Getting into The King John School
The King John 11+, set by GL Assessment: what it involves and what to do next, for entry in September 2027.
King John is a comprehensive, so there is no pass mark. Up to 15% of places go on a 30 minute GL Non-Verbal Reasoning test at the school, open only to children living in an SS postcode. Children inside the catchment area do not need to sit it.
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 October 2026 test closed on midnight on Monday 7 September 2026. 4 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 King John 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
King John sits the GL Assessment 11+.
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
350 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes. Children in the priority admission area are ranked ahead of the test route, so the test mainly matters to families outside it. The area is published only as a map, so check your postcode on Essex County Council's catchment area finder.
The document sets out six criteria.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after children and previously looked after children, including children who appear to the admission authority to have been in state care outside England and who left that care through adoption.
- 2.Children living in the priority admission area for the school, or living in an SS postcode area, who have a sibling on roll at the school at the time of application.
- 3.Children living in the priority admission area for the school.
- 4.Children of staff working at the school, where the member of staff has been employed on a permanent contract for at least two years at the time of application, or was recruited to fill a post in a shortage area, and is still working at the school on 1 March (national offer day). If the school fills within any of these criteria, places inside that criterion are allocated by shortest safe walking distance from home to the school. Only if places remain unfilled after criteria 1 to 4 does the school move on to:
- 5.up to 15 per cent of the published admission limit allocated on the results of a test of general ability, open only to children living in an SS postcode, with higher scorers given priority and ties broken by distance; and (6) any remaining places by shortest walking distance from home to the school's main reception on Shipwrights Drive, measured electronically along recognised roads and footpaths using Ordnance Survey based software. A tie on exact distance is settled by drawing names out of a hat.
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.
Four weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.