Getting into Haberdashers' Adams School
The West Midlands Grammar Schools: Shropshire, Walsall and Wolverhampton (SWW) 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 4pm on Friday, 26th 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 Haberdashers' Adams 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
Haberdashers' Adams sits the West Midlands Grammar Schools: Shropshire, Walsall and Wolverhampton (SWW), 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.
On the consortium registration form you must tick SWW, or he will not be considered here even if you name the school on your council form. For September 2026 entry the school says the requirement was 205, and 195 for Pupil Premium.
How places are decided
135 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area. Instead, boys already on roll at one of 36 named local primaries by the registration deadline are ranked ahead of the open group. Everyone else is ranked on the test result, with straight-line distance used only to separate equal scores.
8 ranked criteria decide the order, across 2 lists.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.looked after children and previously looked after children, including children adopted from state care outside England;
- 2.children recorded as in receipt of pupil premium or service premium funding in the October 2025 school census, who must submit the Pupil Premium Form by the registration deadline, and who need a qualifying score no lower than 5% below the general qualifying score;
- 3.children on roll at one of the 36 designated primary schools listed in the policy by the registration deadline, allocated on test scores if that group alone exceeds the places;
- 4.rank order of the entrance test result, with straight-line distance from the school as the tie-break.
- 1.looked after and previously looked after children;
- 2.children of UK Armed Forces members who qualify for MoD boarding-fee assistance;
- 3.children with a boarding need as defined in the policy;
- 4.rank order in the entrance test, tie-broken by distance. All boarding applicants and their parents are interviewed. The policy states no residence-based criterion and no sibling criterion for Year 7.
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.
Across the whole area, 355 children sat the shared entrance test in 2024. They were not all applying here: that number covers every school that shares the test. 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, 5 schools
The same test also covers these schools: We have pages for these so far:
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.