Getting into Lancaster Girls' Grammar School
The Lancaster Girls' 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 is open, and it closes on 12 noon on Wednesday 9 September 2026. Then: 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 Lancaster Girls' 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
Lancaster Girls' 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.
There is no fixed pass mark: it is set each year on how that cohort performed, so it moves up and down. Girls who are looked after, previously looked after or eligible for Pupil Premium can be considered up to 5% below it. She may sit the test only once.
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: No catchment area. Any girl who reaches the pass mark is considered wherever she lives. Living in the City of Lancaster district only moves her up the order when more girls pass than there are places, and there is no sibling rule at all.
There is no catchment area.
Every applicant is eligible wherever she lives, provided she achieves the Pass Mark in the 11+ entrance test; only girls who achieve the Pass Mark are considered for a place.
Applicants with an EHCP naming the school who qualify through the entrance test are admitted before other places are allocated, and the number of places available to other applicants is reduced accordingly.
6 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after and previously looked after children who have achieved the Pass Mark or who score up to and including 5% below the Pass Mark.
- 2.Applicants whose home address is located in the City of Lancaster at the time of application who are eligible for Pupil Premium and who have achieved the Pass Mark or who score up to and including 5% below the Pass Mark.
- 3.Applicants whose home address is in the City of Lancaster at the time of application.
- 4.Children of staff members employed by Lancaster Girls' Grammar School, where the staff member has been employed for at least two years at the time of application.
- 5.Applicants whose home address is outside of the City of Lancaster who are eligible for the Pupil Premium and who have achieved the Pass Mark or who score a maximum of 5% below the Pass Mark.
- 6.All other applicants, meaning everyone who achieved the Pass Mark and is not included in a criterion above. The City of Lancaster appears only inside criteria b and c: it is a priority tier that decides the ORDER of offers among girls who have already qualified, and living outside it never makes a girl ineligible. There is no sibling criterion at any point. No place counts or quotas are attached to any individual criterion. Within each criterion places are allocated by rank order of test score; ties are broken by straight-line distance from the home address to the school address point, with those living closer having higher priority, and equal distances by random lottery in front of a person independent of the school. Where twins, triplets or higher multiple births apply to the same year group at the same time and at least one gains a place, all are offered a place. The same lettered list also governs sixth form entry, which is why each limb of the policy text also mentions the MAEC (Minimum Academic Entry Criteria); MAEC is the Year 12 route and has nothing to do with Year 7 admission.
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.
318 children sat for Lancaster Girls' Grammar for 2025 entry, for 145 places, about 2.2:1. 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.