Lincolnshire 11+ tutors and Lincs grammar test prep

The Lincolnshire 11+ in plain English

There are 15 selective schools in Lincolnshire. Fourteen of them share one test through the Lincolnshire Consortium of Grammar Schools, and Caistor Grammar School sets its own separate papers on its own dates. A child sits one or the other, not both.

The consortium test is supplied by GL Assessment. It is two papers: verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning and spatial awareness. There is no English paper and no maths paper. Both are multiple-choice, with answers shaded on an optical mark reading sheet. Registration runs through an individual grammar school while the child is in Year 5, and the papers are sat in September of Year 6. Application for a school place is a separate step through your home local authority, with the national deadline of 31 October.

The qualifying standard is a total standardised score of 220 across the two papers, set to identify the most able 25% of the age group in the selective areas of Lincolnshire. Scores are standardised with an age allowance. Reaching 220 does not by itself secure a place at any particular school: each school then applies its own oversubscription criteria.

Paper format

Two papers, sat a week apart. For entry in September 2027 the verbal reasoning paper is on Friday 11 or Saturday 12 September 2026 and the non-verbal reasoning and spatial awareness paper on Friday 18 or Saturday 19 September 2026. Which day a child sits depends on the area: some test in their own primary school on the Friday, others at the grammar school on the Saturday.

The verbal reasoning paper is preceded by a ten-minute preliminary practice test. The non-verbal reasoning and spatial awareness paper is divided into sections, each with a few practice questions that are not marked. The number of sections varies from year to year. The consortium describes these as tests of potential rather than attainment, so there is no curriculum content to revise. Familiarisation papers go to Lincolnshire feeder primary schools, and GL Assessment's multiple-choice practice packs are the format the consortium points parents to.

Caistor Grammar runs a different assessment: two verbal reasoning papers, one standard written and one multiple-choice, sat on 19 and 26 September 2026 for September 2027 entry. There is no non-verbal component. Each Caistor session lasts an hour, made up of a fifteen-minute practice test and a forty-five-minute real test. Caistor also applies a qualifying score of 220 and its own catchment rule of 6.5 miles from the school.

The Lincolnshire grammar schools

The 14 consortium schools are Boston Grammar School, Boston High School, Bourne Grammar School, Carre's Grammar School in Sleaford, Kesteven and Sleaford High School, Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, The King's School in Grantham, King Edward VI Grammar School in Louth, Queen Elizabeth's Grammar in Alford, Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Horncastle, Queen Elizabeth's High School in Gainsborough, Skegness Grammar School, Spalding Grammar School and Spalding High School. Caistor Grammar School is the fifteenth selective school and tests separately.

Two schools are sometimes wrongly grouped with these. Lincoln Christ's Hospital School is non-selective, and Sir John Nelthorpe School in Brigg is non-selective and sits in North Lincolnshire rather than Lincolnshire. Neither uses the 11+. The Stamford Endowed Schools are independent and fee-paying, and run their own entrance assessments.

Catchments differ school by school, and the county's size means distance is a real constraint on which schools are practical.

Registration deadlines vary by school

Registration is handled by the individual grammar school, not the county. For the September 2027 cycle the consortium opened registration on 7 January 2026 and published a deadline of 31 March 2026 for forms to be returned to the individual grammar schools.

Individual schools then vary that date in practice, and several run later. Queen Elizabeth's High School in Gainsborough closed on 20 March 2026 and extended to 15 May. Bourne Grammar stayed open until midnight on 30 June 2026. Caistor Grammar, which is outside the consortium, set its own deadline of 14 August 2026. Check the deadline with the specific school you plan to register at, well before you need it.

A child may only sit the consortium test once in the academic year, and the result is shared between the consortium schools, so registering at one school does not limit which of them you can later apply to.

Typical prep arc for Lincolnshire

Because the papers are reasoning-only, prep looks different from regions that test English and maths. Early work is about vocabulary breadth and reading, which is what verbal reasoning draws on, alongside comfort with pattern, symmetry and rotation for the non-verbal paper.

The middle stretch is question types worked through one at a time, since both papers reward recognising a format quickly rather than reasoning it out from scratch. The final months are timed papers, with attention to the optical mark sheet: shading answers accurately under time pressure is a skill of its own, and the papers are built with an element of time pressure so few candidates finish everything.

The consortium's own view is that additional commercial preparation beyond the familiarisation papers is unnecessary and may be unhelpful, and it does not endorse tutoring. Families weigh that differently, and a tutor is most useful where a child is close to the standard or unfamiliar with reasoning question formats.

Choosing a tutor

Worth asking whether the tutor has prepared candidates for the Lincolnshire consortium papers recently, and whether they understand that the test is verbal and non-verbal reasoning only. A tutor pitching English comprehension and maths practice for the Lincolnshire 11+ is working from the wrong format. If you are targeting Caistor, ask specifically about its written verbal reasoning paper, which is a different task from the multiple-choice format.

Given the county's geography, online tutoring is often the more practical option, and it opens up tutors elsewhere who work with GL Assessment reasoning papers.