The Birmingham grammar landscape
Birmingham has eight grammar schools. All eight select on the same entrance test, which the King Edward VI Foundation arranges on their behalf:
Bishop Vesey's Grammar School for Boys (Sutton Coldfield)
King Edward VI Aston School (boys)
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls
King Edward VI Five Ways School (co-ed)
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys
King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls
Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls
Six of the eight belong to the King Edward VI Foundation, which traces its origin to the establishment of King Edward's School on 2 January 1552. Bishop Vesey's and Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls sit outside the Foundation but inside the same consortium, and each sets its own admissions policy.
The Foundation also runs non-selective schools and two independent schools, King Edward's School and King Edward VI High School for Girls. The independent schools write and mark their own entrance exams, which are not the grammar consortium test and must be registered for separately. If your target is one of those two, the consortium timetable below does not apply to you.
The entrance test
GL Assessment provides the test. Candidates sit two papers, each about 60 minutes long including time for instructions and example questions. Each paper is split into smaller, individually timed sections covering English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics, and non-verbal and spatial reasoning. There is no separate English paper and no writing task anywhere in the test. Every question is multiple choice and answers go on a separate answer sheet.
Marks are weighted: 50% for English and verbal reasoning together, 25% for maths, 25% for non-verbal reasoning. Section scores are standardised for age, so a child born in August is not measured against an almost-Year-older classmate on raw marks.
Instructions, example questions and timings are delivered by audio. Candidates work only on the current section and cannot go back to an earlier one or move ahead. There is a short comfort break between the two papers.
For September 2027 entry the test is on Saturday 12 September 2026, with morning and afternoon sessions. Children are allocated a session and a venue based on home address, and cannot choose either. The venue is not necessarily a school you intend to apply to.
Registration and dates
Registration is through the West Midlands Grammar Schools site, not through individual schools. For the 2027-entry cycle it opened on 5 May 2026 and closed at 4pm on Friday 26 June 2026, with a 12 June deadline for reasonable-adjustment requests. Late registration is not accepted.
One sitting covers all 19 grammar schools in the West Midlands partnership, which includes schools in Shropshire, Walsall, Warwickshire and Wolverhampton alongside the Birmingham eight. Sharing results with those other areas requires ticking the relevant consent boxes on the registration form.
Results were scheduled for 16 October 2026, ahead of the 31 October 2026 local-authority preference deadline. Offers follow on 1 March 2027. Registering for the test is separate from applying for a school place: the place application goes through the council where you pay council tax.
Qualifying scores and priority
Seven of the eight schools do not publish a pass mark in advance. The six King Edward VI schools set both a qualifying score and a priority score, and their admission arrangements say only that the two figures will appear on the King Edward VI Foundation site before the entrance test. Bishop Vesey's works the same way.
Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls is the exception. Its admission arrangements for September 2027 state the figure up front: the qualifying score is 205. That number applies to that one school in that one year, and it tells you nothing about the threshold anywhere else on the list.
For the other seven, scores circulating on forums and tutoring sites usually come from an earlier cycle and are not a target.
Where a school is oversubscribed, geography and disadvantage shape who gets a place among children who qualify. The King Edward VI schools define a catchment area by electoral ward, apply the priority score within it, and reserve 25% of places for children attracting Pupil Premium. Bishop Vesey's instead uses distance zones measured from the school entrance, up to 12 miles, 12 to 20 miles, then beyond. Check the determined admission arrangements for each school you are considering, because a score that secures a place at one may not at another.
How tutoring usually focuses
English comprehension and verbal reasoning
These carry half the marks between them, so they deserve at least half the preparation. Comprehension skill and vocabulary range both respond to wider reading over months.
Maths and non-verbal reasoning
A quarter of the marks each. Maths draws on KS2 content, so arithmetic fluency and confident work with fractions and percentages matter. Non-verbal and spatial questions are not taught at school, and pattern recognition builds slowly with regular practice.
Time discipline and the answer sheet
Sections are individually timed and cannot be revisited, which changes how a child should work. Getting stuck on one question costs the rest of that section, not just that question. Practice under audio-paced timing, and practise recording answers on a separate multiple-choice answer sheet, since transcription errors cost marks a child has already earned.
Past papers
GL-style practice papers from commercial publishers match the question types closely. Past-paper work usually intensifies in the last few months before the September sitting.
Choosing a Birmingham 11+ tutor
Worth asking a candidate tutor before committing: whether they have prepared students for the specific school you are targeting and where those students ended up, and how well they know the GL question types across all four content areas rather than one or two.
One useful filter is whether a tutor will give you a realistic appraisal of which schools are reachable from your address, given how catchment and zone rules work here. Preparing for an unreachable target wastes time, and a tutor unwilling to say so is not the right tutor.