Getting into Rugby High School
The West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test, shared across five areas: 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 30 June 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 Rugby High 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
Rugby High sits the Warwickshire 11+ Test (West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test), 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
150 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Two areas, one inside the other. The Eastern Area of Warwickshire is Rugby plus a long list of surrounding parishes. Around it sits the Priority Circle, a 10.004 mile radius from the Rugby Water Tower. Girls outside both can still be admitted on score.
Children with an EHCP naming the school must be admitted first, which reduces the places available.
10 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 Automatic Qualifying Score (AQS) or above, or between one and twenty marks below it, or the required minimum academic standard for the waiting list, whichever is lower.
- 2.Up to 30 places for children eligible for the Pupil Premium at the point of registering for the test who live in the Eastern Area of Warwickshire or the Priority Circle and who reach the AQS, or within twenty marks below it, or the waiting-list standard, whichever is lower (this 30 is shared with criterion 7).
- 3.Up to 5 places on the same basis for children eligible for the Service Premium living in the Eastern Area or the Priority Circle (this 5 is shared with criterion 8).
- 4.Children of staff who achieve the AQS, where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time of application.
- 5.Children living in the Eastern Area of Warwickshire who achieve the AQS.
- 6.Children living in the Priority Circle who achieve the AQS.
- 7.If the PAN has not been reached and fewer than 30 places went under criterion 2, the balance goes to Pupil Premium children living outside the catchment areas on the same score basis (criteria 2 and 7 together capped at 30).
- 8.The same balance rule for Service Premium children living outside the catchment areas (criteria 3 and 8 together capped at 5).
- 9.Children living outside the catchment areas who achieve the AQS.
- 10.Children living inside or outside the catchment areas who achieve the required minimum academic standard for admission (the waiting-list score).
Within every criterion the highest test score wins first; a tied score is broken in favour of children eligible for the Pupil Premium or Service Premium at the date of registering, then by shortest straight-line home-to-school distance, then by computerised 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, 2,926 children sat the Warwickshire 11+ in 2024. 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
No, and the two deadlines are four months apart. Registration closed at the end of June; the school application is not due until 31 October. Missing the June one cannot be fixed in October, and it is the commonest way a family loses a place.
There is no pass mark to aim at, and there never is one before the test. Each school sets its Automatic Qualifying Score after the papers are marked, against that year's cohort. Any number circulating beforehand belongs to a previous year.
Yes: proof of address, due by 31 December. Failing to supply it makes an otherwise on-time application late, which is a costly way to lose a place you had won.
Two papers of about an hour each, covering English, Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning and Maths across the four sections. Of each hour, roughly a quarter is spoken instructions and practice questions, so the testing time is shorter than the sitting time.
The same test is operated across the Warwickshire, Birmingham, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Shropshire grammar schools, so a family near a boundary may be able to use one sitting for schools in more than one area. Check each school's own arrangements before relying on it.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.