Getting into Spalding Grammar School
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 Spalding 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, in one look
Spalding Grammar 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.
If more than 150 boys qualify, Spalding lifts the bar: the policy says the aggregate score of 220 will be raised in order to contain the number of admissions. The school has never published how high it went, so there is no number to aim at beyond clearing 220 comfortably.
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: A priority area rather than a strict catchment. If more than 150 boys qualify, those living in Spalding and the 26 named feeder parishes of South Lincolnshire are considered before boys living outside it.
Only boys may be admitted below the Sixth Form, and only boys who have reached the Lincolnshire county standard of 220 are considered at all.
That 220 is a minimum, not a promise: the school raises it if too many qualified boys apply.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.qualified children with an EHCP naming the school, allocated first, before the school allocates any other places;
- 2.qualified Looked After Children and Previously Looked After Children, including those who appear to have been in state care outside England and ceased to be in care as a result of being adopted;
- 3.if more than 150 qualify, boys living in Lincolnshire County Council's designated transport area for the school, defined as Spalding and the 26 Feeder Parishes of South Lincolnshire listed in Appendix 1, are considered before boys living outside it;
- 4.if numbers still exceed 150, the aggregate score of 220 is raised in order to contain the intake;
- 5.if fewer than 150 qualify from Spalding and the Feeder Parishes, qualified boys from outside are considered in score order, highest first, until 150 is reached. Tie-break: the boy living nearest the school by direct distance ("as the crow flies") from home postcode Post Office address point to the school's; if still tied for the last place, a lottery drawn by an independent person not employed by the school or working in the local authority Children's Services Directorate. The admission limit is 150 across five forms of entry; the only other place count in the document is the separate Year 12 external admission number of 60.
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.