Getting into St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School
The Slough Consortium 11+, one GL test shared by the four Slough 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 5 June 2026. 2 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 St Bernard's Catholic 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
St Bernard's Catholic Grammar sits the Slough Consortium, 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.
Reaching 111 only gets your child considered. What ranks them is the faith category, ten of them in order, and within each one Pupil Premium comes before the test score.
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: No catchment area and no distance rule for general admission. Proximity is used only to separate children tied for the last place. One category does require living in Slough and attending one of four named Catholic primary schools.
Places are only considered for children who score 111 or above in the Slough Consortium 11+ tests.
Children with an EHCP naming the school are admitted first, and the places available to others are reduced accordingly.
10 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after children and previously looked after children.
- 2.Practising baptised Catholic children with a priest's reference or a Certificate of Catholic Practice.
- 3.Other baptised Catholic children.
- 4.Baptised or dedicated children of other Christian churches with a religious leader's reference.
- 5.Baptised or dedicated children of other Christian churches.
- 6.Children from other faiths who attend a Slough Catholic primary school within St Peter's Pastoral Area (Holy Family, Our Lady of Peace, St Anthony's, St Ethelbert's) and live in Slough with a permanent home address.
- 7.Children from other faiths who attend one of those same four primary schools (without the Slough residence requirement).
- 8.Children of other faiths with a religious leader's reference.
- 9.Children of other faiths.
- 10.Any other children. Within each of those ten categories the order is set first by whether the child is currently in receipt of Pupil Premium (or Service Premium), and then by the child's score in the selective tests. A remaining tie for the last place or places is settled by proximity to the school, measured in a straight line from the school's main entrance to the front door of the home using Slough's GIS, and if still tied, by drawing lots. No quota or number of places is attached to any individual category.
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.
What the official figures show
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, 4,970 children sat the Slough consortium test for 2025 entry. They were not all applying here: that number covers every school that shares the test. Source
Over 7 years we have figures for, 525 families appealed and 127 won, about 24%.
- 2025 entry: 118 heard, 29 upheld
- 2024 entry: 82 heard, 12 upheld
- 2023 entry: 83 heard, 17 upheld
- 2022 entry: 80 heard, 34 upheld
- 2021 entry: 83 heard, 28 upheld
- 2020 entry: 35 heard, 5 upheld
An appeal is a hearing where you explain to an independent panel why your child should have a place. How appeals work, and the figures for every school
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, 4 schools
The same test also covers these schools:
Common questions
No, and this catches families out every year. Registration only asks for a seat in the test. You still have to name the schools you want on your council application form by 31 October 2026, in your genuine order of preference.
111 makes your child eligible for consideration at any of the four schools. It does not win a place. Each school then applies its own criteria, and at three of the four your address does much of the deciding, so treat 111 as the door rather than the destination.
No. One sitting at one of the four schools counts for all of them (Saturday 19 September 2026 for 2027 entry).
Two papers of roughly an hour each, with a mix of Verbal, Numerical and Non-Verbal questions rather than one subject per paper. GL Assessment marks them and standardises the scores, so age is taken into account. Some familiarisation material from the test provider is published on the consortium schools’ websites.
Up to 25% extra per paper may be granted for recognised special educational needs. It has to be requested during registration with professionally supported evidence, and the consortium sets an evidence deadline a week after registration closes (12 June for 2027 entry).
Mid-October, through the consortium portal, ahead of the 31 October council deadline. Selective schools have to tell parents the outcome before that deadline, which is why the whole timetable runs the way it does.
Two weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.
PlusProgress mocks return a standardised score, the same kind of number the consortium reports, so you can see where they stand against that 111 well before September.