Getting into Nonsuch High School for Girls
The Sutton Selective Eligibility Test and the second stage that follows it: what both involve 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 31 July 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.
6 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 Nonsuch High for Girls 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
Nonsuch High for Girls sits the Sutton SET 11+.
Both parts of the second stage must be passed, Maths and English separately. The total score is the second-stage marks added to half the SET aggregate, each part carrying equal weight.
How places are decided
210 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes, a circle: 5.25 km from the front door of the school in a straight line, which 125 of the 210 places are linked to. It is not a bar on applying, since 85 places go on score alone whatever your address.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked After and previously Looked After Children who achieve the pass mark or above in the entrance test, or whose score is up to 20% lower than the standardised pass mark for the SET and the minimum standardised pass marks in the NWSSEE Maths and NWSSEE English (evidence must reach GLT Admissions before the child sits the SET).
- 2.Places irrespective of address: 85 places on the basis of the score in the Entrance Test, in order of highest score, irrespective of home address.
- 3.Pupil Premium: up to 35 places for children eligible for Pupil Premium who achieve the pass mark or above, or whose score is up to 20% lower than the standardised pass marks, by rank order irrespective of address; any shortfall here rolls into criterion 4.
- 4.Catchment area: up to 125 places linked to the catchment circle, in order of highest score, for children whose permanent residence on 31 October 2026 is 5.25 km or less from the front door of the school in a straight line; this count is reduced by the places already offered under EHCP, Looked After and Pupil Premium criteria.
- 5.Any places still unfilled after criterion 4 (up to the PAN of 210) are offered in order of highest score, i.e. on criterion 2. Children of selective ability with an EHCP naming Nonsuch are allocated places before any of the above, and reduce the numbers available.
Ties for the final place under criteria 2, 3 or 4 are broken by straight-line proximity to the school, then by supervised random allocation.
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.
Across the whole area, 1,148 children sat the joint Sutton selection test for 2025 entry. 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, 6 schools
The same test also covers these schools: We have pages for these so far:
Common questions
The Selective Eligibility Test is shared: one sitting decides who is eligible at any of the six schools. Five of them then run their own second-stage papers a fortnight or so later. For 2027 entry the SET was Tuesday 15 September 2026, with second stages on Saturday 26 September (Nonsuch, Wallington High School for Girls) and Saturday 3 October (Wilson’s, Wallington County, Sutton Grammar). Greenshaw has no second stage.
Stage one is two multiple-choice papers, Maths and English, of 40 to 50 minutes each with a break between, and no Verbal or Non-Verbal Reasoning. Stage two is written rather than multiple choice, again Maths and English, around 45 minutes to an hour each, broadly on the Key Stage 2 curriculum.
None is published. The schools decide the standard after the papers are marked, and each school may set its own. Where a school ranks on the combined score of both stages, a strong stage two can still change the outcome.
No. You register once, through any of the six schools, and the schools then send invitations to the tests. Naming the schools you actually want still happens on the council application form, which closes on 31 October in the year of the test.
For 2027 entry, registration ran from 1 May to midnight on 31 July 2026, and no late registrations are accepted. That deadline falls in the school summer holidays, which is exactly why it catches families out.
The eligibility outcome comes in the week after the September test, and second-stage results are emailed before the October half term, both comfortably ahead of the 31 October council deadline.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.