Getting into Torquay Girls' Grammar School
The Torbay Grammar Schools Entrance Test 11+, set by GL Assessment: 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 4 September 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 Torquay Girls' 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
Torquay Girls' Grammar sits the Torbay Grammar Schools Entrance Test, 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.
If she is ill on test day there is a catch-up sitting on Friday 25 September 2026, arranged in advance. A late registration with a good reason is tested in December 2026 and still counts in the first round.
How places are decided
192 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area. The 2027 policy has no residence rule at all: girls who reach the eligible score are ranked on test score alone, and distance is used only to separate two girls tied for the last place.
Entry is first gated by the test: only applicants achieving an eligible score go on the ranked eligible list, and children with an eligible score whose EHCP names the school are admitted.
3 ranked criteria decide the order. Tie-break for the last available place is straight-line proximity from the main School Reception front door to the applicant's home address using Devon's Geographical Information System, then supervised random allocation for applicants living equidistant.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked After Children and previously Looked After Children, including those who have ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted;
- 2.children on the eligible list who are entitled to Pupil Premium, including the Service Premium (covering children registered as eligible for free school meals now or at any point in the last six years, and children of serving or recently serving UK armed forces personnel or in receipt of a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or War Pensions Scheme);
- 3.rank order based on the total score achieved in the tests of children on the eligible list. No place counts or quotas are attached to any criterion.
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.
386 children sat for Torquay Girls' Grammar for 2026 entry, for 192 places, about 2.0:1. 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.
One sitting, 4 schools
The same test also covers these schools: We have pages for these so far:
Two weeks out is exactly when a timed mock helps.