Getting into Clitheroe Royal Grammar School
The Clitheroe Royal Grammar 11+, set by FSCE: 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 12.00 noon on Friday 4th 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 Clitheroe Royal 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
Clitheroe Royal Grammar sits the FSCE 11+.
FSCE (Future Stories Community Enterprise) is a not-for-profit test provider set up by Reading School, and a growing number of grammar schools now use it. Its papers stay close to the Key Stage 2 curriculum: English and Maths, not abstract reasoning puzzles. That makes it a fairer test, because what counts is what children have actually learned at school. FSCE publishes no past papers, so there is nothing to drill from, but you can still prepare properly. Steady work on KS2 English and Maths is what pays off, and that is exactly the ground PlusProgress practice covers.
FSCE publishes no past papers, which unsettles parents used to drilling them, but it also means there is nothing to drill and steady curriculum work is the whole strategy. The papers stay close to Key Stage 2 English and Maths, which is exactly the ground PlusProgress practice covers, adapting difficulty as your child improves rather than repeating what they can already do.
Two papers on the same morning: English and Maths in multiple choice, then English and Maths in short written answers. Content stops at the Key Stage 2 curriculum taught up to the end of Year 5. Your child may sit the examination once only.
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, two of them. The immediate catchment is a list of Ribble Valley civil parishes including Clitheroe, Whalley and Chatburn. The wider catchment is 12 Lancashire boroughs plus Blackburn with Darwen. An address counts as one or the other, never both.
Candidates must first reach the “required standard” in the entrance examination; only those who do are considered.
Candidates reaching the required standard who have a current EHCP naming Clitheroe Royal Grammar School are offered a place before the criteria are applied.
7 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after children, or previously looked after children who immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement or special guardianship order, or who appear to the school to have been in state care outside England and ceased to be so as a result of being adopted.
- 2.Candidates whose permanent residence is within the immediate catchment area and who qualify for Pupil Premium funding at the time of registering for the entrance examination.
- 3.Candidates whose permanent residence is within the immediate catchment area.
- 4.Candidates whose permanent residence is within the wider catchment area and who qualify for Pupil Premium funding at the time of registering.
- 5.Candidates whose permanent residence is within the wider catchment area.
- 6.Candidates whose permanent residence is outside the catchment area and who qualify for Pupil Premium funding at the time of registering.
- 7.Candidates whose permanent residence is outside the catchment area. Within categories 2 to 7 candidates are ranked by ability as demonstrated in the testing process, and equal scores are separated by straight-line proximity to the Chatburn Road site. No place counts or quotas are attached to any individual criterion.
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.
518 children sat for Clitheroe Royal Grammar for 2025 entry, for 180 places, about 2.9:1. 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.
Three weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.