Getting into St Anselm's College
The St Anselm’s College entrance examination, set and marked by the College: 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 Friday 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.
4 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 St Anselm's College 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
St Anselm's College sits the College 11+.
This school writes and marks its own 11+ papers rather than buying them from a national provider. That changes preparation in two ways. The format is whatever the school says it is, so its own admissions pages and any sample material it publishes are the only reliable guide to what comes up. And there is usually no bank of past papers to work through, because schools that set their own tests rarely release them. Steady work on the underlying skills counts for more here than drilling a particular format.
When a school writes its own papers there is rarely a bank of past papers, so the school’s own admissions pages and any sample material it publishes are the only reliable guide to the format. Preparation is therefore about the underlying skills rather than a particular paper’s habits, which is what adaptive practice across the four subjects is for.
Boys granted special access arrangements sit on a separate day, provisionally Saturday 19 September 2026, and the supporting evidence has to reach the College by the 31 July registration deadline.
How places are decided
156 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area, and nothing stops a boy anywhere from sitting the exam. Where you live counts only inside two of the faith criteria, which use a relevant area of Wirral, Cheshire West and Chester, and anywhere within 10 miles of the College.
Places first go to boys who reach the required standard in the entrance assessment (English, Mathematics and Verbal Reasoning); a boy who reaches the required standard and has an EHCP naming the College is automatically offered a place.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Baptised Catholic Looked After and Previously Looked After boys.
- 2.Baptised Catholic boys living in the relevant area (defined as Wirral, Cheshire West and Chester and any other areas within 10 miles of the College).
- 3.All other Looked After and Previously Looked After boys.
- 4.Baptised Christian, non-Catholic boys living in the relevant area.
- 5.Non-baptised boys whose parents wish them to have a Catholic education. Within every one of those categories, priority is given to boys in receipt of Free School Meals at the time of application (documentary proof required). If a category is itself oversubscribed, priority within it is by rank order of performance in the assessment and testing procedures; ties are broken by distance from home to the College, nearest first. No place quotas or numeric caps are stated for any category. Verbatim: "1. Baptised Catholic Looked After and Previously Looked After Boys, 2. Baptised Catholic Boys, living in the relevant area (defined as Wirral, Cheshire West and Chester and any other areas within 10 miles of the College). 3. All other Looked After and Previously Looked After Boys, 4. Baptised Christian, non-Catholic boys, living in the relevant area. 5. Non-baptised boys whose parents wish them to have a Catholic education."
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.
571 children sat for St Anselm's College in 2024, for 156 places, about 3.7:1. 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.
Common questions
Three papers, English, Maths and Verbal Reasoning, each an hour in length. Every applicant sits all three. There is no second stage and no automatic qualification from anywhere else.
The College publishes its bars, which is unusual and helpful. Maths and English each need 55%, and Verbal Reasoning needs a standardised score of 118. For Year 7 entry the policy says a boy must achieve the pass mark in two of the three papers.
No. Wirral Council’s assessment covers the non-Catholic grammar schools. St Anselm’s runs its own examination on its own date, so a boy applying to St Anselm’s and to a council-assessed grammar sits two separate tests.
English and Maths sample papers are on the College website. The College does not hold sample Verbal Reasoning papers and points families to ordinary published VR practice material instead.
No. There are 156 places. A boy who reaches the required standard and has an EHCP naming the College is admitted first. If more boys than that reach the standard, the College’s published Catholic oversubscription criteria decide the order.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.