Gloucestershire has more grammar schools than most counties people think of as selective. Seven of them. They're spread across Cheltenham, Gloucester and Stroud, and they all admit through one shared test run by a single consortium. If you live in the county and you're starting to wonder whether grammar school is on the table, this is the part you need to get your head around. What test does your child sit? When? What score gets them in? And what happens if they fall short?
The good news is that the system here is cleaner than somewhere like Kent or Buckinghamshire. One test, one registration, one set of dates. The complication is that seven schools means seven sets of admissions rules sitting underneath that shared test, and that's where a lot of Gloucestershire families get tripped up.
The seven Gloucestershire grammar schools
Three towns, seven schools. It helps to picture them by area.
Cheltenham has Pate's Grammar School, which is co-educational and consistently the most oversubscribed grammar in the county. Gloucester has four: Sir Thomas Rich's School and The Crypt School for boys, and Denmark Road High School and Ribston Hall High School for girls. Stroud has two, Marling School for boys and Stroud High School for girls.
All seven sit inside the Gloucestershire Grammar Schools' consortium and use the same entrance test. Your child takes it once, and the result can be used to apply to any combination of the seven. So a Gloucester family might list Sir Thomas Rich's, The Crypt and Denmark Road on the same form, depending on the child.
The Gloucestershire 11+ test format
The test is written by GL Assessment and comes as two multiple-choice papers, each lasting around 55 minutes. The first paper covers English comprehension, vocabulary and verbal reasoning. The second covers maths and non-verbal reasoning, including spatial reasoning where children work with shapes, patterns and rotations.
The maths follows the Key Stage 2 curriculum for Years 5 and 6. Nothing on the paper sits outside what your child should be meeting in school. The pace and phrasing are tougher than a normal class test, though. Both papers are multiple-choice, which sounds easier but isn't. A child who can do the maths but can't transfer answers onto a separate sheet quickly will lose marks they earned.
Scores are age-standardised. That means a child born in August is measured against a slightly different yardstick from one born the previous September. Younger children in the year aren't penalised for being younger. Worth knowing if your child is summer-born and gets written off too early.
Test date and the deadlines that matter
The entrance test is sat in early September of Year 6, on a Saturday. For September 2027 entry, the test is set for Saturday 12 September 2026.
Here's the bit that catches people out. Registering for the test and applying for a school place are two separate jobs with two separate deadlines. Registration for the test opens at noon on 18 May 2026 and closes at noon on 26 June 2026. You do that through the consortium. Miss it and your child doesn't sit the test at all.
Then results come back in mid-October. Only after that do you apply for actual school places, through the Gloucestershire common application form, which has to be in by 31 October 2026. Two deadlines, both firm, and the late routes for either are not somewhere you want to find yourself. Set both reminders the day you decide to go for it.
What score does your child need?
There's no fixed pass mark. The consortium doesn't publish a number you can aim at, because the qualifying standard is set after the test based on the cohort that year. Roughly speaking, the test identifies the top quarter or so of children who sit it, and historically the qualifying standardised score has landed somewhere around 210 to 220.
But a single qualifying score doesn't tell the whole story, because the schools aren't equally hard to get into. Pate's is the sharp end. It draws applicants from a wide area, including families who'll commute from outside the county, so the effective bar there is well above the basic qualifying mark. A child who qualifies comfortably for Marling or Ribston Hall might not be near the top of the Pate's list.
As a rough home guide, a child scoring around 75% consistently on good GL-style practice papers is usually on track for the county's grammars in general. If Pate's is the target, you'd want to see them nearer 85% before you'd call it a realistic shot. Those aren't official figures, just the pattern that tends to hold.
Catchment, distance and how places get allocated
Qualifying on the test doesn't hand you a place. Each school runs its own oversubscription criteria, and most of them lean on distance once the qualifying standard is met. Live close to a school and qualify, and you're in a strong position. Qualify but live the other side of the county, and you're competing against nearer families who also qualified.
This matters most around Gloucester, where four of the seven schools cluster. A Gloucester family has genuine choice. A Cheltenham family is close to Pate's but further from the Gloucester and Stroud schools. A Stroud family realistically looks at Marling and Stroud High first. Geography quietly shapes which schools are sensible long before the test does.
So the honest read is this. If your child qualifies and you live within a few miles of a Gloucestershire grammar, you've got a strong chance of a place at one of them. If they scrape the standard and your nearest grammar is twenty minutes' drive away with hundreds of nearer applicants, the result is far less certain.
How to prepare without losing the plot
GL Assessment is the most documented exam format in the country, which is a gift. Practice materials are everywhere. CGP, Bond, Schofield & Sims and Letts all publish books that match the real structure. Ignore anything labelled CEM, since that format isn't used here and was retired across the board back in 2022.
The reasoning sections respond well to steady practice. A child who works through verbal and non-verbal reasoning from January of Year 5 will see real gains by September. English and maths move slower. For English, reading widely does more than any workbook, and for maths, problem-solving practice beats grinding through sums they can already do.
Then there's the clock. Two 55-minute papers under multiple-choice conditions punish children who are accurate but slow. Start timed practice from around Easter of Year 5, not the final fortnight. The aim isn't to make your child fast at the expense of thinking. It's to make the format itself stop being the thing that costs them marks.
The most common mistake I see Gloucestershire parents make? Starting in September of Year 6, six weeks out, and then panicking. Year 5 from January is the realistic window. Year 4 usually risks burning a child out before any of it counts.
FAQ
Can my child apply to more than one Gloucestershire grammar?
Yes. One test covers all seven schools. After results, you can list any combination of them on your common application form, ranked in your order of preference. Plenty of Gloucester families list three or four.
Is Pate's really harder to get into than the others?
In practice, yes. The qualifying standard is the same test, but Pate's attracts far more applicants than it has places, including from outside Gloucestershire. Your child only needs to meet the consortium standard to qualify. Getting an actual offer from Pate's tends to need a noticeably higher score, plus reasonable proximity.
My child is summer-born. Are they at a disadvantage?
The scores are age-standardised, which adjusts for date of birth within the school year. A younger child isn't measured against the same raw bar as an older one. It doesn't erase every difference, but it's a real correction, and summer-born children pass every year.
What if my child doesn't qualify?
You carry on with the standard Gloucestershire secondary application like any other family. The county has strong non-selective secondaries, and a grammar place was never the only good route for a capable child. Treating it as pass-or-fail tends to weigh on the child far more than the outcome itself does.
If you want to know where your child actually stands before you commit to months of prep, readyfor11.co.uk gives you a free benchmark across reasoning, English and maths. No account, no paywall, no upsell. It takes about 20 minutes and gives you an honest read on whether the Gloucestershire 11+ is a sensible target for your child.