Getting into The North Halifax Grammar School
The North Halifax Grammar 11+, set by FSCE: 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 26 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 North Halifax 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
North Halifax Grammar sits the North Halifax Grammar / Crossley Heath joint FSCE test (Calderdale) 11+.
FSCE (Future Stories Community Enterprise) is a not-for-profit test provider set up by Reading School, and a growing number of grammar schools now use it. Its papers stay close to the Key Stage 2 curriculum: English and Maths, not abstract reasoning puzzles. That makes it a fairer test, because what counts is what children have actually learned at school. FSCE publishes no past papers, so there is nothing to drill from, but you can still prepare properly. Steady work on KS2 English and Maths is what pays off, and that is exactly the ground PlusProgress practice covers.
FSCE publishes no past papers, which unsettles parents used to drilling them, but it also means there is nothing to drill and steady curriculum work is the whole strategy. The papers stay close to Key Stage 2 English and Maths, which is exactly the ground PlusProgress practice covers, adapting difficulty as your child improves rather than repeating what they can already do.
Three papers, not two: two mixing Maths and English, then a creative writing paper that is only judged if your child has met the standard in the first two. Nothing is set beyond the Year 5 curriculum, and there is no Non-Verbal Reasoning.
How places are decided
180 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area. Children anywhere in Calderdale or in any other UK local authority may apply. Up to 10% of the 180 places are held for children living in the Illingworth and Mixenden or Ovenden wards; the rest go on combined merit in English and Maths.
Only children who reach the required standard in the test are eligible at all.
4 ranked criteria decide the order. Tie-break for children level with the last place offered: first siblings (including step, foster and adopted siblings living permanently at the same address) of children presently attending the school, then proximity of home to school measured in a straight line by the LA's GIS from the pupil's home to the closest designated school gate.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.children looked after, previously looked after or with special guardianship;
- 2.children attracting Pupil Premium (PP) and Service Premium (SP), with evidence required no later than the end of September in the year of application;
- 3.up to 10% of the 180 places to children living within the NHGS Priority Admissions Area (Crossley Heath has no Priority Admissions Area);
- 4.the remaining places offered according to combined order of merit for English and Mathematics until the school reaches its PAN.
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, 1,205 children sat the shared Calderdale entrance test 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.
Two weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.