Getting into Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School
The Bexley Selection Test, the one 11+ the council runs for its four 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
The test was sat on 2 to 10 September 2026. Results are due early October 2026.
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 Chislehurst & Sidcup 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
Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar sits the Bexley Selection Test, set by Quest.
Quest Assessments writes 11+ papers for a number of schools and councils, and each one picks its own mix of subjects, so the papers differ from place to place. What stays the same is the approach. Questions are built on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, answers are recorded on an OMR sheet by drawing a line through the chosen box, and marks are standardised according to age in years and months. That last point has a consequence worth knowing: there is no fixed number of correct answers that qualifies, because the mark needed shifts with how old a child is on the day. Quest publishes free familiarisation booklets, and working through one is worth doing if only so the answer sheet itself is not a surprise.
Quest papers are built on the Key Stage 2 curriculum and marked from an answer sheet, with scores standardised by age in years and months, so there is no fixed number of correct answers that qualifies. Two things follow. Work the underlying curriculum rather than chasing a target mark, and make sure the answer sheet itself is not a surprise on the day: download Quest’s own free familiarisation booklet. PlusProgress practice covers the curriculum ground adaptively and reports progress as a standardised age score, so the number at home means the same thing as the number the school sends.
How places are decided
192 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area. Any child deemed selective may apply from anywhere. Once the ranked categories are filled, proximity to the school decides the rest.
Deemed selective in the Bexley Selection Test first. Then: looked-after and previously looked-after children; up to 12 Pupil Premium places in rank order of distance; children identified by Bexley as achieving one of the highest 180 scores; siblings in Years 7 to 11 at the time of admission; then proximity to the school.
Taken from the school’s own determined admission arrangements. The full document is linked under sources.
One sitting, 4 schools
The same test also covers these schools:
Common questions
There is no fixed pass mark, and Bexley says so plainly. The council and the four headteachers agree the selective standard each year after seeing how that cohort did, and about 30% of candidates are deemed selective. For scale, the council publishes that the average total weighted age-standardised score is 200 and about two thirds of children score between 170 and 230.
All four schools give priority to children the council identifies as achieving one of the 180 highest scores in the test, and Bexley Grammar’s policy says those children are guaranteed a place. So being deemed selective gets your child considered, and the top 180 is what usually decides the offer. Below that, distance from the school does a lot of the work.
In the first full week of September, at the start of Year 6. For 2027 entry, children whose own primary acts as a test centre sat between 2 and 10 September 2026, and everyone else at one of the grammar schools between 7 and 10 September 2026.
No. Registration only books the test with the council. You still name the schools you want on the common application form, which closes on 31 October in the year of the test.
For 2027 entry, registration closed at midnight on 31 March 2026, and the council is blunt about it: late registrations will not be accepted and there is no appeal process. The next opportunity is the following year’s round.
Early October, before the council application deadline at the end of that month, so you can name preferences knowing whether your child was deemed selective.
A format-matched mock shows where they genuinely stand.