Getting into The Tiffin Girls' School
The Tiffin Girls’ two-stage entrance test, set and marked by the school: 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 October 2026 test closed on 12.00 noon, Tuesday 1 September 2026. 3 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.
6 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 Tiffin Girls' 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
Tiffin Girls' sits the school 11+.
This school does not sit a single off-the-shelf 11+. It uses papers from more than one source, typically its own alongside a commercial provider’s, and the combination is set out in its admissions arrangements. Because the mix belongs to this school, general 11+ practice books only take you so far. The school’s own guidance on what each stage contains is the thing to read first, and it is usually the only place the weighting between papers is explained.
A school combining papers from more than one source rewards breadth: your child needs to be steady across everything the mix contains rather than sharp in one part of it. Read the school’s own description of each stage first, because the weighting between papers is usually explained nowhere else, then practise across all four subjects rather than the favourite one.
A 10 per cent leeway is added to the standardised mark, at each stage separately, for girls who are or have been looked after and for Pupil Premium girls living in the Designated Area. It is applied once even if she qualifies both ways.
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: Yes, a Designated Area of 44 postcode districts: most of KT1 to KT19, TW1 to TW17, SW13 to SW20, W3 to W13, plus SM4 and CR4. Nested inside it is the Inner Area, 13 electoral wards in Kingston and Richmond.
Only girls who made a valid application are considered, which the policy defines as four conditions all being met: registering for the Stage One Test via the online Supplementary Information Form by the SIF Deadline, being invited by the school to Stage Two after Stage One, naming the school on the home local authority application, and attending the Stage Two Test.
Places are then allocated in this order.
3 ranked criteria decide the order. Tie-breaks for the 180th place run in this order: a Looked After or Previously Looked After girl, then a girl whose school currently receives pupil premium funding for her, then the girl living nearest the school, measured in a straight line by Ordnance Survey grid reference to the nearest school gate, and finally independently verified random allocation.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.A girl who has an EHCP naming The Tiffin Girls’ School specifically, who must still have demonstrated academic ability through the school’s test procedure.
- 2.Then, by rank order of combined mark within each category in turn: 2a. Currently Looked After Children and Previously Looked After Children whose combined mark is at or above the 350th ranked mark of all applicants who sat the Stage Two Test. 2b. Up to 60 girls whose combined mark is at or above that same 350th ranked mark, taken in this internal order: first girls living in the Inner Area or the Designated Area who qualify for Pupil Premium funding at the SIF Deadline, then girls living in the Inner Area.
- 3.All remaining places, allocated on 1 March 2027 in rank order of combined mark: first girls whose permanent residence is inside the Designated Area, then girls whose permanent residence is outside the Designated Area.
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.
The stage one sitting figures the school has released, 149, 147, 189 and 184 for 2016 to 2019 entry, count inner area candidates only. They are not the size of the whole field.
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
An English paper and a Maths paper, each lasting under an hour with a short break between them. English is multiple choice. Maths mixes multiple choice with questions where your daughter writes a numerical answer into digit columns. Everything is recorded on an OMR sheet and marked by computer.
For 2027 entry it runs in four sessions across two days, Thursday 1 and Friday 2 October 2026. The school allocates the date and cannot take requests for a particular one.
English and Maths again, similar in length, but with handwritten answers. The English paper includes a reading comprehension task and a creative writing task. The school sets and marks these papers itself, and no marks are given for workings on the Maths.
Everyone who sits stage two and has named the school is ranked on a Combined Mark: 60% English and 40% Maths. The English mark comes from stage two alone; the Maths mark combines stage two and stage one in a ratio of 3 to 1. Girls in the designated area are ranked above those outside it, whatever the score.
A great deal. The catchment has an Inner Area of 13 electoral wards and a Designated Area of 44 postcode areas, and since 2014 offers have gone only to residents of the catchment. Of the 180 places, up to 60 can go to Inner Area girls reaching a mark equal to or above the 350th highest.
No. The school does not publish them and changes the number of questions, the time limits and the question types each year. It also runs no mock tests of its own and does not endorse any provider’s papers. The tests assume the Year 5 National Curriculum in English and Maths and nothing beyond it.
Three weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.