Alcester Grammar School is a co-educational selective state school on Birmingham Road in Alcester, Warwickshire, and children enter at eleven on the shared West Midlands entrance test. This page covers Alcester Grammar School entry at eleven by the GL Assessment test, for children now in Year 3 to Year 5, and not sixth form, fees or A levels.
Is Alcester Grammar School a boys' or a girls' school?
Neither, and it is worth settling that first. The school is co-educational and says so plainly, describing itself as forward-thinking, selective and co-educational, and it stays mixed all the way through the sixth form. Several of the Warwickshire schools sitting the same test take boys only or girls only at eleven, so this is a real point of difference.
It stands alone structurally too. The school converted to academy status and runs as a single academy trust, a company limited by guarantee and an exempt charity. It helped found the Three Rivers Alliance, which it describes as not a multi academy trust but an alliance of successful schools retaining their independence as single academy trusts.
How does a child get in at eleven?
There is no Alcester paper to hunt down or practise from. The school takes part in the West Midlands Grammar Schools Partnership, so a child sits one shared entrance test, once, in the September of Year 6, and that single result travels to every partnership school the family has named. The paper itself is set by GL Assessment, the assessment publisher the partnership uses, so the format is the same at every school in the group.
The step families lose is the registration, not the test. A parent registers online during the summer term of Year 5. The window is short, your child's primary school plays no part in it, and nobody will chase you. Miss it and the year is gone, however well prepared your child was.
Reaching the standard is not an offer: the test decides whether a child meets the required standard. What happens after that is governed by the school's own published admission arrangements, which decide who among the qualified children is offered a place. Read those before you settle a preference order, not once the outcome is in.
What do the two papers actually sample?
Two multiple-choice papers. Each is timetabled at roughly fifty to sixty minutes, and the instructions and worked examples come out of that block, so the time your child spends answering questions is shorter than the headline number suggests.
Neither paper belongs to a single subject. Both mix the areas: English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics, and non-verbal reasoning including spatial questions. The weighting is the useful part. English and verbal reasoning together decide half the result, mathematics a quarter, and non-verbal reasoning the remaining quarter.
Answers are recorded on a separate sheet rather than beside the question. That is not a trivial detail. A child who drops a line loses a run of marks with entirely sound thinking behind them, and almost never spots it while the clock is still running.
Where should Year 5 effort go first?
Follow the weighting rather than your instincts. Reading and vocabulary do most of the heavy lifting, because English and verbal reasoning carry half the result between them, and both reward a long run-up. A child who has read widely since Year 4 starts from somewhere a single summer cannot reach.
Non-verbal reasoning behaves differently. Children climb quickly once they have met the question types, then level off, so early exposure buys most of what there is to buy. Mathematics is usually about pace and multi-step questions rather than new content, since the material has been taught already.
The specific thing to rehearse is the gear change. Both papers move between comprehension, word puzzles, arithmetic and shape questions inside one sitting, and switching quickly without losing accuracy is a skill in its own right.
Check this first: this page deliberately carries no scores, no intake figures, no catchment description and no dates, because each of them shifts from year to year and the copies floating around parent forums disagree with each other. Read these two instead:
Alcester Grammar School official website and the partnership's own site. Check the school's official admissions page for this year's figures.
Pathway Eleven has no connection to Alcester Grammar School, to the partnership or to any admissions authority. We cannot register a child, confirm eligibility, or say anything about catchment or your chances. Pathway Eleven is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GL Assessment.
Common questions about Alcester Grammar School entry
Is Alcester Grammar School co-educational?+
Yes, throughout. It describes itself as forward-thinking, selective and co-educational, and the sixth form is co-educational too. That sets it apart from several of the other Warwickshire schools using the same shared entrance test, which admit either boys or girls at eleven.
Does the school set its own entrance exam?+
No. It uses the shared West Midlands Grammar Schools entrance test, taken once in the September of Year 6. The same result is sent to every partnership school a family names at registration, so there is nothing separate to sit for Alcester.
What is the Three Rivers Alliance?+
A grouping the school helped found. It is careful to describe the alliance as not a multi academy trust but an alliance of successful schools that retain their independence as single academy trusts. Alcester Grammar School itself runs as a standalone single academy trust.
When do we have to register?+
In the summer term of Year 5, online, through the partnership. It closes long before the test is sat. Primary schools do not handle it, so check the partnership's own site for the dates applying to your child's year rather than a date quoted second hand.
Other schools in this consortium
Alcester Grammar School belongs to the partnership's Warwickshire group. A child sits the shared test once, and the result reaches each of these schools if you name them.
- Ashlawn School, mixed, in Hillmorton, Rugby.
- King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, boys, in Stratford-upon-Avon.
- Lawrence Sheriff School, boys, in Rugby, Warwickshire.
- Rugby High School, girls, in Rugby, Warwickshire.
- Stratford Girls' Grammar School, girls, in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Where to go next
- The West Midlands 11 plus entrance test, the shared test in full, with every partnership school listed.
- 11 plus preparation in Year 5, the year the registration falls in, term by term.
- 11 plus English comprehension, the slowest skill to build and the heaviest weighted.
- 11 plus non-verbal reasoning, the quarter where early exposure does most of the work.