Getting into Wallington County Grammar School
The Sutton Selective Eligibility Test and the second stage that follows it: what both involve 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 31 July 2026. 1 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 Wallington County 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
Wallington County Grammar sits the Sutton SET 11+.
The second stage counts for more here than the shared test does. The total standardised score is two fifths from the SET and three fifths from the Second Stage papers.
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 as such. A boy may apply from anywhere, but 15 of the 150 places are held for those whose home address on 31 October is in SM1 to SM7, or in the KT4 8, CR0 4 or CR4 4 postcode sectors.
Before the criteria are applied, students with an EHCP naming the school who meet the combined qualifying standard are allocated a place, and the numbers below are reduced accordingly.
5 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked After Children, and previously Looked After Children, who meet the combined qualifying standard from the SET and the WCGS Second Stage Test.
- 2.Children of permanent members of staff who meet the combined qualifying standard, where the member of staff has been employed at WCGS for two or more consecutive years at the time the application is made, or was recruited to fill a vacant post with a demonstrable skill shortage.
- 3.Entrance Test: students who reach the combined qualifying standard, allocated in rank order of performance. Priorities 1, 2 and 3 together will not initially exceed 110 places.
- 4.Pupil Premium: up to 25 places for students who meet the combined qualifying standard and are eligible for Pupil Premium through their current school at the deadline for the Common Application Form (31 October), in rank order of performance; supporting evidence is only asked for after the child has been confirmed as reaching the pass mark, and any unfilled places on National Offer Day and thereafter go back to priority 3.
- 5.Sutton Postcodes: up to 15 places for students who meet the combined qualifying standard and whose permanent home address at 31 October is in a listed postcode, in rank order of performance, with unfilled places again going back to priority 3.
Ties are broken by straight-line home-to-school distance from the centre of the property to the front entrance of the school on the London Borough of Sutton's GIS, then by the drawing of lots by an independent Greenshaw Learning Trust officer.
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.
Across the whole area, 3,500 children sat the joint Sutton selection 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.
One sitting, 6 schools
The same test also covers these schools: We have pages for these so far:
Common questions
The Selective Eligibility Test is shared: one sitting decides who is eligible at any of the six schools. Five of them then run their own second-stage papers a fortnight or so later. For 2027 entry the SET was Tuesday 15 September 2026, with second stages on Saturday 26 September (Nonsuch, Wallington High School for Girls) and Saturday 3 October (Wilson’s, Wallington County, Sutton Grammar). Greenshaw has no second stage.
Stage one is two multiple-choice papers, Maths and English, of 40 to 50 minutes each with a break between, and no Verbal or Non-Verbal Reasoning. Stage two is written rather than multiple choice, again Maths and English, around 45 minutes to an hour each, broadly on the Key Stage 2 curriculum.
None is published. The schools decide the standard after the papers are marked, and each school may set its own. Where a school ranks on the combined score of both stages, a strong stage two can still change the outcome.
No. You register once, through any of the six schools, and the schools then send invitations to the tests. Naming the schools you actually want still happens on the council application form, which closes on 31 October in the year of the test.
For 2027 entry, registration ran from 1 May to midnight on 31 July 2026, and no late registrations are accepted. That deadline falls in the school summer holidays, which is exactly why it catches families out.
The eligibility outcome comes in the week after the September test, and second-stage results are emailed before the October half term, both comfortably ahead of the 31 October council deadline.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.