or by email before the 14 August 2026 closing date;
- 4.criterion 5.3, everyone else who qualifies, ranked by higher Verbal Reasoning score.
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.
Common questions
Yes. Caistor sets two papers and both are standard reasoning papers: one written, one multiple choice. There is no Maths paper and no English paper at 11+. That makes it quite unlike most grammar school tests, and it changes what is worth practising.
Each paper lasts an hour in total, but only 45 minutes of that is the real test. Candidates first sit a 15 minute practice test so they know exactly what the format feels like before anything counts.
The school’s guidance shows hidden words inside sentences, letter codes, jumbled words, odd-one-out groups, letter and number sequences, connected word pairs and short logic puzzles. It says questions could be on a wide range of reasoning topics, which means that no revision is required.
The school publishes one: only children who attain a total score of 220 or more across the two tests will be eligible for entry. It describes the standard as designed to select the upper 25% of the ability range. Eligibility is not the same as a place, though, since there are 96 places and the oversubscription criteria decide them.
A week apart. For 2027 entry the first paper, standard written Verbal Reasoning, is on Saturday 19 September 2026, and the second, multiple choice Verbal Reasoning, is on Saturday 26 September 2026. Both are sat at the school.
Two weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.