How Competitive Is Your Grammar School? Understanding 11+ Odds by Region

At some point in every 11+ family's journey, a number lands like a stone. A neighbour mentions that the grammar school up the road had "thousands of applications" for a modest number of places. A forum thread quotes odds that sound closer to a lottery than an exam. And you are left wondering whether your child — bright, hard-working, nine years old — is walking into a fair test or a stampede. The honest answer is that it depends almost entirely on where you live. England's grammar schools do not all play the same admissions game; they play at least two very different ones, and knowing which one your target school plays should shape everything about how you prepare.

The landscape: 163 schools, spread very unevenly

England has around 163 state grammar schools, and no new ones have been permitted since 1998, so the map is essentially frozen. What that map shows is not a national system but a patchwork. Kent runs the largest selective system in the country, with more than 30 grammar schools and a county-wide test. Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire retain broadly selective systems of their own. A cluster of London boroughs — Sutton, Kingston, Bexley, Barnet among them — keep a handful of famous grammars surrounded by comprehensives. Birmingham has its King Edward VI foundation schools. And vast stretches of the country have no grammar schools at all, which is precisely why the ones near big-city populations attract such extraordinary demand.

This unevenness is the single most important fact in 11+ planning. The same phrase — "my child is sitting the 11+" — describes two utterly different experiences depending on the postcode.

Two different games: super-selective versus wholly selective

The super-selectives: a ranking, not a pass mark

In areas where a few grammar schools serve an enormous population — Birmingham, Kingston, Sutton, parts of north London — the test functions as a ranking. There is no meaningful sense in which a child "passes"; there is only where they finish relative to everyone else, and places go to the top scorers until they run out. Figures of eight to fifteen applicants per place are commonly reported for these schools, and some have loose or non-existent catchment rules, which draws candidates from a very wide radius. The competition is real, and it is intense.

The wholly selective counties: a threshold, then a place

Kent, Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire work differently. Because grammar places exist at scale, the test operates closer to a threshold: it is pitched so that a substantial slice of the local cohort — commonly reported as around a quarter — can qualify, and a qualifying child has a genuine likelihood of securing a grammar place somewhere sensible, even if a specific favourite school remains oversubscribed. Pass rates are structurally higher not because the children are cleverer but because the system is built to admit far more of them. If you are weighing up the biggest of these systems, our Kent 11+ guide walks through how the Kent Test and its headteacher assessment route actually work.

Essex sits somewhere between the two models: a consortium of highly regarded grammars using its own CSSE papers, with fierce competition for the best-known schools. We cover the detail in our complete guide to the Essex CSSE 11+.

What "applicants per place" actually means — and what it doesn't

Here is the part the scary headlines never explain. Applications-per-place figures are a temperature reading, not a probability. Three things inflate them.

• Double counting. One child typically sits for, and applies to, several schools. The same strong candidate appears in four or five schools' totals; the same unsuccessful candidate does too. The pool of actual children is much smaller than the sum of applications.
• Casual entries. In test-first systems, many families sit the exam speculatively, with modest preparation, to see what happens. They swell the denominator without changing the contest at the sharp end.
• Priority criteria. Distance, sibling links and catchment bands mean the real competition varies street by street. A school that looks impossible on raw numbers may be considerably more attainable from two miles away — and vice versa.

What the odds should change about your preparation

The point of understanding your region is not to frighten or reassure yourself — it is to calibrate. A threshold test rewards secure, accurate, calm work: the goal is to clear the bar with room to spare, and a steady year of preparation from Year 5 usually serves that well. A rank-order test is different. Marginal marks matter, timing pressure matters, and polish under exam conditions matters, because your child is being compared with a large field of heavily prepared candidates. Families targeting super-selectives sensibly start earlier and practise more deliberately — not out of panic, but because that is what the format measures.

One practical note on test providers: CEM no longer runs traditional 11+ exams, and GL Assessment now dominates the landscape — Buckinghamshire and the Birmingham King Edward VI consortium both use GL papers. Essex remains the notable exception with its own CSSE papers. Preparation materials should match the actual provider, because question styles differ more than parents expect.

How to find the real numbers for your school

You do not need to rely on rumour. Three sources will give you a truthful picture of any grammar school's competitiveness.

• The school's admissions arrangements. Published annually on its website: the number of places, the oversubscription criteria in order, and whether catchment or distance applies.
• Local authority allocation statistics. Councils publish offer-day data each spring, often including the last distance offered and how many first preferences were met.
• The open day question. Ask directly: how many children sat the test last year, how many qualified, and how many offers went to families outside the priority area. Good schools answer plainly.

Building a sensible list — and holding it lightly

The families who navigate the 11+ best tend to build a list the way sixth-formers build university choices: one stretch school, one realistic target, and one banker they would genuinely be content with — which, in most of the country, means a strong comprehensive. That last part is not a consolation prize; it is the thing that keeps the whole process proportionate for a ten-year-old. Selection at eleven is a rough instrument, and a near-miss says very little about a child's eventual trajectory. If results day ever does bring a disappointment — at 11, 16 or 18 — the recovery playbook is much the same, and we have written it up in our September reset plan after disappointing results.

Know your region, read the real numbers, calibrate the preparation to the actual contest — and keep the child, not the school badge, at the centre of the decision.