Getting into King Edward VI Grammar School (Louth)
The Lincolnshire consortium 11+, one test shared by the county's 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
Registration for the September 2026 test closed on Tuesday 31 March 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 King Edward VI Grammar (Louth) 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
King Edward VI Grammar (Louth) sits the Lincolnshire Consortium of Grammar Schools (LCGS), 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.
Both papers are sat at the school itself, in the Old Sports Hall, usually on the mornings of the third and fourth Saturdays in September. Exact dates are confirmed once you have registered, and you register with the school rather than with the consortium.
How places are decided
145 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes, of a kind. Children who live in the school's free bus travel zone, or who attend one of 25 named primaries from Binbrook to Wragby, are ranked ahead of other qualified children. The zone is a county map, not a postcode list, so ask the school.
Only children who have passed the 11+ are offered places (“Offers are only made to those students who have passed the 11+ test.”).
Children with an EHCP naming the school are allocated first.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after children and all previously looked after children;
- 2.Siblings of children who will still be attending King Edward VI Grammar School when the child is due to start, the school gives priority only to siblings who have passed the test and who will have a sibling at the school on 1 September in the year of entrance;
- 3.Twins (or multiple births) who have both passed the test for the same year of entry;
- 4.Eligible children who are in Year 6 and live within the traditional catchment area or are attending one of the named primary schools listed in Appendices A and B, and if this category is itself oversubscribed those applicants are ranked according to their test scores;
- 5.Remaining candidates, ranked according to their test scores. Tie-breaks, in order: Lincolnshire County Council’s nearest home address test, then, if children are still tied for the last place, an independent lottery drawn by a person not employed by the school or working in the local authority’s Children’s Services Directorate. No place counts or quotas are attached to any criterion, though Appendix B says “We anticipate that approximately a third of places each year will go to children from other primary schools, who have passed the entrance test and live-in North-East Lincolnshire.”
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.
One sitting, 13 schools
The same test also covers these schools: We have pages for these so far:
Common questions
No, and this is the mistake that costs Lincolnshire families places. The county says it plainly: registering for or sitting a test is not an application, and qualifying is neither an application nor a guarantee. You register with a grammar school in the spring of Year 5, then apply separately to your home council by 31 October. A child who scores 220 and is never named on the council form gets nothing on offer day.
It is a qualifying floor, not a target and not a place. It is set to identify roughly the most able quarter of the age group, and what happens above it is decided by each school's own criteria. Twelve schools share the floor and none of them shares its oversubscription rules.
A Verbal Reasoning paper and a Non-Verbal Reasoning and Spatial awareness paper, sat about a week apart rather than on one day. Both come from GL Assessment, both are answered by shading boxes on a separate sheet, and there is no English paper and no writing task.
Either in their own primary school or at the grammar school they registered with, depending on the area. The consortium confirms the arrangement after registration.
Results are emailed to parents at midday on the published results day in October, and to primary schools that afternoon, comfortably before the 31 October council deadline.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.