Getting into Queen Elizabeth's High School, Gainsborough
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 High, Gainsborough 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 High, Gainsborough 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.
All testing is at Queen Elizabeth's itself, on Saturdays, rather than in your child's own primary, and the school runs two familiarisation days there first, one for Verbal Reasoning and one for Non-Verbal.
How places are decided
188 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No mapped catchment, but a 9 mile line drawn by road. Children within 9 miles driving distance count as local children and are ranked nearest first. Those further out are not shut out: they are ranked by 11+ score instead.
All applicants must first qualify in the 11+ testing arrangements.
Places for children with an EHCP naming the school are allocated first.
6 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after children and all previously looked after children, including those who appear to have been in state care outside England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted.
- 2.Children with a brother or sister on roll at Queen Elizabeth's High School at the time of application.
- 3.Children of staff employed at the school.
- 4.Children for whom the school is 9 miles or less from the home address by driving distance, referred to as 'local children'; within this criterion priority goes to the child living closest by driving distance, and ties for the last place are broken by highest aggregate standardised 11+ score, then closest by straight-line distance, then a lottery drawn by an independent person.
- 5.Children registered as Ever6FSM at the time of application.
- 6.Children for whom the school is more than 9 miles from the home address by driving distance; within this criterion children are ranked by aggregate standardised 11+ score in decreasing order, with ties broken by closest driving distance, then closest straight-line distance, then a lottery drawn by an independent person. If categories A, B, C or E are oversubscribed the tiebreaker is driving distance. Brothers and sisters in the same year group who have all met the qualifying standard are considered as one application, and the school may go above its admission number to admit them all unless that would make the class too large.
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 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, 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.