Getting into Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Alford
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 Queen Elizabeth's Grammar, Alford 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
Queen Elizabeth's Grammar, Alford 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.
How places are decided
84 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes, of a kind. Priority goes to the designated free transport area, the school's traditional catchment, which is published as a map rather than a postcode list. A lower priority covers children who live outside it but attend a primary school inside it.
All applicants must first reach the required standardised score of 220.
Places for children with an EHCP naming the school, who have achieved the required score, are allocated first.
9 ranked criteria decide the order. Within the criterion where capacity runs out, pupils are ranked by 11+ score and admitted in descending order; ties are broken by straight-line distance (calculated to three decimal places by Lincolnshire County Council from Post Office Address Point to Post Office Address Point), then by random allocation carried out by an independent person.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Pupils who have reached the required score and who are or have previously been in public care.
- 2.Pupils living within the designated free transport area (the traditional catchment area) who have a sibling at the school at the time of application who will still be attending at the time of admission, and who have reached the required score.
- 3.Pupils living in the designated free transport area who have reached the qualifying standard and who are eligible for pupil premium.
- 4.Pupils living within the designated free transport area who have reached the required score.
- 5.Pupils who do not live within the designated free transport area but attend a primary school within it, who have a sibling at the school and who reach the required score.
- 6.Pupils who do not live within the designated free transport area but attend one of those primary schools and who reach the required score.
- 7.Pupils not living in the designated free transport area or attending a primary school in it who have a sibling at the school and have reached the required score.
- 8.Pupils not living in the designated free area who have reached the qualifying standard and who are eligible for pupil premium or the service premium.
- 9.Pupils not living in the designated free transport area or attending a primary school in it who reach the required score. The determined arrangements name the primary schools inside the area, at criteria 5 and 6, as “Alford, Huttoft, Mablethorpe, Sutton-on-Sea, Theddlethorpe, Willoughby and Withern”; the school’s website publishes a different list, so see the catchment note before relying on either. There are no quotas or fixed place counts attached to any 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.
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.